There are so many bases to cover when starting a virtual assistant home-based business. The fun doesn’t end when you land your first client however. Now it is time for client intake forms, contracts, business policies and payment arrangements. This is where New Client Welcome Packets can save you and your new client valuable time, energy and mishaps.

Welcome packets serve many purposes:

• They inform new clients of your standard operating procedures.
• They insure you have collected those devilish little details; contract, contact information, passwords, etc.
• They introduce new clients to other service offerings that may be of interest.
• They show you are a professional and can leave your new client confident that they chose the right person for the job.

Getting all of the correct pieces into place can be a bit overwhelming. That is where Virtual Assistant Forums has stepped up to the plate and put together a 26-page guide for creating a Professional New Client Welcome Packet. In addition to the guide, you will also find seven editable templates:

• The Client Retainer Contract is eight pages covering everything from rates to payment terms, non-disclosure to non-compete. US, UK and Canada versions are included.
• The Welcome Letter is fabulous. It sets the tone and expectations for those first few weeks when both parties are learning the other’s business processes.
• Client Intake Form
• Client Questionnaire
• Credit Card Authorization Form

The guide walks you through each document, its purpose and how you can put it to good use.

Things I Would Have Liked to See

No examples were given for the sections relating to service upsells and business policies. If I was a new service provider, I believe that would have been a great help. However, these things are not of the same importance as those included templates. Therefore I don’t feel it has a negative impact on the value of this product. A business policies document can easily be created by pulling a few of the most important aspects of your contract and creating a document that reiterates these procedures.

Is It Worth the Investment?

This is how I weigh potential investments: In the time this product will save, could I make more money working than the cost of the investment?

This eBook costs $14. I have no doubt that I could make more money working than finding or creating these documents on my own. In fact, I purchased similar documents to this years back that I currently use. I paid far more than $14 for them… far more than $14. And mine didn’t come with a guide.

Virtual Assistant Forums is a trusted resource in the VA community. I have no problem recommending this guide and no doubt that you will get more than your money’s worth time and again as your newly created welcome packet streamlines your incoming client process saving you time, energy and headaches. Buy it on the forum or get it for your Kindle.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this guide to review. All opinions are mine.

There’s never been a better time in history to be self-employed. If there’s an upside to the recession, it’s that it forced hundreds of thousands of people to reassess their careers. Many of them finally found themselves pursuing dreams they’d left on the sidelines for a ‘real job’ years before.

Unfortunately, with the economic downturn came a belt-tightening by banks. It became harder than ever to acquire a small-business loan at a good rate, counteracting the movement toward entrepreneurship that rounds of corporate layoffs had forcefully inspired.

Enter Kickstarter. Recognizing a need for new sources of small business capital, three programmers and idealists in New York City began the site in 2008. Four years later, over $175 million dollars in pledges have been raised, with 20,000 projects successfully funded.

Although artists, bands and filmmakers have embraced the site, the most successful campaigns have been for innovative products. However, even a service-industry concept can succeed. Looking to start an interior design consulting firm? Kickstarter can launch your business, with less payout than a daily deal like Groupon or Living Social would require. Whether you’re a freelance bookkeeper, a massage therapist, or a jewelry artist, Kickstarter should be on your radar as a useful tool for raising new capital.

Before launching your campaign, remember these important guidelines:

Launch with Guns Blazing

The same principles that exist for retail outlets and restaurants apply to work-at-home endeavors backed by Kickstarter. Would you open a new restaurant if you were still waiting on your menu to be printed, tables to be refinished and approval for a license to sell alcohol?

Open up shop before you’re prepared, and the initial feedback will be poor. Online and in the physical world, you want your first customers to be excitedly spreading the word.

Launching a Kickstarter campaign for a pie-in-the-sky idea (i.e. “If I raise $10,000, then I’ll pursue this further”), might seem like a good thought, but it’s a virtual guarantee that you won’t meet your goals. That requires doing your homework first, and sticking to this next point:

Give Your Supporters Tangible Rewards

Occasionally, a Kickstarter campaign will succeed where the motivation of backers is based solely on altruism. This is exceedingly rare, however.

For work-at-home and small businesses, Kickstarter should be thought of as a pre-sale tool. Don’t base your campaign on asking for a handout. Even if your friends want to help you, do you really feel good about begging for free money, just because you might raise $1,000 or so?

Let’s say you’re a recently licensed massage therapist, and you’re hoping to start your own home-based business rather than subletting space from an existing salon. To do that, you’ll need funds to file an LLC, purchase a quality table or two, and buy supplies and advertising. You estimate that you’ll need about $5,000 to get started.

If you plan to charge $75 for a one-hour massage, launch on Kickstarter by offering the same service for $60. Your recipients have an incentive to pay now and receive later, you raise fast capital, and you build a future customer base.

Provide a Variety of Low-Cost Options

One of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history concluded this February. A comic book artist in Philadelphia needed roughly $58,000 to print more copies of his popular “The Order of the Stick” series. By the time the fundraising drive ended, 14,952 backers had pledged $1,254,120.

How did a comic book generate 20 times what it asked for?

One of the Order of the Stick campaign’s most notable features was the detailed variety of deals. For $10, backers received a fridge magnet and a digital copy of the comic. For just a dollar more, backers received an original crayon drawing by the artist. That option was limited to ten backers, creating a sense of both haste and popularity when people visited the site.

The majority of Kickstarter donations come in the first and last 24 hours of the campaign. Having limited deals that ‘sell out’ can create urgency and discourage waiting to pledge (and perhaps forgetting).

Order of the Stick’s rewards increased in small increments, with $16, $24, and $25 pledge levels that include detailed and varied reward packages. People felt like they were getting a bargain, and the idea of helping an artist out that they admired while being a part of a movement encouraged them to make the ‘impulse’ purchase of something they might have deliberated over longer in a physical or online store.

If you’re ready to start your business, consider Kickstarter before going to the bank. You won’t pay interest on the ‘loan,’ and you’ll have the backing and motivation provided by your supporters to get your project done and get them their rewards. Best of all, you’ll be in business faster than you could have imagined.

Anita Brady is the President of 123Print.com. The website offers promotional and office organization supplies like affordable business cards, memo pads, banners, personalized mugs and other items that combine high quality and customization with an affordable price.

I have a confession to make. I stink at email marketing. Oh, I have been building a list since I started blogging. I pay for an email newsletter service. I know full well the value of an email. Not a fan of creating them, however. I’m stubborn. If things don’t work like WordPress these days, I have little patience for it. But, this is one service that loses me money month after month. I hate that worse than I hate creating newsletters.

Over the weekend I spent some time in Aweber looking at what was going out to subscribers previously, and what options I had to improve things for both readers and myself. Much to my surprise, Aweber now has a Drag and Drop builder for email newsletter design that is perfect for my needs.

After choosing from the many templates available – you can also upload your own – it is simply a matter of clicking on the applicable box to edit the contents. The below template came ready to promote articles or blog posts. With these new features, I can easily add an image, title, description and URL for my latest blog post. If my chosen template had a different setup, it would just be a matter of dragging and dropping the Article block to make it fit my article promotion needs.

You have several other Drag and Drop blocks available as well. Once a block is dropped into the editor a slide-out box will prompt you for the necessary information for that block. You can add easy-to-follow Facebook and Twitter buttons to your emails, promote your products and add coupons to your newsletters. You can add your logo or signature. These options allow for a little more networking, a little more branding and a little more passive income.

This was a great find. The Aweber Drag and Drop builder will encourage me to take a few minutes every week to create a more interactive and attractive newsletter replacing the less than stellar RSS broadcast that was previously being sent. As I am more confident in what is being sent, I can start actively building my list again, something that I stopped quite some time ago. Hopefully over time, my emails will become another avenue that passively generates an income. Something they should have been doing from the beginning.

If you are already an Aweber customer, schedule some time to design a fresh broadcast for your subscribers this week. If you are not currently using Aweber, you can get started for only $1.

Last week I noticed a sudden upswing in traffic coming from Yahoo! and Bing. Though these are not search engines I have taken much notice of in the past, if they are going to send me traffic I want to make sure that continues. One way to do that was to add my site to Bing Webmaster Tools so that I can get a better picture of how these search engines view my sites.

The process is rather simple. Once you create an account, you simply need to add a piece of code to your site to verify ownership. If you are on WordPress and using a plugin like Google XML Sitemaps, Bing will see this and you will not need to generate a new sitemap. Within three days you will begin to see Bing stats.

In your dashboard you will see metrics similar to those in Google Analytics. You will find information relating to your traffic, indexing and crawling. You can see your search rank and Click-Thru Rate for keywords. You can see code errors and submit missing URLs.

In addition to these features, there are a few other useful metrics you will want to keep an eye on:

In addition to Inbound Links, Bing will also show you Deep Links. If Bing finds your site to be “authoratative,” you will be blessed with Deep Links within the search engine.  These are similar to Google’s Site Links.

Crawl Details will alert you to any crawling issues such as malware infections, HTTP code errors and robot restricted pages. These are always problems you want to watch for and fix ASAP. Bing will even notify you by email of these issues, if you choose. This is especially handy in the event of malware infections.

Bing Keyword Tool

The Keyword Tool within Bing is far different than Google’s, and one I am still experimenting with. Unlike the Google Keyword Tool which pulls phrases from paid advertising, Bing tells us these phrases are those actually being used in search queries. You can look at the keyword’s impressions for the past few months. You can even seek out keywords by location and/or language.

If you are looking for search traffic, make sure your site is visible and accessible to every search engine – not just Google. I also received $50 in advertising credit upon submitting my site. Submit yours here.

Helpful Webmaster Resources from Bing

Getting Started Checklist

Bing Webmaster Tools Help

I usually keep a running list of blogging and home-based business tools that I would currently recommend. These are applications that made the cut after experimentation. Here are a few that are on my list right now. A few are paid, but most are free online business tools.

Blogging Tools

nRelate – I had a blog at the first of the year with a bounce rate that made me concerned. Most of my sites are niche affiliate blogs, so I do run a little on the high side regardless. This one was above what I am comfortable with however. In addition to making an effort to link more internally, I also added nRelate. This tool allows you to feature thumbnail images of related content, flyouts and more at the bottom of posts in an attempt to get readers to stay on your site a bit longer. After about two months on said site, its bounce rate is down about 10%.

BackWPUp – Backing up your blog is important. You can get hacked. Other issues can occur. BackWPUp is a free plugin that can automatically back your blog up to a location of your choice, including SugarSync, Amazon S3, DropBox and more. My backups go to DropBox which is also free for your first 2GB (the average blogger is likely not going over this number). Use this link and get an extra 500 MB of space free.

Home-Based Business Tools

QuickBooks – If you have been around here long, you likely know QuickBooks is my accounting software of choice. I use the Online version for my business books. Last month they sent an email letting me know I could start accepting payments through their payment network. This allows me to accept payment from my clients that will be direct deposited into my business checking account. A little button is included on my email invoices, my clients can click-through and pay, my QuickBooks account is automatically updated to reflect the payment, within about one business day the money was in my account. The only charge is a flat fee of $0.50 per transaction. Even on small invoices, PayPal fees are typically more than 50 cents. When you start talking about invoices totaling several hundred dollars, PayPal fees can really add up. I am loving this QuickBooks feature.

BeKnown by Monster – This came through my inbox last week. I have not yet tried it out, but it appears to be a little similar to LinkedIn. It connects to your Facebook account and starts seeking out professional connections. The premise here is that it can help you connect to your next big career move. Your Facebook profile stays private.

VANetworking Tech Seminar – Occasionally, VANetworking still puts on free seminars. This Thursday there is one with Lynette Chandler. She is going to be talking about a few little tech skills you can add into your service practice. There will be a upsell here. I have had a preview of Lynette’s new training site however, and there are some really cool little tech tricks in there for bloggers and business owners. Even though you can expect an upsell, free seminars typically give a few takeaways. If you have the time, sit in and see if you can learn something.

What blogging or home-based business tools are you recommending right now?

Several readers left comments on last week’s Easy Search Traffic post wanting to know more about Google Alerts. While I have mentioned this nifty tool in passing, I have never devoted a post to why or how to set up Google search Alerts.

What Are Google Alerts and Why Should I Use Them?

Alerts allow you to tell Google specific items that you are looking for. When Google comes across these terms on web pages, news articles, or blogs, it will send you a notification letting you know where you can check out what is being said. Just a few of the reasons online business owners and bloggers use Alerts:

• Brand Management (see who is saying what about your business/blog)
• Industry News
• Client/Job Leads

Setting Up Google Alerts

You can create up to 1,000 alerts. After entering your search query term, you will have a few options to set:

• Result type: Everything, News, Blogs, Discussions, Video, Books
• How often: Once a day, one a week, as-it-happens
• How many: Only the best results, all results
• Deliver to: email or feed

If you were not signed into your Google account when setting up the alert and you wish to have notifications sent to an email address, you will receive a verification email.

Sending Google Alerts to RSS

While you can opt to have Google Alerts sent to email, I try to keep my inbox as clean as possible. I send mine to my Google RSS Reader. As my chosen searches are found, they show up in my Reader as they happen. You can choose this option when setting up your Alert by picking Deliver to: Feed. (I also have an older post on how to Organize Your RSS Feeds, for those interested.)

Cancel Google Alerts

If you find you need to narrow down or change a search query, you can always go in an edit the term or add quotes. (Adding quotation marks around your search query will tell Google to only alert you when that exact phrase is found. I use quotes often, especially in alerts for my business/blog names.) If the search isn’t returning results you are looking for, you can cancel the alert altogether. Put a check mark next to the alert you need to nix and hit Delete at the bottom of your Google Alerts page.

Google Alerts are a nice hands-off way to keep tabs on what is happening in your industry or with your brand. Let those searches come to you.

Do you use Google Alerts? What are you watching?

The following is a guest post. Carolyn is a guest blogger who writes about small businesses and the tools like Big Commerce software that they use to optimize their performance. 

The list of capabilities of our phones is growing longer each day. It is now possible to successfully manage a business from the palm of your hand. If you’re a small business owner and you haven’t checked out any of these apps, you’re missing out on a very convenient and useful tool. These are a few of my personal favorite apps for iOS.

Freshbooks Minibooks

This handy little app is perfect for any home business owner who ever happens to leave their home. If you find yourself away from that trusty old desktop or laptop, but you want to send an invoice to a client or check on details of a past job, Freshbooks Minibooks is just the app for you. You can create estimates through the program that become printable invoices with just one click of a button.

PayPal

More and more business is being conducted online these days and the PayPal app is great for those who make a lot of online transactions. With the app, you can send, receive and transfer funds between bank accounts. If your ecommerce site feeds directly into a PayPal account, you can easily transfer funds to your bank account with a few simple clicks. In the latest version of the app, you can “bump” people to exchange contact information.

GoogleDocs

This handy version of the search engine’s cool application allows users to view and edit documents and spreadsheets from the palm of their hand. Google Docs stores all of your files in the Cloud so you can access documents from your computer, tablet or phone and the edits will be synced across all of your devices.

Evernote

Evernote is a great note-taking system that allows you to make notes and reminders for yourself. Sounds pretty simple but this is an extremely handy app. Let’s say you’re at an obscure resale shop downtown and you see the perfect decoration to pull your home office together but you don’t have your checkbook with you. You can take a picture of the item, geo-tag it with the location and save it to your phone. When you get home, the geo-tagged picture will show up on your desktop. It’s also great for to-do lists, shopping lists and notes from meetings.

What’s your favorite home business smartphone app?

At the end of last week, quite a few emails came through announcing updates to a few of my favorite home business tools. The two I will talk about in today’s post are both free small business tools I use and have reviewed here in the past with exciting new features.

Thumbtack Improvements

Thumbtack keeps getting better and better. The leads they have been sending over have picked up in frequency over the past month or two. In a notification last Friday, they mention they you can now accept credit card payments from your Thumbtack clients through their system.

Here is how this works: They send you a lead. You send your lead a quote. Your lead can accept your quote and authorize a credit card using Thumbtack’s new Book It Now feature. Or, you can choose to send your Thumbtack client an invoice though the Thumbtack system once your work is complete. The client can then pay your invoice online using the same system. The money collected is then sent to you via direct deposit, PayPal or check.

This may prove to be a valuable alternative to those that prefer not to use PayPal.

Mozy Now Offers Syncing

Mozy is a service that I have used for years. Having lost everything on my computer in the past and having gone through more than one computer since I started working virtually, this is one of the home-based business tools that I won’t ever go without. And for my needs, I have never paid a cent for it.

Mozy now has a feature called Stash. Stash is a syncing feature that allows users to sync files on up to five devices (computers, smart phones, and tablets). Users will also be able to access the sync folder via the web as well. No more emailing files to yourself. No more USB drives. No more having to utilize yet another online service for remote access. Syncing is done automatically as you work.

Any user who signs up for a MozyHome account before April 15th will have access to this feature free of charge.

MozyHome Pricing

• Up to 2GB of storage is always free. No payment information required for signup.
• Up to 50GB on one computer is $5.99/month.
• 125 GB on three computers is $9.99/month.

If you will require a paid plan, you can get 10% off MozyHome with promo code STASH..

What home business tools can you not live without?