For people that work at home as virtual assistants, using the internet to grow your business is a great way to meet new clients and increase your profits.
While you should never ignore any local opportunities to grow your business, working over the internet allows for unlimited growth.
If you would like to grow your business online, you will definitely want to set up a website.
Your website will be your portal for meeting new clients.
When a prospective client finds your website, they can read about the services you offer, what rates you charge, see samples of your work, and book time with you.
When you have a website, all of those activities can take place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You will be able to grow your business while you are making dinner, running errands, and even while you are on vacation.
Networking with other business owners on forums and message boards is one of the easiest ways to grow your business online.
A message board allows people with similar interests to communicate by leaving messages on various topics.
You can perform a Google search to find forums that center on work at home businesses or entrepreneurial topics.
Other business owners with home businesses make great clients, as they are used to working with people over the internet and are familiar with the concept of the virtual assistant.
Most message boards allow you to add a signature line to your profile, which will be displayed on all of your posts.
You can add a blurb about your virtual assistant business and the URL to your website.
Other business owners may click on this link to view your site or contact you directly to learn more about your services.
Social networking sites are another great place to grow your business.
While some of these sites are geared more toward meeting friends, sites such as LinkedIn have more of a business nature and allow for networking with serious business owners.
You can also find job openings on job boards such as monster and Craigslist.
When performing searches with these sites, use keywords such as telecommute to help you find jobs in which you can work at home.
Beware that some of the jobs posted will be scams.
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Another alternative is to visit freelance job sites such as Elance or guru.
These sites allow business owners to post job openings.
The twist with these sites is that the registered users of these sites bid on the jobs.
For example, if you wanted to apply for a virtual assistant job with these sites, you would respond back to the job inquiry with how much you would charge for the work.
This does lead to people posting lower rates than they may normally charge, as they are competing for these jobs.
However, not all of the job posters will choose the lowest rate.
If they are smart, they will choose the person who can do the best work.
These are just a few of the ways that you can grow your business online.
The internet really does open up many opportunities for you.
Take some time to market your business every day and you will find yourself with plenty of clients.