When you need money quickly, there’s no better way than to provide a service. For many moms, that means being a general virtual assistant. Someone who does all the tasks of a traditional assistant but all accomplished virtually. It is good honest work and many do very well. The down side to a general assistant type position – the competition is stiff because the barrier of entry is low. Many tasks a general assistant handles does not need specialized skills nor expensive education. Add that to a global economy and you may find yourself competing for peanuts. Not quite the vision you had when you decide to go solo huh?

The solution business coaches will tell you, is to niche yourself. That’s a good strategy but what niche should you take? That would depend on your personality or what you enjoy doing. If you’re anything remotely geeky, then my suggestion is, be a web tech assistant.

What’s A Web Tech Assistant?

This is someone who can take care of the back end stuff in an online business. They are often skilled web designers but do a whole lot more than just design websites. Some of the things they might do on are:

* Make the website talk to the shopping cart
* Create gated communities and memberships
* Perform website backup and recovery
* Restore a site after it’s been hacked
* Make landing pages personal and increase its usability
* Build mobile sites and campaigns
* And a whole lot of other tasks along those lines

Why Technical Assistance?

If you haven’t noticed, there are lots of businesses online. From very large corporations to the self employed and there are still many more local, independently owned businesses who want to get online. For many small businesses, all they want to do is use the Internet to expand
their business and do what they are good at or enjoy doing. Rightly so.

The Internet is not going away and the demand for web tech help will always be there as long as there is commerce online. Even during a slow economic period, there is still a deep need because business online can grind to a halt when something goes wrong with a web site. Web sites also need regular upkeep, tweaking and re-working to keep sales coming in and customers happy.

Because of specialized skill, training and experience, web tech assistants can also get paid better. That’s always a plus.

Is it right for me?

I’ll admit. Web tech assistance is not for everyone.

* If you are easily flustered and tend to give up on technology, this is not for you
* If you are afraid to edit code, this is not for you
* If you are intimidated by the thought of a database and doing anything with it, you could make the cut but it can be challenging when you need to get your hands dirty
* If words like FTP, cPanel, PHP, Ruby and JavaScript make your eyes glaze over, this is not for you
* If you go into a meltdown when your sites act strangely or go down, this is not for you

Sounds like a tall order? Not really. Notice I never said anything about knowing how to do all that, only how you feel and react to them. When I got started, I knew very little PHP. JavaScript still kicks my butt now and then. These are things that can be learned and practiced. It’s your attitude towards the technology that is important. Think you’re a good candidate? Then your next step is to fill the knowledge gap.

Get Training

Seek new training for skills you want to learn. Pursue advanced training in the areas you are weak on. The more you know how to tackle, the more valuable you will be to the client and when it comes time to build your own team, the more equipped you will be to train your people.

~ Lynette

Guest Post by:
One place you can get web tech training from is TechBasedTraining.com (TechBasedTraining.com), created by the author Lynette Chandler who has been the tech manager behind the scenes of some very successful Internet businesses. Check out their courses and be sure to sign up for free training, tech hints
and shortcuts while you’re there.