Evidently I've been living under a rock. Recently, I stumbled across the small business solution that turned my overwhelming to-do list into something manageable. It's called Virtual Assistance, and it has freed me from the burden of what would otherwise be time-consuming busywork. Simply put, a Virtual Assistant is an off-site employee who provides web or administrative support services, conducting nearly all transactions electronically.

Not only was I surprised to discover this neat lifesaver, I was even more amazed to find that it has it's own association: The International Virtual Assistants Association (ivaa.org). The IVAA website is a great place to find what will most certainly be an indispensable resource for you: Your own Virtual Assistant. Below are the top seven reasons to hire a VA:

1. They are all business. Your Virtual Assistant will support your needs, not the other way around. Since they bill their hours for the work they accomplish - some in increments as small as five minutes - you are not paying for personal phone calls, late arrivals, childcare crises, or sick time. If you detest the forced socialization of a corporate workplace, or listening to the humdrum minutiae of your co-worker's life story, a virtual staff solves that problem.

2. You're in control. Your working relationship is based upon a contractual agreement whereby you state in no uncertain terms what you expect. They either do it or they don't. If you want a web designer who uses Dreamweaver instead of hand-coding HTML, then you specify that. Or, you can entirely defer to your Virtual Assistant's expertise and focus your energy elsewhere.

3. Professional rapport. Your Virtual Assistant is in the entrepreneurial boat, too. They work at home, market their services, prospect for clients, and provide a service just like you do. It's a great way to add to your network base, as they may have found ways to solve problems you never even thought of. Often they have their own network of resources that they utilize for printing, document processing and promotion. Tapping into their resources doubles your own.

4. Cost savings. You can hire a VA from anywhere on Earth. It's as competitive an industry as any other, and you can expect a wide range of fees for various services offered. If you like the fees for web design, but think a particular service is too expensive for document editing or proofreading, you can hire multiple VA's to do different tasks to keep your own costs low. You are not under any obligation whatsoever, except, of course, to pay your bill.

5. Pride in their work. If you are hiring a VA for tasks such as web design, you can easily preview their work. Often the VA service will place testimonials on their site or examples of web pages they have designed. Examine their portfolio pages to determine the depth of their skills and experience.

6. Virtual freedom. No on-site employees means no liability, no worker's comp insurance, and no payroll taxes to calculate. Everyone is an independent contractor. You can utilize a virtual assistant for either ongoing work or on a per-project basis.

Businesses that need to employ people to do certain jobs can alternatively employ virtual assistant (VA) services for more efficient result. What is a virtual assistant? They are skilled people with high level of competency that either work for themselves or with a company to provide services to people that needs to accomplish certain task within their range of expertise.

Although there are many people who call themselves personal or virtual assistants on the internet these days, not all of them provide quality or efficient services. So it would be good to look for efficient virtual assistance through companies that have good track records.

Other VA points to note include:

1) There are also independent virtual assistants. There's no guarantee whether they would do well or not unless they have build up a reputation through their previous assignments and recommendations. So check out their resumes, experience, samples, etc.

2) A business may need virtual assistant service if there are processes that need to be accomplished but there's no available personnel in the company that match the required expertise to do it effectively. A competent virtual assistant will do the job efficiently at a cost lower than what a company would spend by hiring a people to do the job within the business organizational framework. Virtual Assistants usually do tasks that are not regularly done in the operation of business so hiring people is not a good choice. But even if the process is important to the business a virtual assistance would be cost-effective because the need to buy machines and equipments required to do the job will be eliminated.

3) Many industries employ virtual assistance in the operation of their business. Medical practitioners needs medical transcriptionist to accomplish their duties. Some virtual assistants are replaced by machines or software to do their jobs. There is a mechanical virtual assistant that helps decode voice in medical transcription. Accounting also uses virtual assistants in doing its jobs. There is also available software that could act as virtual assistant to business people that needs to do accounting jobs.

4) The ultimate goal of a virtual assistant is to provide efficient jobs at the least possible cost. Companies and individuals needing a specialized task would sometimes outsource your virtual assistant service requirements from other countries. There are countries that offer their services for much lower cost than in the US. Some of these virtual assistants can equal their US counterparts as far as efficiency is concerned. They are becoming more and more popular because of the low cost of service and mid to high level of efficiency.

Virtual Assistant Services provide people with a cost effective way of accomplishing their purpose whether in business or otherwise. The high rate of pay in the US compels people to look for alternative way of doing a job. The virtual assistants whether here or abroad offers a promising solution. Reduction of cost is made possible because virtual assistants are paid only for the jobs they made as opposed to the regular pay the conventional employee would get. Another great thing about virtual assistance is that they are classified as independent contractors and so their service would be considered tax deductible