The Cheapskate Geek
This week I am going to try and kill two birds with one stone. Because I cannot hide me geekness, and I am open about my cheapskatedness (if I created the word, you cannot shout at me for spelling it incorrectly!) I often get asked questions about how to get things done without spending much money. Recently I was asked by a friend for advice regarding setting up shop as a Virtual Assistant, as a lot of the advice will apply to hundreds of different situations I thought it would make a good post for my column on Nerdles. For the benefit of this piece I am going to presume you already have a good, fast internet connection, and a computer.
Communication tools are going to be the heart of any remote working base, and the solution I have to offer is very simple. Google provide free email, with great functionality and expandability. Google also provide a whole world of other tools that will come in handy, so click here and grab yourself an account with Google as soon as possible.
Remember to choose a name that is suitable for you as a professional, feelmywrath2009 may not be a clever choice of user name if you want people to take you seriously!
The good old fashioned telephone is still a great office tool. Choosing Skype for all your office telephone needs will
- make your more accessible (now customers can contact you from anywhere on the planet, you can set up Skype so people can Skype you from a regular phone)
- reduce your costs (sometimes it is free to make calls with Skype , and it means you do not need another phone line!)
- give you more control about when you work (it’s a lot easier to turn off your PC than your home telephone)
- enable you to make conference calls and give you the facility to video conference (video calls require a web-cam which you can buy for next to nothing)
Open Office is a great, free, alternative to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). It is almost identical to use and 100% compatible!
Your Google account will let you access lots of other tools that Google provide, my favorite is Google Calendar. This great piece of web software will help you organize your time between customers, you can even share parts of your diary, which is great for collaborative working.
Google Calendar and Mail mashes with Google Tasks, this is a great way of having a to do list you can access from anywhere and manage using a really nice colorful interface.
Finally, if your work patterns necessitate using a mobile phone to access your email you can use most modern phones to manage your Google Mail, Calendars and Tasks!
I have lots of ideas about using social media to help with marketing, if your interested in these drop me a line and we can chat!
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- Guy’s Nerdles Blog – My Profile
