What’s up with me.

It’s been more than a year since my last update isn’t it? a lot has happened, first I had the most <a href=”http://stoneformers.blogspot.com/”>effective kidney stone treatment</a> after experiencing the worst pain in my whole life.

I no longer a VA, i have been building websites this past few months.

I’m also addicted to <a href=”http://getthebesttan.blogspot.com/”>spray tan,/a> and having a sun-kissed skin all the time even during monsoon season.

I’m also into facebook games and in currently in search for a
<a href=”http://www.newfacebookgame.com/”>working Gourmet Ranch Cheat</a>

I miss you

wow it’s been 50 years! kidding! will post soon

Manage your Contacts and keep track of your RELATIONSHIPS!

JibberJobber.com is a career management tool! Have you heard of this site? It’s so hot! This website earns it’s popularity as a job seeker’s tool- but there’s more to it.

So as a VA, how do I use it? What benefits do I get? And why I recommen this to all the other VAs and freelancers?

First, I use it to store my contacts. I know you’re thinking “what’s so special about it?”. There’s an import and export feature, so all my gmail, outlook, yahoo and even twitter friend’s contact info are all stored in one place. Not interesting enough for you?

Second, I can track my network connections. I have contact info of people I haven’t met or communicated with, contacts that were referred to me by people I know that I keep for future use. By using this site I can track the degrees of separation. I can remember who gave me the contact info (1st degree) so when I contact the person who has no idea who I am, I could easily inform him/her who gave me the info. And even if you’ve already formed a relationship, it would be something to remember who and how you got introduced.

Third, I can rate my contacts. This is my 2nd favorite. I rate my contacts specially my clients, former clients and potential clients. I rate my relationships with them. So at one glance I’ll remember, if this client has been great, do I want to work with him again. Or do I have a strong potential to get hired by this client. I also add notes to my contacts, I love adding information about my interactions with them, for example, I had a good chat with this potential client, he seems nice, or this client doesn’t like jokes, ect.

Fourth, Tags. They have a tag and category features which make filtering my contacts easier. I mean I can group all of my clients in my outlook or gmail and mark them as clients, but with JibberJobber, I can tag them as clients, good, bad,  generous, cheap, even their location. So for example I want to send my potential clients an email about a VA friend who needs work, I can sort them by clients, good and generous, or I can sort them by my star ratings… Too cool!

Lastly, my favorite, action items. I can plan things that I need to do to establish a good relationship with my contacts. Having a good relationship with my contacts is very important to me, specially my former clients and would-have-been-clients that offered me projects that I couldn’t accept because of my schedule. I want to maintain a good network with them. And action items helps me a lot. I can set an Action Item alert that will alert me via email. My action items are usually about emailing my contacts on certain occasions like birthday, xmass or how about remembering a very special request? Enter it on your account while your memory is fresh and you’ll definitely be reminded even if its months or years from the day you input it.

For me, staying in touch with my old clients and potential clients is important. And not just staying in touch but having a good relationship. It helps broaden my clientele, plus my connections with them can help me with my future projects. Most specially somehow they can help me when I need more hours or worst, I’m out of clients and I need work.

This jibberjobber tool is great for job seekers to track their job search- but it’s also a great tool to manage your professional(or business) network relationships. Try it, poke around the website, you can get a free account and see how it can benefit you. Probably not the same way as it benefits me, but you’ll find it really interesting. I’m sure you’ll have fun rating your contacts and adding notes about them.

Have Fun!

Personal Branding

Check out my logo! I know it’s not, WOW! I find it simple, cute and perfect! I’m starting to build my personal brand. Something that will set me apart from all the other VAs and  freelancers. Personal branding is something that you’ve probably heard before, the concept was really vague for me when I first learned about it, but as I’ve read about it more and more I began to understand how it can benefit my career or business as being a VA is considered a business.

Like always, I’m going to do this on my own and try to learn ways to achieve a good personal brand, some might consider hiring a consultant but I’m just not too crazy about spending money that way…

So do you have a personal brand? Are you trying to build your personal brand? Why and how? I’d appreciate those that would share a thing or two..

Free Host and Free Domain

Out of shear frustrations, of not being able to tweak my blog. (Read my post below WordPress.com VS WordPress.org) I went to find a web host to set up my own customizable blog.

So now, I’m loving both my wordpress.com and my own customizable blog. thanks to wordpress.org

For those who wants to try it out, don’t spend a dollar for your sandbox. Try this web host. 000hosted.com I’ve tried 6 free web host and none of them works with wordpress, I almost gave up and thought no free sites can support it, even though they claim to support php, my sql and even fantastico, but whenever I install wordpress I always get errors, I followed the instructions to a T. And on my last try, on this site (000.hosted.com) It worked, I was really surprise to see the password being given to me, almost couldn’t believe it! LOL.

I’m having fun tweaking it and installing plug ins. And I’m planning something big for that site, I’m probably not going to turn it into a blog. I’ll be blabbering here! If you don’t mind.

Oh and the next thing, once you have your site up. You can get a free cc.co domain. You’ll also find a link for a free domain on that site.

Enjoy!

Love And Marriage

I received this email today. I just wanna share this to everyone.

One day, Plato asked his teacher, “What is love? How can I find it?”

The teacher answered, “There’s a large wheat field in front. Walk there without turning back, and take just one leaf. If you can find one leaf that you think is extraordinary than all the other leaves, it means you have found love.”

So Plato walked… and not long after that, he came back empty handed.

The teacher asked him, “Why didn’t you bring any leaf?”

Plato replied, “I can only bring just one leaf and when I walk, I can’t turn back. Actually, I have found one extraordinary leaf, but I dont know whether there’s anymore extraordinary leaf ahead, so I didn’t take that leaf. When I walked further, I realized that all the other leaves I found are not as extraordinary as I’ve found previously. In the end, I didn’t take any single leaf.”

Then the teacher told him, “So… that is love…. and you lost it!”

Another day, Plato asked his teacher again, “What is marriage? How do I know that I have found it?”

The teacher answered, “There is a forrest in front. Please walk there and don’t look back. You can only cut one tree, and cut the one that you think is the highest, because that means you have found marriage.”

Plato walks there, and he came back not long after that bringing one tree. The tree is not a very good tree and not a very tall one either. It’s just a plain and ordinary tree.

The teacher asked him, “Why did you cut that kind of tree?”

Plato answered, “Because, according to my previous experience, after walking thru the wheat field, I came back with nothing. So this time, when I saw this tree, and I think this tree is not so bad, I decided to cut it and bring it here. I don’t want to risk loosing it again.”

And the teacher said, “Well… that is marriage and you found it! Marriage is the continuity of love… The more you look for love, you will find nothing… Love is in your heart… the place where you can control your desire and your hope to find something better… When you have endless hope and wish of love, you will only get emptiness .. because you wont get anything and time can not be turned back. Accept love for what it is… Marriage is a process of taking chances, and you choose the best option among all the alternatives… If you want to have a perfect match and a perfect marriage, you are wasting time… because there is no perfect marriage.”

How to choose the right keyword!

You’ll read and hear a lot about keywords and SEO. It is very important to find a competitive keyword for your site so you’ll get more impressions on search engines.

There’s a lot of great tips and techniques out there but let me share this one first. This is the latest I’ve learned about keywords and it’s very interesting.

How to choose the right keyword? Do keyword research. Whatever keyword techniques you have, you’re still going to do some research about it.

So this is one technique on how to choose the right keyword.

First, go to google AdWords keyword tool. Test your keyword or topic. The keyword tool will generate keyword ideas and the approximate search volume of that keyword.

Second, go to google.com.

Now you have two browsers open, go to keyword tool and check what keywords have high search volume anything more than 1,000 is good enough. Then go to google.com and google the the keyword, you have to remember to enclose the keyword or keyword phrase inside a quotation.  Just below the search field, on the right side, you’ll see how many pages has that keyword, so you can determine how many of you will fight for that keyword.

This is the rule, on the keyword tool, check for the search volume, on google check for the number of page competing for that keyword. The right keyword would have more than 1,000 search volume and would have less than 60,000 pages competing for that keyword.

Lets try an example. If you pull up the keyword tool and type in nail polishright now the search volume is 550,000. Then go to google.com and type “nail polish” (don’t forget the quotation marks.) it would show you that there is about 4,680,000 pages competing for that keyword. Not a good keyword according to this technique. You can try a few more keywords.

If you scroll down a bit more on the keyword tool, you’ll see  safe nail polish. (i don’t know how safe or how dangerous a nail polish is but that’s one of the keyword tool ideas). According to this tool, the search volume is about 1,600. Check on google, the number of web pages containing this keyword is 3,530.  It has more than 1,000 search volume and has less than 60,000 competing pages. So this is considered a good keyword on this keyword research method.

My personal take, seems like a good technique, but I wouldn’t just use the keyword tool alone to do my keyword research. If you look at this example you have a fighting chance of 50%, looks good enough.

So this is how you choose the right keyword according to this keyword research method.

How I became a Virtual Assistant

I’m a Filipino VA. After years in the customer service industry, working mostly night shifts, I’ve  acquired the advance level of  ”Call Center Syndrome”- these are health conditions common to call center people acquired because of the call center environment. Ulcer, highblood pressure and stress to name a few. I had a bad case of Peptic Ulcer!  I didn’t want to quit, I loved my job, I was good at it, I had a future and just a few months shy to a promotion. But I love my family and I had to take care of my health so I quit.

Staying at home and being a housewife seems so unproductive for me, because I was used to earning money, and I always feel guilty about spending someone else’s money for myself, even if it’s my husband money! Although he insist, it’s just not the same as I enjoy spending my own salary.  And very soon I was so frustrated of getting back to work! But my husband pointed out few important things that made me stay at home, 1. We are planning to have a baby, he doesn’t want my health to suffer again. 2. He is very concern and worried about my shift schedules, he drives me and picks me up from work when he is here but whenever he is at sea (he’s a seafarer!) he always worry about my commute. 3. He wants me to give him atleast 3 years, I bargained 1 1/2 , and then I can go back to the office.

So I was stuck in my house. But I know what to do. I’ve heard of it, I’ve read something about it but I haven’t tried it. Freelancing! I figured I can do that, data entry work shouldn’t be hard! So I did my research and found cool freelancing sites that got me my first jobs. And soon I found my niche in VA service. Being a VA doesn’t have a specific skill set, sometimes you are ask to do the most bizarre tasks. Like “maintain an adult friend finder account”, or “buy a gift for my dog on line and make sure he’ll love it!” When you are a VA you  should be smart, quick to learn, resourcefull, flexible and patient. You have to constantly educate yourself.

About the money, It would depend. Some months, it’s not enough on some you got it big! It depends how may clients you have, how many hours you put in, and the rate you charge. I charge differently per clients, I have a standard which may seem high but I allow them to bargain to a point. So if my going rate is $5/hr I’ll price you at $8, if I’m lucky they will take the bait, else they would usually bargain for 6 to 5, if the tasks are easy and the clients seems a good person to work with I’ll go as low as $4. It depends, I loved earning money but I’m not greedy.

But the key to this profession/business (to some) is having a good network and clientele. Especially when you’re starting out, give your best. Always give good service because that’s how they will give you more work. And when you are known for your quality, even if you raise your fees, as long as it is still a reasonable amount, they will continue working with you. Being a VA is not easy money, you have to really work for your earnings. If you work hard enough then you will earn a lot. Right now, I have one fulltime client and 2 part times. I try to just keep it the way for awhile. I dont want any of my clients business to suffer–or for me to suffer! Experienced having two full time clients and it almost gone crazy. But even though I refuse some jobs now, even those that offers bigger pay than what I currently have. I’m happy with my clients and my work load and the “just ok” salary it brings in every month. However I make sure I still maintain a good network with my former clients and almost clients, I make sure I take good care of the relationships I build with them.

I’m just very thankfull I’m earning and I’m loving my job.  *Winks* to the VA fairy!

Beginners Guide to SEO!

Some people thinks that SEO is complicated. I think otherwise. Although I must admit It was intimidating at first, it seemed so technical, so confusing, with terms like google algorithms, adword, onsite and off site SEO. But believe me, once you’ve read a couple of articles about it, they all seems to tell you the same thing over and over again. Why? because that’s it! It’s not as complicated as it sounds.

 

First, lets explain the basic stuff. What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The basic GOAL of SEO is to rank high on Search Engines (ex: Google, Yahoo, MSN). Why? To bring FREE traffic to a website.

 

ON SITE vs OFF  SITE SEO

Sometimes called, offline (onsite) and online(off site) SEO. Let start with Onsite or Offline SEO, these are SEO strategies that you implement on your website. These would involved your codes, your content, the name of your pages, the images on the website, even the design of the website, ect. Off site or online SEO are strategies that you implement on other sites. These includes, link building, social bookmarking, article marketing, directory submissions, ect.

 

And here are some SEO terms/jargons.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Back Links (Incoming links. A link to your website from other website!)

Indexed (When search engines spiders visit your page a stores your web page content on their date base.)

PR (Page rank, this is how google measures how good your site is in terms of links)

Spiders (Are programs used by search engines to explore the world wide web)

 

Now that we have defined what SEO is, lets now talk about SEO strategies: (These are SEO strategies that I know so far, there are probably more out there that I haven’t heard of but let’s stick to the basics, we are beginners anyway)

 

Keyword

One of the most important elements of SEO is choosing the right KEYWORD/s. Keyword/s are words or phrases that an internet user use for their search. And these are the words that Search Engine Spiders will look for on a website.

 

Keyword density

This is the measurement of the number of times a keyword or phrase was used compare to the total number of words on a page. The higher your keyword density, the more likely it will appear on the searches.

 

Link Building

This is a long topic but as you know more about SEO you’ll discover different ways, good and bad link building strategies. Since this is a beginners guide, let just touch this subject a little. Some says that the more links to your site, the better you will perform on search engines, that maybe be true before and links could still help your website now, BUT! not all links are considered valid by search engines, specifically GOOGLE. So when you link, it has to have relevance to your site. How do you get links to your site?

1. You can request for it. You can ask a web master or a blogger to link to your site.

2. Including a link on your signature and posting on forums and commenting on blogs.

3. Making an article and submitting it to article directories. The articles should have a backlink to your site. It will also drive a lot of traffic to your site and in my opinion the most effective SEO strategy out there.

4. Social bookmarking. This is a tedious task, you have to register to social bookmarking sites (most would register from 50 to 100 social bookmarking sites) and bookmark your webpages.

5. And some bad practices that I don’t want to discuss. If you’re curious, go ahead and google, link bating, spamming and Black hat SEO.

 

Blogging!

SEO also use blogs, somehow blogs get easily indexed by search engine spiders. So some uses blog sites to introduce their websites, create a blogging community, create a buzz about their website or product, can even earn them links to their website, ect.  Yes I do some SEO stuff, this is a service that I also offer to my clients as a VA. But I’m not linking them here, this is my private space! lol!

 

Good Website Content

Content is KING! This is the best way to have high performance on search engines, have a good content. Fill your website with good stuffs that will benefit your visitors. Google loves good content. Don’t put to much effort on building links and bookmarking, when you have a good content, search engines will indexed you, visitors would comeback, bloggers will point people to your site, ect. So invest 80% of your time on this.

 

Ok, so that’s a Beginners Guide stuff. I’m sleepy…

Stay at home mom doesn’t mean a jobless mama.

Just a few years ago, at least here in my country, housewives or stay at home moms are women who takes care of the household, the children, cooks the family meal and the husband takes care of earning money for the family. Until recently, fiber optics had improved, internet connection becomes cheaper, the current mom generation are more techy and internet savvy and suddenly, having a job while you stay put in your house is possible!

Many are still skeptic about working from home, there’s only a few people aware of it and most refuses to believe that it is possible.

I’m not an advocate of leave the office stay at home and work! I enjoyed my years in the office and sometimes misses it. I was actually earning more back then. But when I had a circumstance that forced me to quit my job, I made the most of it.

Do I see myself going back to an office environment? I refuse to eat my words, so I’ll play safe and say MAYBE! Who knows?

So for stay at home mamas like me, yes my sister we can still earn a living, we can be more productive, after or in between all the chores and the groceries and meals, we can earn money for our family (or to buy a little treat for ourselves).

For career moms(who works outside their homes), I still and will forever look up to you guys.

I respect all the mom’s in the world especially my mom.