Many people find themselves extremely busy that they need to employ an assistant, but rather than hire a real person, many people are now turning to the help of virtual assistants.

What is a virtual assistant (VA)?

Virtual assistants are individuals who work from their own home office and are considered an independent contractor. These individuals are not technically an employee of yours, so they have their own equipment and pay their own benefits and business expenses. 

What are the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for your online business?

Since virtual assistants specialize in their area of expertise, you will know that you are hiring an individual with the knowledge to take care of your business. They tend to have a firm grasp on their tasks and can perform well above your expectations. Virtual assistants can usually start the job without needing any training, unless you use a special software or program.
Virtual assistants are also more cost-effective. If you only need the assistant to work part time, you can have them work part time instead of hiring a full time employee. These individuals can also help alleviate your day to day responsibilities so you can spend more time focusing on your business.

Fawkes the Firefox and the Million Dollar Homepage guy (Photo credit: remisser)

With the rise of the online world, there are those individuals who have managed to capitalize on all the opportunities it brings to make their fortunes. Whether you sell Ford Mustang parts and classic Mustang parts, your own artwork or run a blog, you can learn from the lessons of these successful online entrepreneurs and apply them to your business.

Check out these unlikely success stories of online business.

Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) Workshop 3 (Photo credit: rogercarr)

Promoting affiliate product on your blog and earning good amount of money from it is not easy. It is easier to just place an AdSense code to your blog and start earning per click. However, you can maximize your chance to earn good amount of money from affiliate marketing through your blog, as long as you can keep your marketing hot on your blog. Here are 5 good strategies to keep your blog affiliate marketing hot:

Wordle Cloud of the Internet Marketing Blog - 08/15/08 (Photo credit: DavidErickson)

If you’re considering hiring an internet marketing consultant to help your business succeed in the potentially profitable but highly volatile online market, you need to know a few things first:

1. The consultant isn’t a genie in a bottle
2. You get what you pay for
3. You’re in control
4. Traffic isn’t everything
5. Internet marketing isn’t evergreen

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Have you heard of Klout? If you are a business, or a just a student―it's best to keep your knowledge of different social and business sites up to date. Klout is a start up business founded by two friends in 2008.

The main goal of Klout is to measure the influence that you have (or a company) around the web. There is a score from 1 to 100 based on how well you (or a company) can call people to action. In a nutshell, it is a “credit score” that makes your life better. Instead of looking at who is following you, or how many friends you have, Klout looks at what you do. It looks at your retweets, comments, likes, and how it influences other people. Right now, they only focus on Facebook and Twitter.

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Quick Response, or QR, codes are gaining in popularity in America. More and more people have camera phones that connect to the Internet, so they can easily scan a QR code and receive its content. QR codes are a good supplemental aspect of your marketing campaign. Not everyone responds well to QR codes, so you shouldn’t rely on them solely. A QR code should add something additional to your marketing. It should link to content that is informative or entertaining, and something that your will enhance your customer’s experience. This type of marketing can bring in big business if done effectively. Here are some ways to incorporate QR codes in marketing for your small business.

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Quora is the name of a questions and answers website that was founded in the year 2009 and launched in 2010. This is akin to an online encyclopedia of questions and answers which is uniquely maintained and updated by all those who use it. There are newer questions and their answers created as well as edited by those reading them. It is a constant process of enrichment of the site that is carried out by those who are reading or using it in the end. There are various topics for the questions here and subsequently you can answer them too. If there is another who reads the answer and feel they can update or correct the same the suggestions will be brought to you by their comments.

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Setting your LinkedIn privacy controls when you use LinkedIn for networking and marketing is quite important. It is common for social members to skip the privacy settings as they begin to establish their online social presence especially when they are promoting a business through LinkedIn. But there are things that you do not want everyone to see as you make updates to your LinkedIn profile.

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The most important thing in every individuals mind today is that because of the Google farmer / Panda update the act of article promotion has lost some of its value. Some of these individuals have found if an article is totally dependent on search engine traffic, it may no longer drive clicks to the website and has lost its high ranking on Google.

A major thing which is missed by almost all of the article dealers is the community factor on most of these sites. Not the whole thing, article encyclopedias are just a source of trainings and not more than that. In most of the networks for article individuals can interact with each other through the help of forums, comments, as well as areas where they can ask questions and anyone can answer them according to his/her knowledge which help them in enhancing their knowledge and the quality of content they write.

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Do you have your fans online? Musical artists are now more prone of exposing their selves through the internet. But some have the difficulty in gaining followers on their web-page and other online accounts. This article will contribute fresh ideas and tips on getting fans for bands online.

The use of internet became the hottest trend in this modern generation; people are investing their time on the net. They can have almost every benefit on the internet like job hunting and even entertainment. Since people are also seeking entertainment on the net, entertainment industry is present on the net also.