I just received this Google alert for Virtual Assistance – IAC Professionals Seeking Savvy Entrepreneurs to Get Creative and Win Innovative Prizes.
After reading the press release, I did visit the IAC website to read more about them.
I must respectfully say, that I am against a contest for virtual assistants and giving your work away for free. If you are a professional building a reputable business, why give away the thing that you have worked so hard to build? I don’t see lawyers having a contest to give away their services, do you? How about plumbers? Hmmm, don’t think so!
Now, if a VA wants to volunteer for a non-profit, a church, or an organization they believe in and want to support, that is completely another matter. You don’t donate your services with the intention of gaining new business. You donate it because it is a charitable organization or you may want to build more skills.
I see these contests on other sites, such as Elance, etc. I think this is demeaning to our profession. We have a hard enough time when people want to pay less than $10.00 an hour for our services or start to tell us that we need to know everything in order to be a virtual assistant. I left the corporate world to run my own business so that I can live the life I want with balance and integrity.
A contest for my services would so be not with integrity. Not only that, but if you are familiar with the Law of Attraction, what kind of ‘client’ are you attracting who basically want to test drive you?
