A recent opportunity to do some dissertation editing led to a 2nd and 3rd opportunity, and I decided to have a website in conjunction with some business cards. While doing research, a long forgotten plan to try doing some VA work on the side has resurfaced, and works perfectly in conjunction with editing, with a little cartography thrown in.

I've been reading almost non-stop on this website, and links from it, since yesterday (bad idea to get only 4 hours of sleep when I had to be at work at 8 this morning!), and I am thrilled to have such a great resource at my disposal to help me.

Currently, I work full-time at the University of Kansas, and I'm just looking for a little extra income to save up to buy a car, the occasional vacation, and pay off my mortgage a little faster.

Looking forward to getting to know you all, and take advantage of the many opportunities and incredible font of information here. Thanks for having me!

Margretta

Hi Margretta, welcome to the forums I can't tell you how many new member introductions include a mention of spending the first night (all night) wrapped up in the site.

There is a ton of information here - make the most of it! And if you can't find what you're looking for or have a question, don't be shy about asking, there are so many wonderful virtual assistants here to help.

Wishing you much success in your new business venture!

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Thanks, Tess,
I appreciate your welcome! Still reading!

Margretta

Hi Margretta, how's the research going?

I'm really interested to learn more about how you might offer cartography via a virtual assistant business - it's such a unique service... what types of clients would you be marketing to?

Looking forward to hearing more

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Margretta,
You certainly have a full plate! hope that you get some sleep soon. At least the students will be gone (of course there is summer school) so maybe you will get a little break. My husband works up at KU as well in the housing department as an electrician. Small world.

diana

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Diana Buchanan
When You Don't Have the Time

Tess -
the research is going well, but familiarizing myself with WordPress is not going quite as smoothly. I haven't found any themes that completely do what I want them to do yet, so I suspect that I'll be "making do" with something until I learn enough to completely customize it myself. I definitely see elements in one theme that I like, but not the overall theme, so I plan to start marrying various parts of the CSS I like together.

I've also broken it twice so far... We'll see how many more times I have to break it to make it work. However, I've had an offer for help from a local friend who's migrated several sites to WordPress, so we'll see if he can spend an hour helping me figure out the parts that baffle me.

Re: cartography - so much of the information that is used to make maps nowadays is in the public domain, if not necessarily readily accessible, that doing it in a "virtual" context shouldn't be too hard. And I think that many people would like something that looks nicer than a google map, if they new that someone was out here to make such a thing. My initial plan is to market that to folks who need nice maps for academic papers (theses and dissertations, primarily) who don't have the skills to make more than a hand-drawn or google map. This could also be useful for folks who are doing event planning, fliers, etc, and once I work out the details, I hope to take advantage of the folks here on VAF for referrals for stuff like that!!

Diana,
I am lucky enough to operate well in spite of lack of sleep, but because of my hobby, not my job. My office experiences some "down time" at the end of the semester, and so I'm also not terribly busy there for these few weeks. Summer isn't too bad, either -- most of the work prepping for next year happens before April. I also have to "use or lose" some vacation time, so that's what I've been doing so far this week. Back to work tomorrow, though!

Margretta