One of the biggest benefits of becoming a virtual assistant is the flexibility it offers.  I don’t know about you, but working from home sounds really attractive to me.  I’m sure everyone has heard about the telecommuters who earn a living wearing pajamas.  No hassles with office politics.  No obnoxious boss breathing down your back.  No stressful commute.

The virtual assistant field is a boom for women, who even in our enlightened post-feminist world, have to deal with juggling job and family.  In some ways, the expanded freedoms women have these days come along with stressful choices.  How do we balance the demands of our families and the demands of making a living?  One solution is working as a virtual assistant, which provides flexibility and autonomy for those who choose it as a career.

Becoming a Virtual Assistant allows women to have it all—work in a lucrative career that permits them to focus on caring for their families.  It allows them to the flexibility to schedule business and client work around their family and personal lives.  Most of the women who work in the field report gaining confidence and self-sufficiency.  This has become more important in the current job field, with high unemployment and fewer opportunities for women.  Discrimination in the job market is a given even when times are good, and it becomes worse when times are tough economically.  The Virtual Assistant field levels the playing field for many women.

Working as a Virtual Assistant doesn’t tie the worker to a specific place.  You can live anywhere you want.  Many women have to choose between staying in a job they love and moving with their spouse for a more lucrative job for him.  If they were a Virtual Assistant, the choice wouldn’t be so difficult to make.  Working as a Virtual Assistant is a completely portable job; it doesn’t matter where you live.
Another benefit to being a Virtual Assistant is without all the trappings of a 9-5 job, there’s less stress.  It allows women to be totally there for their families and children.  As one woman put it, “It gives me the best of both worlds.”  Who wouldn’t want that?

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash?

When you sign up with 24/7 Virtual Assistant you just can’t go wrong! Sign up today!

Got too much to do? Let 247VirtualAssistant.com help!

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So you want to become a personal assistant.  One of the best ways to start is to become a virtual assistant.  Just like there are top levels of every field, there is a top level of the PA industry.  It makes sense, then, that the top echelon of PAs would be celebrity PAs, and the top people of them would be PAs that work for Oprah Winfrey.

There are stories about how Oprah put all her staff on a private jet and sent them on their own vacation to thank them for their hard work.  The benefits of working for Oprah extend even to the staff of her staff.  In 2007, it was reported that the personal assistant of one of Oprah’s executive producers filed for 800 hours of overtime for the first four months of the year.

So let’s do that math.  This means that this PA put in 12.5 hours a day, seven days a week, for 17 weeks!  They say that it added up to over $65,000.  That’s a lot of overtime!  Remember, this is the television industry we’re talking about, where it’s common to work those kind of hours for a few months out of the year.  Imagine all the time off she was able to take in the following eight months!
According to Shelley Anderson, a celebrity personal assistant who has written a book about her profession, a CPA is “the right hand to a famous person.”  CPAs are hired for their secretarial and computer skills, so she classifies them as “executive assistants.”  The difference between executive assistants and CPAs is that CPAs work out of the celebrity’s home or they work on a movie and/or TV set.  Anderson says that CPAs must have either prior executive secretary experience or had previously worked in the hospitality field as, for example, a concierge for a major hotel.  Some CPAs start as interns or are related to the celebrity in some way, but many come from a more formal background.

A CPA, depending on his or her employer, fulfills a variety of tasks.  Sometimes CPAs are travel companions and function as someone who “hangs out with” their celebrity.  Sometimes CPAs stay at their employer’s home while they’re away, overseeing the nanny, housekeeper, cook, gardener, pool guy, or construction workers.  They may be needed to run errands all day.  Depending upon the need, CPAs can be soft-spoken or aggressive gate-keepers who know how to say no to everyone wanting a piece of their employer.

I would think that working as a virtual assistant would be a good way to gain the experience necessary to become a celebrity personal assistant.  I imagine that it would give someone interested in the field a taste of what it would be like, and a way to start out in the field.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash?

When you sign up with 24/7 Virtual Assistant you just can’t go wrong! Sign up today!

Got too much to do? Let 247VirtualAssistant.com help!

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While doing research on virtual assistants, I thought a good way to go was to do a google search on “Personal assistants,” since virtual assistants are simply personal assistants that are never seen by those who hire them, and are dealt with almost entirely by phone, email, or some other electronic method.  I found something really funny that’s worth sharing in this context.

I was able to find some articles and blog posts about Oprah and her infamous use of personal assistants.  I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard that she uses a huge group of PAs, and her PAs has their own PAs.  Specifically, I found a fictional blog post entitled, “The Hard Life of the Celebrity Personal Assistant.”  You can find it here: http://www.epinions.com/content_2882642052.
It’s a semi-humorous post, written in 2002, about the obviously-fictional experiences of celebrity PAs, including Oprah’s PAs.  It makes some over-the-top claims, like how Carol Burnett bought her PA a Land Rover.  (I guess that would be really nice work if you could get it!)  The author also makes some claims about John Travolta’s family that, taking their recent family tragedy into account, are a little painful to read.  One of the most outrageous claims is this one:
A story sadly underreported by the media was the number of personal assistants killed by opening their bosses’ anthrax-filled mail. These included the PA’s of Calista Flockhart, Martha Stewart, Louis Rukeyser, David Duchovny, Jerry Seinfeld, Kate and Ashley Olsen, and Betty White. Oprah Winfrey’s entire staff of 45 personal assistants was wiped out by the dangerous spores.
Then I saw this report:
Australia: Top public relations firm Markson Sparks has come under fire for repeating the fictional claim from a blog that Oprah Winfrey lost all her personal assistants to anthrax in a press release for a client.
The press release was for PKL, a recruitment agency, and was described the benefits of a career as a personal assistant. The PR firm says the last paragraph was intended as a joke but PKL is extremely upset and angry over the reference.
“A story sadly underreported is the number of celebrity personal assistants who die from opening their bosses’ anthrax-filled mail. Oprah Winfrey’s entire staff of 45 personal assistants was wiped out by the dangerous spores,” read the press release.
So, no, it’s unlikely that if you become a personal assistant, or even a virtual assistant, that you will die from anthrax-filled envelopes of mail.  As a matter of fact, it’s unlikely that you will die or become injured on the job.  Actually, that’s one of the perks of the job—it’s very safe.  The most unbelievable thing about the above report is that there was someone who actually believed what was obviously a fictional account.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash?

When you sign up with 24/7 Virtual Assistant you just can’t go wrong! Sign up today!

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Ah, yes, the American dream.  One aspects of this always-elusive concept is becoming a business owner.  We’ve heard a lot these days about how our economy is built upon small businesses.  Small businesses employ almost half of all private sector employees, and pay almost half of the total private payroll in the United States.

Yes, we all want to be our own bosses.  The problem with that, though, is that once we accomplish our goal of owning our own businesses, it takes even more effort to keep it going.  Half of all new restaurants that open in New York City, the food-mecca of the country, fail.  Many business owners trade 80-hour work weeks in the corporate world for 80-hour work weeks in the self-employment world.  The result is the same: their time isn’t fairly compensated, they’re stressed out, and they spend little time with their families.

We at 24/7 Virtual Assistants believe that we have the solution to this dilemma.  We believe that we’re the key to a different way of working.  Imagine actually being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor, without practically killing yourself with outrageous hours and stressful lives.  That key, we believe, is hiring a virtual assistant.  It’s often the case that we spend our time in endeavors that don’t really earn us the money.  If you’re a salesman, for example, why should you waste your time and talents checking your email and faxing reports?  Let a Virtual Assistant do it for you!

Think of it this way: if you could devote eight hours a day meeting clients and establishing new contacts, instead of on all the other activities it takes to run a successful business, imagine the money you could be making.  The question, “How can I possibly afford a virtual assistant?” becomes “How could I afford NOT to hire one?”  A virtual assistant frees your time and energy to focus on your talents—the very activities that really make you money.  You started your business because you thought those talents were marketable; why waste your time on activities that keep you away from that?

Those activities are probably what led you away from the corporate grind, anyway.  You probably started your business because you have a passion about something; why participate in activities that take you away from it?  I’d bet good money that you’ll get burnt out running your own business, just like you got burnt out in the corporate world.  If you direct your time and talents towards work that is profitable, you’ll be certain to earn more money.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash?

When you sign up with 24/7 Virtual Assistant you just can’t go wrong! Sign up today!

Got too much to do? Let 247VirtualAssistant.com help!

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Our media kit is an attractive resource for finding out about the innovative and useful services of 24/7 Virtual Assistants.  It describes our history, and what we’re all about—what we can offer businesses and entrepreneurs.  In this post, I’ll describe its salient points, especially as it relates to Virtual Assistants.

24/7 Virtual Assistants, based out of Atlanta, Georgia, is the virtual administrative support branch of Global Data Solutions, a full service data management firm.  We provide professionals with the services of well-trained Virtual Assistants at a fraction of the cost of full-time employees.  That way, you can ensure that your business dollars have the maximum growth.

We offer our customers two affordable programs.  Our Member Discount Program has provided discounts for more than two dozen partners.  Our clients simply log into our secure Member Portal and receive discounts for business-related services, travel packages, and a wide variety of discounts tailed for the professional.  Our clients receive updates on new service partners and information on featured discounts each month.  New partners are added frequently for even more savings.  Our Affiliate Program provides our clients, every time they make a new referral to us, a full fifty percent of the first month’s fee, up to $400.

We also offer an ebook to help companies new to the Virtual Assistant and virtual support world.  We have proven that it is possible to use a support staff based entirely of Virtual Assistants, and this ebook explains how.  This ebook, entitled Newbies’ Guide to Virtual Assistants, is available free from our website.  If you want to learn more about this innovative way to do business, we highly recommend that you read it.

Newbies’ Guide to Virtual Assistants is an all-in-one guide to hiring and working with virtual support staff.  In it, we answer the most frequently asked questions about Virtual Assistants, gained from thousands of interactions with our clients.  The list is included below:
•    What are the advantages of virtual support vs. full-time staff?
•    What technology will I need to work with a VA?
•    What types of tasks do Virtual Assistants perform?
•    How do I find and hire the right Virtual Assistant?

This guide takes the guesswork out of finding and working successfully with your Virtual Assistant.  If you’re serious about outsourcing your support staff, Newbies’ Guide to Virtual Assistants is the next step in making virtual support a reality for your company.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash?

When you sign up with 24/7 Virtual Assistant you just can’t go wrong! Sign up today!

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Timothy Ferriss is an interesting fellow.  He insists in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, that by using virtual assistants, you can make a boat-load of money with very little “work.”  Of course, that’s misleading, since he defines work a bit differently than most.

The traditional definition of work is the 40-hour a week job you devote your entire life to, and at the end of twenty-five years, you retire.  Ferriss thinks that in today’s world, that’s unrealistic.  He says that you can spend very little time in activities that you get directly paid for, and that making money is a matter of engaging in the right kind of activities.  In today’s digital world, he says, there are three commodities: time, income, and mobility, and using them is what will make you successful and have a satisfying and fulfilling lifestyle.

Ferriss believes that you can outsource your life (i.e., hire virtual assistants) and create virtual businesses that may not necessarily make you rich, but allow you live the lifestyle of a millionaire on less than $50,000 a year.  If you make millions of dollars a year but work eighty hours a week, how can you enjoy your wealth?  Virtual assistants help you enjoy the lifestyle you have, and allow you do the things you really want to do.

The trouble with retirement, Ferriss says, is that the whole idea is inherently flawed.  People assume they’ll make enough money to stop working and then be happy, but the reality is much different.  It’s often the case that retirees find themselves bored to death.  Sitting on the beach is great at first, but it eventually becomes boring.  And then you find yourself deeply depressed and even suicidal.

The trick is filling that time with things that doesn’t necessarily make you money.  The trick is finding activities that you enjoy and give you a sense of purpose.  Pursuing your interests is the key to what Ferriss calls “filling the void.”  He insists that hiring out the uninteresting things to others (i.e., virtual assistants) can free you up to learn and develop new skills that may become marketable in the future.  “Chase excitement and you’ll find happiness, not the other way around,” he says.
“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” as the old saying goes.  Doing things like hiring virtual assistants isn’t about spending little or no time doing the things that you dislike or find boring.  “It’s about adding more life, not just subtracting work,” Ferriss says.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash? Sign up today!

Got too much to do? Let 247VirtualAssistant.com help!

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There are roughly five million home-based businesses currently in operation in the United States. Of those five million businesses, roughly half of them are experiencing some kind of financial setback from this insane economy we’re in right now. A lot of home-based businesses that have employees working with them have had to cut back hours, cut back staff or just get rid of staff all together. The problem is; they still have a business to run.

There are thousands of business owners out there who are in desperate need of staffing solutions but they just don’t have the time to place an ad, search through all those resumes and interview all of the people they need to just to find a few good ones. And that’s even if they can afford to bring on new help. Most businesses have started outsourcing some of their workload to independent contractors so they can manage their time and effort a little better. However, they often find themselves chasing down several different providers just to get one project completed.

Enter the digital age and the concept that’s sweeping the nation. Virtual assistants. There are tons of home-based businesses and corporations who are offering this service to small and mid-sized businesses. It’s a great service. I’ve looked into it recently and one company that I’ve found that offers a great price for their services is called 24/7 Virtual Assistant. They seem to have the best price for the services they offer, and they’re available any time, day or night.

Now I know what you’re saying to yourself right about now, “sounds good, but what can I really hand off to someone that I can’t just do myself?” That’s honestly the best part. When I did the research on the companies that offer this service, I found out that a lot of them just want to take “the load” off your shoulders. Most business owners surely know what it’s like to be the master of their trade. However, most business owners don’t care to be the master of email replies or the master of phone answering. They just want to run their business and bring in more business.

I don’t know about you but I hate sitting down to my computer at the end of the day to finish up all of my accounting stuff and reply to all of my emails. That usually takes up the last half of my day that I could be spending with my family. I like spending time with my family, not with my computer. Check out 24/7 Virtual Assistant and see what they might be able to do for you.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash? Sign up today!

Got too much to do? Let 247VirtualAssistant.com help!

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Tim Ferrisss was working 12-hour days, taking no vacations, and sleeping under his desk running his online business selling diet supplements and advising Olympic athletes when he re-evaluated his life.  His girlfriend finally broke up with him because she was fed up with never seeing him.  He realized that if he continued, mental illness, a la Howard Hughes, was in his future.  He was sure that he’d at least be alone for the rest of his life, and he wasn’t sure if the success he was striking for was worth it.

The result was a series of radical changes to his life, which he later wrote about in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek.  When it was published a year ago, it hit number one on The New York Times bestseller list, and his blog, with 20 million hits a month, became one of the top 1,000 blogs in the world.  As Ferriss says, he provides people a “third option.”  He insists that there’s more to life than either a high-stress, high-reward lifestyle or a low-stress, low-reward one.

Ferriss adheres to the “80/20 Principle,” a theory devised by an obscure Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto, which maintains that twenty percent of our activities take up eighty percent of our time.  What that means is that most of our time is spent on unimportant tasks.  Ferriss found, for example, that he devoted ninety percent of his profit on ten percent of his customers.  As a result, he decided to outsource the ninety percent to virtual assistants and to focus on what really made him money.

One of the things Ferriss suggests doing is to limit your access to technology.  He recommends hiring others to check email, make phone calls, and set up appointments.  Ferriss was one of the first entrepreneurs to recommend hiring virtual assistants to take care of tasks and activities that fill up your day and waste your time.  This kind of thing involves discipline, because for most people, it’s hard to give up our over-reliance on technology, or let virtual assistants to handle it for us.

For example, virtual assistants can take those unknown calls that fill up our days.  Ferriss recommends that we not answer the phone every time it rings.  He even suggests that we leave our cell phones at home one day a week, something that seems impossible for many of us.  With virtual assistants, that’s probably more feasible, since we can be confident that they’re being taken care of by someone else.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash?

When you sign up with 24/7 Virtual Assistant you just can’t go wrong! Sign up today!

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Have you ever heard of the bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek? Its author, Timothy Ferriss, makes some dubious claims, like holding the world record for the most tango spins in one minute, and advising thirty world record holders in professional and Olympics sports, but one of the ways he was able to cut down his workweek was using virtual assistants.

Ferriss also claimed that he hired virtual assistants to check his email, pay his bills, and run parts of his company.  He suggested using companies like 24/7 Virtual Assistant, which matches clients and VAs.  24/7 Virtual Assistant connects employees with employers, based upon both of their needs.  In other words, we find workers who specialize in your specific need and helps you find them.

Virtual assistants are independent contractors, not employees, so you don’t have to go to the bother of hiring someone, paying employment taxes, and training them.  Most VAs provide administrative services.  They’re self-employed, and like it that way, since they can set their own rates, and work their own hours.  In other words, you can go to the golf course while they work on your filing, phone calls, research and data entry in their own home, even while wearing pajamas.  It seems that with this arrangement, everyone benefits!

A more practical arrangement, instead of spending time on the golf course, is to have someone do your typing for you, or do library research, or data entry, while you’re making new sales contacts, or making a presentation to clients, or traveling to a meeting to expand  your business.  Why not let someone else do all the “grunt” work, while you take care of the really important stuff, the things that actually grow your business and increase your capital?

What you need to remember about all that “grunt” work, though, is that it really is necessary.  The trouble, though, is that it can bog you down and prevent you from expanding into new areas.  It can get you into a rut, where you spend all your time maintaining what you have instead of reaching out into new areas that keep your business successful in the long run.  That’s why you need help, so that you can focus on what’s really important.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash? Sign up today!

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When you first opened up your business, I bet you thought to yourself, “man, this is it…I’ll finally be able to do what I want, when I want and no one can say a thing about it.” don’t worry, everyone thinks this way for the first two or three months they’re in business for themselves. Then one day they realize that they’re working twice as hard to keep their business open as they were for their normal job. Not to mention they’re making less money on a daily basis because of all the extra expenses that go into running a business. What is a business owner to do?

One thing you can do is learn how to manage your time better. I know this sounds like a lot of garbage speak from one of those “hotel presentation gurus”, but it’s the truth. If you manage your time and alleviate some of the menial work associated with running your business, you might actually find that you enjoy your business as you should. And you may also find that you make a little more money than when you were driving yourself into the ground. Now I’ll be you’re wondering how on earth you could manage your time well enough to feel comfortable. Luckily, I just happen to have one suggestion that you’ve probably never considered but really should look in to.

Have you ever heard of a virtual assistant? This is someone who actually works for your company but isn’t an employee of your company. They handle the menial tasks of your job like updating the company website, doing the bookkeeping, managing sales schedules and appointments. Stuff that you already do for the business, but may use up too much of your time in doing so. There are people right now that are running businesses out of their home and using virtual assistants to appear larger than they really are. While they’re in appointments, their virtual assistant is updating their myspace.com page and their twitter.com account.

Think about having someone who could answer your phone calls while you’re making a presentation to a potential client. Or how about having someone who can send out emails while you’re talking to your sales people? Wouldn’t that help out a lot? Wouldn’t you love to have someone who can update your quickbooks software and send those updates to your accountant without you needing to spend three days just learning how to start quickbooks? Go ahead and look into it. You can go to 247virtualassistant.com and see for yourself.

A new added bonus at 24/7 Virtual Assistant is the re-seller program! 247VirtualAssistant.com will offer you plans at the lowest cost possible so that you can take those plans and resell them at your own price. There are no fees involved to start as a reseller(unless you want a site to be created) …so pretty much you can take our $299/month plan and resell it for $499/month on your site…Our site handles the transaction and the client signs up under your banner. As long as that client is signed up you receive $200/month($499 – $299 = $200) for this client. It’s that simple. You can track everything through your very own control panel and request money withdrawals whenever you like. How is that for some added cash? Sign up today!

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