With gas prices rising, many displaced from their jobs, and more and more businesses downsizing, comes the need for finding an alternative way to make a good income. Now more than ever, families are seeing the need for two incomes. One Industry that is increasing in popularly today, being rated one of the top 5 home-based businesses for 2005 by Entrepreneur Magazine last year, is virtual assisting. Becoming a VA allows you to work from anywhere in the world and requires little in the way of start-up costs or fees. The main requirement is the ability to type well and a good understanding of the Internet.

By definition, a Virtual Assistant or VA, is a highly skilled professional who provides administrative support and other specialized services to businesses, entrepreneurs, authors, online businesses, executives, sales professionals and others who have more work to do than time to do it. Many VA's also provide web design and maintenance, publicity and marketing, desktop publishing, word processing, and business start-up consultations. The services are endless depending upon the VA's knowledge, skills and creativity.

Virtual assistants are instrumental in helping businesses with their marketing, capability to run their offices getting more work accomplished, and also they have a solid understanding of the latest tools to make a business succeed. One example is blogging. We all know that it is essential for a business to have a blog today to succeed, yet many businesses don't have the time to create and maintain a blog. A good virtual assistant will handle that for you and more.

"What started out in the 80's as home-based word processors has grown into what we are seeing today," says Diana Ennen, President of Virtual Word Publishing. "Plus more and more clients are realizing the need to outsource their work and let a professional virtual assistant do it, so they can focus on that they do best, running their business."

Ennen, along with co-author Kelly Poelker have written, "Virtual Assistant ~ the Series, Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA It has the endorsement of work-at-home experts Priscilla Huff and the Mompreneurs as well as a number of others and has helped thousands over the years start their own thriving business. Virtual Assistant The Series is also the primary textbook for the Red Deer College-Canada VA Certification Program in Canada, Owens College, and several other large colleges, and is required reading for students of "Virtual Assistance U" -- an online training center for virtual professionals.

For free information on starting a virtual assistant business or to find a qualified virtual assistant, stop by Ennen's new site, Publicity-VA.com You'll also find publicity tips, free booklets on obtaining clients, and sample letters and chapters from their book. Start today in the successful career you've been longing for - a home-based virtual assistant business.