Overall I am much happier, make more money, and completely mobile!

Life is short, you only live once.

I’m glad you wrote this blog because this is an opportunity for all VA’s to evaluate just how well we take care of our clients. Here is my take away:

1) It is very important that clients are confident in our ability to provide quality service to them so be sure to follow up with your clients on their projects, because they are putting their trust in someone they cannot see.

2) Just because we are independent contractors doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a business continuity plan of some sort in place, after all, one aspect of being virtual is the process SHOULD BE seamless. Take advantage of subcontracting if you become inundated with too many projects. It could minimize the loss of a client base and insure that client projects don’t get neglected. Keep your clients informed if something goes wrong so they can make other plans if they have to.

3) When writing in blogs and other forums, be sure to spell check. I would even suggest writing your blog in a word processor so you can copy/paste content after proofreading and editing. Be vigilant about blogs, forums, and other forms of social media networking. Don’t run to the computer to write a blog when you are angry, upset, and hurt about something. Vent your frustrations in a word processing document, read it, and then re-read it again (several times). By the time you read it a few times, you may find better wording to express how you feel or you may even realize you probably shouldn’t post it. Blogs are for the whole World Wide Web to see and you don’t want to ruin your credibility and reputation because of something you wrote in a blog. What we write in blogs and forums tell the real story about who we are and could make our established and potential clients question our character.

5)Lastly, it’s probably not a good idea to allow others to have access to the same computer you use to do your client’s work. It’s too easy for someone else to download something that contains a virus that crashes your computer, especially if you don’t have a system backup. Some viruses are irreparable and as a VA, it’s just not worth it to have the security risk.

I hope you can find a VA that you can rely on

BTW, sorry about the roaches, yikes!!!!

I am using msgtag status years ago and works fine, inexpensive (just one pay) and think it is more reliable than readnotify.

Readnotify would have more advantages if it just worked

BTW, my statistics for mstag status show than more than 25% of my messages have been open and am aware many are open but not reported when they are read on linux/unix email clients

With the changes that the economy has experienced, I have not been able to figure out if I made the right choice. Although the company who I now work for has greater integrity then the media giant who I had previously worked for.

I enjoy sales, but have really struggled over the last year. My manager is very supportive and luckily spritual as well.

I have marked your site as a favorite, so that I may refer to your blogs when I question what it is that I’m doing.

Kindly,

Maura