The VA Technical School starts classes March 30

We have officially opened our doors to The VA Technical School. You can find us at: http://www.vatechnicalschool.com

We had a great turn out at our introduction call. You can listen here:
The VA Technical School News

Our instructors are top-notch VAs and Marketing people who have successful VA Practices.

Classes will begin March 20.

Current classes scheduled:

Creating Assessments using Assessment Generator
How to Find and Create Joint Venture Partnerships
Product Development
10 Ways to BE the Virtual Assistant that Clients Brag About.

Dates, times and cost are listed at the web site.

There is a gap between VA Business Training and the skills successful entrepreneurs need to have in a VA partner in order to run their businesses. The VA Technical School fills those gaps.

I invite you to stop by.

The VA Technical School is open for business

Today I'm announcing the opening of "The VA Technical School."

I'm so excited to tell you about this new adventure for me and
for you!

Please join me this week for the fr.ee introduction to our VA
Technical School. You will meet some of the instructors and
learn about the technical classes we are planning for you.

Learn how and why The VA Technical School will help you gain
value in your VA practice.

Visit http://www.vatechnicalschool.com to register and be sure
to include your questions.

Your VA Pal,

Kathy Sparks

PS: It's okay to tell your all of your friends!

Products your client will be glad you have!

This week has been a "light bulb" week for me. What do I mean - WOW, have I discovered some great adds to my bag of tricks that impress my clients.

I'll share:

1. AdWord Analyzer: This is a great little program that analyzes keywords, the competition for each keyword, tells you how many Google Ads there currently are being displayed for the keyword, suggests other keywords to focus on a niche and how many searches are being made for the keyword.

This is NOT a monthly subscription. It is software you purchase and put on your computer to use as often as you would like.

About three years ago I read an article about how to analyze keywords, calculate the ratio for best performance with the least competition. I set up a spreadsheet for each web site and started with the basic keywords, went to Overture and Wordtracker, found the number of competitors in Google and Yahoo, added them to my spreadsheet, ran the calculation and did my sorting. I then eliminated the ones I didn’t want, and started with some better keywords.

Just last month I took a client's web site from no Google listing to the third listing on the first page. I did this by using AdWord Analyzer for the best keyword with the least competition. The client was delighted.

This program saves me so much time. I highly recommend it to you if you are creating or maintaining web site and Pay Per Click ads for your clients or for yourself.

My Next GREAT Find:

You are, no doubt familiar with Camtasia, the program that captures screen images and audio to create training videos. I Really Really wanted that program, but until I had the $300 to pay for it and a reason to have it, I was not going to buy it.

This week, a new program is available called CamStudioPro and is SO much more reasonable and does almost everything that the other program does. I purchased it and will be trying it out in the weeks to come. I'll keep you posted.

AND a great PopOver Program:

I've been using this program for about a year and have loved it. But, they've come out with a brand new version with a brand new interface and it is wonderful. If you want an easy way to add popup messages to web sites, this is the tool for you.

And the last one:

Unique Article Marketing. What a boring boring subject, but face it, it does work. Your clients are tired of writing articles and you are tired of begging them for articles and know that you've submitted the same ones over and over again. The worse part is that we all know that article marketing does work.

So here is a new twist - take one article and make it into three different articles and submit it to 850 directories, blogs and websites.

You, as a VA, can have one account and submit your articles and all of your client articles through this one account. Most Article Submission services limit you to one account, one author. You are NOT limited to the number of articles you send out.

The BIGGY here is that you can have one account for all of your clients. This could be a positive income stream for you.

Wow, it's been quite a week here at Your Virtual Resource!

I hope you find something here that you love!

Kathy

Hold On Tight To Your Dreams!

I invite you to take a business survey

Hello:

Please click on the following link to take a survey about your business and the challenges you face.

What Are Your Business Challenges?

Thank you!

Ten ways to boost your website performance

First, there needs to be some activity to generate interest in your web sites. SEO will be helpful, but it is an effort that needs to be made from several angles.

1. Consider not using Automatic Play audio buttons. Why? Yes, we love hearing you, but consider the caliber of visitors, especially executive types, who would think having a message “pushed” to them might not meet their expectations of an executive type product or service.

2. Consider doing some social networking. Here are two ways to begin. First, set up a blog for and begin populating it with some of your newsletter feature articles. If you receive comments, then you would need to respond – take half hour a day to look at your blog and comment. Blogs are picked up quicker than web sites by search engines. Or maybe you would need to check just a couple of times a week unless it got very active.

3. Another way to do social networking is to have some Google Alerts sent to you via email – these alerts would be alerts focused on the keywords you are using in your web sites. You would scan these alerts and if you find a blog that you can contribute to the conversation, you would simply click on the link and add your comments. This would enable you to leave your name and URL to the most relevant site you have and create a link back to it. It is important that you don’t blatantly try to sell your products at these blog sites, but contribute to the conversation. We are attempting to get your name out there.

4. Now don’t cover your eyes on this one. Consistently distribute your articles. One every 3 days. I have two sources. I would not spend hours hand submitting – too inefficient. This will take some time to build up, but once the momentum gets going, I think you will see more visits. It must be consistent.

5. Having said that, create different bios, one specific for each article and each article should be specific to one web site – none of this general stuff. We want to focus.

6. Are you currently running Google Adwords? If you are, look at the ads to make sure they are focused to your niche.

7. Use the ShoppingCart Adtracker feature to track the articles and the adwords. This is not perfect because some sites only accept text articles and bios and I will not put an AdTracker URL in a bio – looks unprofessional to me, although some people do it. You can add it to the bios where we can use HTML.

8. Pick the top five keywords and use a different one as the very first keyword and in the description of each web page. Focus this keyword in the content, title and description.

9. Check your back links using Google. It is important to get links – articles will help with this.

10. And if you are interested, you can become an “Expert” at http://www.selfgrowth.com/ and http://www.allexperts.com/

These are volunteer and free to the web sites, but it does get your name and web sites in yet another area.

I believe this is the way to go from experience. Several years ago I did a web site for a woman who picked her most obvious keyword as her top keyword and focus – today, if you put that keyword in google, her site still comes up #1 and it has for several years. Her web site is pretty much how I left it a few years back when we parted ways. She also attracted name site that put every one of her articles in their database, with a link back to her site.

If you have a relationship with some top rated niche company, maybe you could arrange with them to use your articles in their database. I know it is difficult because of the many number of sites out there.

Lastly, you need a reason for someone to visit your web sites to add to your bio for your articles, like a f.ree report on ???? “Visit http://www.yourwebsite.com/ and pick up your f.ree copy of ???????.” Be sure to add an autoresponder to collect email addresses.

Niche, focus and be diligent about those articles!

Setting up your business online

Whether you are setting up a new business, or launching a new product, you need to start thinking about a Business name, a web site, logo, etc.

I hope you have come up with a good name for your business. Only you can do that. But we do have some tips.

To put your business online as well as offline, it is helpful to include in your business name, what you do. By including words related to your niche or product, you will help potential customers find your online business – people will know instantly what you are about.

A good way to test a name is to do a domain search. Try http://www.prositesetup.com/ to search for domain names, and use the feature to have ProSiteSetup suggest available names for you. To make your business name unique and get the name you want, consider including your name in it.

Some examples:

yourproductbyyourname.com
Newmycompany.com
companynicheonline.com
myproducttherightway.com

Once you have picked out a business domain name, register it. I recommend that you register your new domain name and purchase your hosting account at the same service to keep things simple. As a side note, check on your name as a domain name. If it is available, I highly recommend registering it at the same time for future use. Why have a domain name?

1. It gives you a professional image


2. You will send your emails from your business, rather than from hotmail, yahoo, etc.


3. You will have an online “brochure” telling the world who you are and what you do


4. You will have several free email addresses to send your clients emails from, such as, support@yourdomain.com, yourname@yourdomain.com,
   yourbusiness@yourdomain.com


5. You’ll have the ability to check your email online with webmail, and download it into your email program on your computer. Be sure to choose a service with good email s*pam filtering.

You will need a “host” for your web site. A web host is the place where you will load your business brochure into a file on the Internet, and from there it will be available for the world to see. This will be your web site. People will access it by using your domain name in the URL address box of their browser.

Hosting a web site is rather inexpensive. I strongly advise you not to use free hosting accounts. Free normally involves the free service attaching their advertisements onto your web pages. This distracts from the reason you have a web site – to sell your services. Hosting at ProSiteSetup is less than $5 per month. Included in your service is email and a blog. If you have already made this type of purchase and have a registration company and hosting company, we recommend that you purchase your new domain and hosting through your current service if it is satisfactory for you currently.

Next comes the issue of how or who will get your information into your hosting account.

You have a few options.

1. When you choose your hosting, you can subscribe to a service at ProSiteSetup called WebSite Tonight. It’s just what it sounds like – a template driven way that you can enter your own information, upload your own photos, logos etc. They guide you right through the process.


2. If you have a web site editor such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, and feel comfortable creating your pages and loading the site, you can do that. If you need help, ProSiteSetup has free 24/7 customer support. We can also help.


3. Or, you can hire a web designer to create a site for you. Your site will not need to be extensive, but it will need to tell visitors the benefits of your product or business. Web designers are available at many rates and at various companies. You can have a custom site created, or purchase a template online.

Side Note: When creating your website, whether you create it or you have someone do it for you, make sure the keywords, meta tags, title and description is in the code.

• Content can be created by you or you can have a professional write a Sales Letter page for you -
  http://www.copywritingcourse.com/

Now you have your business, a business name, and your electronic brochure (your web site). We recommend that you give your business a brand. Branding your business or product with a logo is one way of making it memorable and identifible to prospective customers. You can hire an expensive designer at Elance.com.

If you would like help with setting up your web site online, you may contact kathy@yourvirtualresource.com