Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Recommended website solutions for home businesses

“I'm just about to sort out websites/email etc and wondered if you have a particular online company you recommend? I don't need e-commerce and have looked at some artist photographer template sites but if you have one you have tried and tested I would rather go on recommendation?”

Answered this question for someone today and thought some of you may like the answer too

Personally I would go with a blog rather than a website – definitely the way to go.

Either use typepad as a hosted blogging platform or use wordpress.com and host it yourself.  Hosting it yourself is more powerful for SEO (search engine optimisation) but if you don’t want to faff around with uploading files to your web host, then typepad is brilliant. 

I run my blog here on typepad and my new email newsletter site on wordpress www.HowtodoEmailNewsletters.com.

If you do just want a basic template website then you can’t really go wrong with www.mrsite.co.uk.

Webhosting – I would recommend www.1and1.co.uk

I’ve also got a great audio download on low cost websites if you are interested – www.kick-assteleforums.com/lowcostwebsites.php

Virtual Assistants - How do I start-up a VA Business?

Virtual Assistants (VAs) are fast becoming a popular profession to enable you to start your own business.

I had someone contact me this week asking advice on where to start looking for support and I was able to recommend some great resources – so I thought I had better share them with all of you out there in case there were other budding VA’s just waiting to get going.

http://www.vact.co.uk/ is managed by the amazing Carmen MacDougall and runs a fantastic VA Mastery Course which covers everything you need to know to start up as a VA.

There are also a number of VA associations based here in the UK.  http://allianceofukvirtualassistants.org.uk/ and http://www.iava.org.uk/ are two that I know of.

If anyone else knows of other VA resources, do add them below as a comment.

Clients on Retainers: How do you attract more?

“How do I attract the client that wants to outsource to me for at least 10 hours a month?  I’ve got a few clients that are ad-hoc but have yet to secure a retainer-type client.”

Interesting question and one that I thought I would share on my blog.  I am currently working with a consultant on exactly the same challenge.  She started up earlier this year offering her telesales skills to clients on a day by day basis.  We have been working on her business plan over the past 4 months and I have challenged her and help pushed her day rate up and up.

She then made a decision that she wanted longer term contracts as well as working with companies to manage their sales campaign – a big step up from doing a day of telesales.  She has now got 2 of these type of contracts and her profit has soared.

How did she do it?  We started out with a very clear plan of action over the next 12 months and broke it down in to smaller milestones.  She worked on building her confidence up on the smaller jobs and listened to the feedback she was getting from her clients.  Her success in winning the contracts really lay in her confidence in asking for the business and when potential clients enquired she explained the different ways of how she worked – including the retainer approach.

How do you tell others about what you do? 

Do you say that you work with clients ad-hoc and that you would like to work with retainer clients?  Or do you walk the talk?

We often attract clients because of what we say and about how we feel about ourselves. 

There are many strategies you can put in to place but the mindset challenge is often the first to address.  Jump over this one and then the ability to ask for more clients on a retainer base can quickly follow.

Getting started - where do you begin?

“I qualified as a reflexologist a year ago but do not know how to get started.”

The best place to start is with the end in mind.  Know what it is that you want to be and do at some point in the future.

If you can’t think too far ahead, 12 months is a great milestone to start with.

Write out how you see yourself working this time next year.  For example, how many clients you would want to work with, the days of the week and times of day you want to be working, where you want to be seeing clients, how much money you want to earn.

Once you are clear on what it is you want to achieve, then you can start breaking down the 12 month plan in to 6 month milestones and 3 month milestones.

From the 3 month milestone, it will hopefully be clearer on where you need to start.

I know you can’t predict the future, but the clearer you are in your head on where it is you want to be, the easier it will be to know where you want to start.