So You Want to Be a Virtual Assistant, Do You?
by Katherine McCrimmon, Virtual Assistant and Free Agent
Continued

Developing Your Home Office

How you develop you office will determine the direction of your business. Writing your business plan will help enormously in deciding how you invest your money and what you will need to begin. Whenever possible it is a good idea not to depend on another party for your office needs. For example, if you intend to offer a transcription service it would be best for you to have the equipment you will need. It can be difficult in this case because there are so many dictation/transcription options. The following are my suggestions for how to put together your workspace:

• THE DREAM HOME OFFICE could be closed off from the rest of the house and would have its own entrance! At a minimum, you need to designate a particular area and make it sacrosanct. If you have a family it is very important that other family members respect that where you work is not open to 'family life'.
  
  You must have your own space and planning how you use that space can be vital to your success. Keep in mind that as your business grows your need for space will grow too. Therefore, incorporate into your business plan a vision of how you propose to do that.
  
  
• YOUR DESK should be as large as you can manage. It is much easier to have your peripheral equipment 'at hand'. You want room for a computer and most likely a printer, scanner, fax machine and telephone. It is also wise to have a place to write that is convenient to the computer. Another good idea to have your files close by as well. On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for having to jump up and down and walk around from time to time - for example, walking across the room or to a nearby room to use the printer can be a welcome relief from sitting in front of a computer most of the time. It's easy to become addicted to the job at hand and find you haven't moved from your spot for hours - and hours!
  
  
• DECIDING ON THE NUMBER OF PHONE LINES to have depends on whether or not you have a dial-up Internet connection and a fax machine and a landline. The fax software for the computer is very good and if money is an issue, it is possible to send faxes easily with a scanner and dial-up modem. Sometimes receiving faxes can be problematic and for that reason I use e-fax, which sends faxes as an e-mail and has the advantage of being free!
  
  
• I HAVE OPTED FOR A PRINTER/SCANNER COMBINATION, which is extremely efficient and a great space saver. I have a Hewlett-Packard model, which is a very good choice for me because it was not expensive, but gives me good enough copies for the kind of documentation I need to reproduce. It also has a great feature of making ordinary copies without needing to have the computer turned on! Because I do not need to use the printer a great deal and for numerous copies of documents, I am able to share it with my husband. This did not require any complicated 'networking', but a simple hub and a two USB printer cables. If you plan to have a fax machine, there is also a large selection of printer/scanner/fax combinations on the market.
  
  
• THE TELEPHONE can be a complicated issue to resolve. If you do not have broadband capability in your area it is best to opt for at least two lines: one for your telephone and one for your dial-up modem, which could be shared with a fax machine. More and more VAs are opting for cell phones, but the viability of this depends upon the quality of service in your area and probably whether or not you have a broadband service for your Internet connection and if you want the capability of faxing. I do not do a lot of faxing in my business and so share my fax and telephone line. I use a Brother telephone/fax, which also has a message function, and have found that this is adequate to my needs.

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