Posts Tagged ‘Freelancing’

Freelancing has become a very appealing option for all. For those who wish to make money online, freelancing has become among the top options not only because it provides a relatively stable income but also because freelance work has become so easy to find over the internet. Online freelancing resources also provide tools that make freelancing simple, profitable, and secure. For this reason, more and more people can benefit from freelancing online. This includes those who are currently unemployed, those who are unwilling to be part of a corporate environment, and those who wish to augment their income.

Because of the depleting global economic situation nowadays, many people have found themselves unexpectedly unemployed. Freelancing becomes a very good alternative for them to make money while they are going through the process of looking for new employment. Finding employment is not as simple as many hope and it often takes some time. Because most people cannot afford to be jobless for any number of weeks, freelancing becomes their best option. They can simply go online and make money while waiting on job interviews. Some of them even end up sticking with freelancing.

Those who are unwilling to be part of any corporate environment, on the other hand, find joy in freelancing because they can work as they please. Because of freelancing, they can work on their own and make money according to their output. Apart from not having to show up at an office on a daily basis, they could also choose to work on things that they enjoy and they are only answerable to themselves. They also would not need to put up with office politics. Although freelancing many not provide an income as stable as they would if they were paid on a monthly basis by a corporation, the benefits are well worth it. With freelancing, they simply need to discipline themselves and they can make even more money that they would if they were hired in a corporation.

Those who wish to augment their income with freelancing are often those who have regular jobs and are paid on a monthly basis. However, they may feel that what they receive from their day job is not enough to cover their monthly expenses or they wish to earn some more in order to save. No matter what their reasons are, freelancing can be a good option for those who wish to augment their income because it does not necessarily have to take up much of their time. Even if they had to work a regular day job, they can simply set aside some time to make money online either during the evenings or the weekends.

Freelancing is a good money-making option for all because it allows people to make money online no matter how much time they have on their hands. Freelancing work is also very easy to find as long as you go to the right site. It may be best for you to stick with one in order for you to build up your reputation quickly so it is important for you to choose the right freelancing website. When you look for freelancing work online, choose the site that provides you with simplicity as well as security and you should be on the right track.

Virtual Assistants

Since the advent of Internet there are so many changes that have taken place in the business world. People started upgrading their infrastructure and they have also made many changes to the way they work. Internet has played a major role in revamping the entire world and it is now the most widely used means of communication. E-mail, instant messengers, video chatting, etc have redefined the way humans communicate. Further to this advances in software and hardware have replaced the traditional manual processing and analysis of business data.  Today Business Intelligence (BI) and decision support systems are able to automatically collect correlate and analyse tons of information.

Virtual assistants are one such new innovation through which a company can make most use of their employees and available resources.

“A Virtual Assistant (or simply VA), is an independent contractor providing administrative, technical, or sometimes creative assistance to clients–usually to other independent entrepreneurs and solo and small business practices, such as that of a lawyer or realtor. Virtual assistants work from their own office (hence “virtual”), thus making it a fairly popular (and growing) profession. Source: Wikipedia “

Businesses both start-ups and established ones have a need for administrative employees to assist them in organizing their day to day schedule. Such assistants are really important to any business. They are able to receive the customer’s calls, answer to emails, and organise/cancel meetings schedules.  In many occasions a good, polite assistance is what can make a sale happen.

For International Businesses which have offices all over the world, employing good assistants, for every country they operate can be extremely costly. The same stands for start up businesses which usually operate on a small budget and thus the cost of employing good experience assistant could be prohibited

Virtual assistants came to reduce such costs. VA’s are people, which work from home, and perform all functionality that a normal corporate assistant will do. For example the virtual front desk Assistant will sit at his home and he will take calls from customers of a client company and answer them accordingly.  Customers will never know if the assistant is located locally or on a different geographical area. Technologies like Virtual Numbers, VoIP, IPBX and call re routing/diverting ensures that such operations are performed transparently.

Most of the virtual assistants are freelancers and they follow the fly in fly out kind of working. Freelancing has become the latest trend in employment due to the fact that is significantly improves improved the quality of the work done.  As a Virtual Assistant you will be working for a company, but you will not need to go to the office like the regular employees do. Such flexibility significantly reduces the expenses of the Virtual Assistant (i.e. car expenses, ) and thus reduces the cost to the employers. Further to this a Virtual Assistant may be able to work for more than one company (i.e. depending on the contract), and thus greatly increase his income.

This concept of virtual assistant has become so famous that now it is estimated that there are more than 50,000 to 80,000 virtual assistants in the entire world. These numbers are fast-growing, and it seems than in the near future most companies will employee at lease on VA. Being a virtual assistant has many benefits and also it has its own quota of demerits. The merits are in that you can work from home and select your working hours. This doesn’t mean that you will have the authority to think and act as you want but you will have a bit more freedom than the regular employees of the company. Another advantage is that since a VA works from the comfort of his home, productivity is usually increased. In short the advantages of working as a VA are:

• Choice of working hours
• Working at home
• Better Salary
• A better level of freedom
• Ability to work for  more than on customer

Working as a VA has also its disadvantages. The worst usually is that they do not get the chance to socialise with co workers. In short the disadvantages of working as a VA are:

• Have to work alone
• Socialisation is a problem
• No superior to guide you
• Requires Self Motivation

Virtual assistants require higher levels of professionalism and motivation. They must have the ability to identify their shortcomings and mistakes and corrected by themselves. This is a vital requirement due to the fact that these persons do not have superiors supervising them no fellow workers to spot their mistakes. This is the reason why people with more experience are selected for the roles of virtual assistants.

Today many Companies do not hide their preference in working with Virtual Assistants. The reasons for this are many.  Most notably  corporations can save large amounts of money from the expenses required to accommodate for normal office employees (i.e. computers, offices).  The amount of money saved can be invested to improve the quality of the services and/or products they provide. Further to this, reducing the employees’ operation expenditures means that more money can be invested in deploying marketing and sales campaigns.

Working with VAs’ also greatly helps corporations and reduced the training expenses required without sacrificing the quality of their offered services. Instead of spending thousands of Euros to train people on specific technologies (or processes) for a project, the company can easily hire VA’s which are already competent with the skills required by the project.

References:

• A great list with tools that can be used by Vas:  http://www.homeofficewarrior.com/virtual-assistants/tools-of-the-virtual-assistant-trade/
• International Virtual Assistant Association: http://www.ivaa.org/
• Virtual Assistants Forum : http://www.vanetworking.com/
• AssistU, Information and certification for Vas: http://www.assistu.com/

The job of a free agent is always challenging as well as exciting. For people that prefer to have challenges and excitement in their professional career, freelancing is just best for them. Most of the time a freelancer’s life is full of rewards. This way of working allows you to select your own hours to accomplish your assignments and projects.

There are quite a lot of people that want to follow the freelancing way while working for a traditional job. They are usually fed up with the 9 to 5 schedule, the reports, the office bureaucracy, and the office politics which lets put it simple in many ways they don’t allow you to complete the work. So the problem with many professionals today is that although they are overwhelmed with the advantages of being a freelancer they are also confused with the ways to start.

Working from home, can help you earn plenty of money. Freelancing gives you the ability to participate in many individual projects whenever this is required. By getting involved into many freelance projects you will dramatically increase your revenue but of course your work-hours will also increase. And this is what the freelancing career is all about in reality, flexibility and autonomy. So if you need more money you work more hours, if not you can end up working a couple of hours and still earn enough money to have a decent living. So in reality freelancing gives you the flexibility of being able to work only the hours you want, at least I don’t know any other job that allows you to get up 11:00 in the morning make your coffee and sit on the computer wearing your athletics , or even have a couple of hours break to socialize with friends. Added to this is that freelancers are usually getting paid more than employees, for the same type of jobs.

Freelancers have chosen a conscious lifestyle and that is the most exciting part for any freelancing job. More often they want to create a perfect balance between their social life and professional career in order to grab the right control. Well, for a freelancer the money earnings are always an equation on which the time he spends for assignments is a critical factor.

But unfortunately freelancing does not come only with advantages. Freelancers cannot enjoy the job security employees have (although with the today’s recession you can never be secure). As a freelancer no one will pay for your training, certification or relocation, and these are usually required by most employers require. Last but not least consider some of the thinks that employees take them for granted while freelancers need to pay for them, like insurance, corporate computer cell phone and sometimes corporate car, and of course pay for your vacations or give you a bonus even if no project exist.

On the other hand creating freelance projects and hiring freelance workers is of great benefit for the employers also. In reality in most cases sitting 8 hours a day in small cubicles and getting paid a fixed salary is simple unproductive. Most employees are able to work only with 20%-40% efficiency in a corporate environment. This efficiency level is enough to show that most corporate workers in reality spend only 2 – 4 hours of work daily. Employers now are asked to pay for electricity, office rent, furniture, sometimes employee’s lunches, pay for training and many other daily operational expenses. Employers benefit much more by hiring freelancers and building virtual teams. Using freelancers will dramatically reduce their operational expenses and increase productivity.

A report from Freelance Switch provides great statistics that were produced from a survey included 3700 freelancers (http://freelanceswitch.com/general/3700-freelancers-surveyed-the-results-are-here/)