When you started your online business development, you knew that you would have to have the traffic to make it a worthwhile venture. With your marketing plan, ideas were already recorded to help that become a reality. Did you think about this option: newsletters? Newsletters are beneficial in helping to impart knowledge to the reader and this could translate into money for you in the long term.

A business website gives visitors the basics of your operation. You want to use your resources to tell them about what you do and why they need to get involved with you. Sometimes, you don’t have enough space to put all the information that you believe would be important to your visitors, information that isn’t necessarily part of your main online business marketing push.

Newsletters are great information pieces, but they also help readers to get to know all about you. You could have a column, which you write that really thanks them for being loyal to you and hopefully prompts them to buy, if they haven’t already done this. This is where you can be very honest about your appreciation for their efforts.

Newsletters are Magical

Fun items such as free offers or contests may take up a lot of room and more in-depth items such as information about your product or affiliate programs may be important to your readers, so you should put them in a well constructed newsletter. There are several excellent formats for online newsletters:

• E-mail a one page layout to your subscribers.
• Multiple page PDF format they can access through a link in email.
• Animated links on a website.

Normally, newsletters are sent out to your subscribers. These are readers who come to your site and opt-in for it by giving you their email address and name. Each month, or whenever you send them out, they get an email with your newsletter or link to the newsletter.

For longer newsletters with more information, you can create a PDF they can easily access, download, print and share with others. This is a chance for your information to go viral, as people distribute it for you.

You might create a section that is available to subscribers only on your website, where they can go to access the newsletters, if you are incorporating some style of animation or video that they cannot access through a PDF. This makes readers feel special because they have a place just for them on your site.

Select the format that you feel is best, but make sure you take the time to make it look good. Whatever information you feel will interest your readers should go here. In the beginning they may not want a lot of flash, since it could occasionally be viewed as trickery by some people. In the beginning, keep it simple until they ask for more. As always, keep in mind that if you’d like this done for you, in a snap, consider checking with expert virtual assistants for support.

Customer Spotlight

Newsletters are a way to highlight those readers who want to be known. You might have visitors who have decided to opt in for your newsletter or who have become affiliates. Listing their names gives them a place of importance in your business. And to take advantage of this quickly, seriously think about taking on a solo virtual assistance specialist, or even a virtual assistant team to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time.

Do you know what you would put in your newsletter? Be diverse and create one to include all those juicy items of information that readers really look forward to, helping to draw them in and become part of your enterprise. 

Virtual Assistants should be just that, Virtual. If you think about it there is nothing holding you back other than a good work ethic and of course the computer, so why not enter the fabulous world of online business? But many new up-coming VA’s can be mislead by this thinking that they need so much more. Don’t be misled by some of those training courses out there, which will easily get you confused. Well, please hear me out - you don’t need to do that.

I have found that there are some nice training courses for VA’s on the market, complete with testimonials from satisfied participants and indeed the majority of courses will have all the basic information to help you set up your virtual assistant business — but in all honesty few of them can be classified as “brilliant” or up to speed with what’s going on in virtual assistance now, as some elements and categories within these courses are really dated, I think, so as times have moved on so much I want to try and pass on to you how I see this, right now.
 
Here are the top three VA Training Course Tragedies that I discovered:
 
Number One: Why Consider Anything Paper-Based?

I came across some training courses actually advising in the start up stages several paper-based materials such as post cards, flyers, printed brochures - AND - this made me cringe, Door Hangers!!! All “Paper” based marketing materials waste your valuable start up cash and of course your time too. The one thing I would say could be of value is a business card, but only if you intend to do offline networking and marketing - I don’t do this personally, and the business cards I had printed 3 years ago are still in a draw somewhere! Please don’t waste your money on these things, unless you know for a fact that they will contribute to getting your first client through the cyber door.

I have managed to develop a thriving virtual assistant business without a single “physical” marketing material, and you can do it to.

Number Two: Don’t Get Hung up with All Those Templates

In the early days you will come across spreadsheets, templates and formatted packages of forms, together with e-books with a lot of generic material, which are all well and good but will inevitably slow down your process when you are getting going and should be thinking of work and nothing else. Let’s face it, when we take the plunge we want to start bringing in the money as soon as possible. On the face of it, these templates and charts and all other material may appear to have a great deal of value, but are they really adding value to your business in its startup phase and if you do want to take on all of these additional bonuses, be very careful to make sure that you are actually going to use what is being offered and that you take all of the benefits on board. Not all, but many of the eBooks are reused and rehashed PLR content, which can often be found free online. What this extra content could do is send you into overwhelm when you need to stay focused on other things.

Number 3 - Don’t Start Learning How To Build Websites If You Have No Interest In This Area

You may think that you need to start learning Dreamweaver or some other website building program in order to get both an efficient and a well presented online presence as quickly as possible; while I did this and it took a long time to get right, the only positive outcome was that I was able to sell my skill as a related service when it was all said and done. If you find a training course that is looking for you to get involved with and master website development yourself, go the other way, especially if you do not know what PHP or CSS is, for example!

Unless you specifically want to make money from skills learned in this area, you need to avoid the considerable amount of time that you will spend trying to master this area right now. Just focus on getting started as quickly as you can and avoid as much of the technicalities as possible, unless you are particularly skilled in this area, while focusing on attracting new clients. The VA Apprentice launching at the end of 2010 is designed to take the hassle out of starting up your virtual assistant business — leaving you stress free, clutter free, and ready for actually DOING business, not READING about doing business! By clicking here, you can enter your name into a draw to try and win one of five FREE memberships.