Sharon Copeland

 With gas prices rising, many displaced from their jobs, and more and more businesses downsizing, comes the need for finding an alternative way to make a good income. Now more than ever, families are seeing the need for two incomes.  One Industry that is increasing in popularly today, being rated one of the top 5 home-based businesses by Entrepreneur Magazine, is virtual assisting. Becoming a VA allows you to work from anywhere in the world and requires little in the way of start-up costs or fees. The main requirement is the ability to type well and a good understanding of the Internet.

By definition, a Virtual Assistant or VA, is a highly skilled professional who provides administrative support and other specialized services to businesses, entrepreneurs, authors, online businesses, executives, sales professionals and others who have more work to do than time to do it. Many VA's also provide web design and maintenance, publicity and marketing, desktop publishing, word processing, and business start-up consultations. The services are endless depending upon the VA's knowledge, skills and creativity.

Virtual assistants are instrumental in helping businesses with their marketing, capability to run their offices getting more work accomplished, and also they have a solid understanding of the latest tools to make a business succeed.