In your quest for money making ideas, you may have come across several get rich quick schemes and earn money while you sleep pitches. A smart reader that you are, you probably have walked right past those flashy claims and are looking for something more legit; something that will let you use the skills you already have, while earning you a good income. Working as a Virtual Assistant had probably crossed your radar, but you are not sure yet if it is the right option for you. Or maybe you have already decided that this is what you want to do, but need some clarity about all the details. In this article we provide a quick overview of what becoming a virtual assistant is all about. It covers some of the basics to give you a feel of what to expect.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant (VA for short) is an individual who provides professional administrative, technical, creative or managerial assistance remotely. VAs work virtually as an independent contractor and provide services for a pre-determined fee.
Prerequisites
To become a virtual assistant, at the least the following requirements should be met -
- Be skilled in providing services in a professional and timely manner
- Have the ability to work remotely (i.e., have a good Internet connection, access to phone and fax connection)
- Be fluent in English, and have the ability to communicate effectively via emails or on the phone
If you can meet these prerequisites then this is one of the money making ideas that will likely work great for you.
Initial Investment
The initial investment costs are fairly minimal for becoming a virtual assistant if you already have an Internet and phone connection. Depending on your personal approach to conquering this field, you may incur some costs for setting up a website and promoting yourself, but these should not exceed a few hundred dollars at most.
How Much Can You Make?
This is one of the better paying money making ideas, with the ability to make anywhere from $5 to $100+/hr depending on your skills and experience. As of the writing of this document, the average salary of a virtual assistant is listed as $45,000/year according to the simplyhired.com salary estimator (You should be able to click on the link to find a more up-do-date estimate). A more realistic number would likely be $20 – $50/hr, with the annual income dependent on how many hours you want to put into it.
Advantages of Becoming a Virtual Assistant
The main advantages of becoming a virtual assistant are
- The ability to work from home
- The ability to choose the work to suit your personal needs – your schedule, your tastes, your temperament, your unique working style.
- The ability to scale your work (take on more vs refuse a client) depending on the demands of your personal life
- The option to get more creative both with your skills and your choice of clients
- The ability to set your own price. Depending on whom you ask, this may actually be a disadvantage, but we here believe in taking control of our lives and finances, so no matter how difficult the task may seem, if it puts us in control, we list it in the “advantages” section
- And, the best of all, being your own boss! You still have to answer to your clients, and some clients may have the tendency to micro manage, but hey, once you finish a project for that client, you don’t ever have to work with him/her again, if you don’t want to!
Remember, you may have to wait until you are established before reaping some of these benefits, though. For instance once you have a steady stream of projects, you will have a lot more freedom to pick and choose which projects you want to take on, but in the beginning when you are still trying to get your footing, you may have to take on tasks that may not be as much of a perfect fit for you.
Disadvantages of Becoming a Virtual Assistant
And yes, there are some. The main disadvantages of becoming a virtual assistant are -
- You need to provide for your own health care costs, setup costs, training costs etc.
- It takes a lot of effort and hard work to get established initially, with the effort required being similar to starting a small business.
- You need to deal with the back end issues – calculating the taxes, dealing with customer support and issues, marketing and promotion etc.
If you would rather not be saddled with these issues, you can get around some of them, to a certain extent, by joining a virtual assistant agency who will match you up with a client (for a fee, of course). If you are looking for a temporary gig, or a one-off project to make some extra money, or just want to get a taste of this before diving in, then this may be the route to go. Take at look at our <A guide for working with virtual assistant agencies>.
Examples of Services Offered by Virtual Assistants
Here is a list of some of the services that virtual assistants offer. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but has been presented here to allow you to evaluate if becoming a virtual assistant is the right option for you. As the scope of the Internet expands, and “outsourcing” reaches new heights, you are likely to see a lot of previously un-thought-of services making its way into this list.
- Handle email (and postal mail) correspondence
- Handle phone calls, customer inquiries, send/receive faxes and convert them to soft copies etc.
- Handle the personal/event calendars, make/confirm appointments, setup meetings, plan events, make travel arrangements etc.
- Website design, maintenance, support etc.
- Content writing, copy editing, proof reading, submission to directories, link building etc.
- Transcription, dictation etc.
- Audio/video editing, podcast generation etc.
- Manage email lists, product databases etc.
If you are looking for more ideas take a look at this comprehensive list of VA services offered by the va4u website. It should give you an idea of what services others are offering and help you determine what you would like to offer.
So now you know what being a virtual assistant is about, and may have a general idea of whether this is one of the money making ideas that will click for you. If you think it will, check out the more detailed articles in our virtual assistant archives as we continuously keep updating it with a lot of tips and information.
In fact this one of ideas of making money online. Right now because my busy schedule i have out sourced manpower on article writing and SEO, and this frees my time to do other stuff. You could make money depending on the project and how long it would take to complete.
Charles recently posted..Ways to Make Money Online For Beginners Without A Website
To be a virtual assistant is very cheap to start. Have internet connection, an email, phone and lately people are using Skype. Depending on what you offer as services, you need to be an expert in that area to be assured of more work flowing through. For assistance, if you offer article writing services, you need to have good grammar with spelling mistakes and a good typing speed.
Charles recently posted..Ways to Make Money Online For Beginners Without A Website
Virtual assistants can make our lives so much easier, they are of so much help when we have a hectic schedule. What makes me feel good about hiring a virtual assistant is I get some spare time. A virtual assistant perfect at the job makes the employer’s life more organized. Those trying to become a virtual assistant as well as those looking for one can benefit a lot from such important posts.
The beauty about being a virtual assistant is being in command of your own time, resources, productivity and output. The more quality output you can provide, the more your client base can grow, effectively increasing both a VA’s control of money (profit from his/her results). Contrary to being in an office where all deliverables are pre-set by the company a person works for, a virtual assistant has the option to only choose what works best for a task at hand.
Charles Beach recently posted..Disney’s Advertising Limit Extends to Junk Food
If you’re an organised, trustworthy individual, becoming a virtual assistant can be an excellent money maker. Building up a strong relationship with your clients is important for networking also. Make a decent name for yourself and the offers will come flooding in and you could have a solid income from this kind of profession.
This is meant in the most straight-up and non-racist way possible, Sam:
With so many of these jobs (Virtual Assitant positions) being outsourced to countries such as India and the like, are people within Australia, the U.S., the U.K. and so on actually a chance to make a good living off being a VA, considering we tend to charge more for our time than our overseas counterparts?
I’d love to know your thoughts, buddy.
If you wanted a job and stay at home at the same time, online businesses offers virtual assistants. As a new graduate. job hunting is one of the most tiring thing to do. Going one job interview to another. You have your written and oral examinations then wait for the result the entire day. Tiring, isn’t it? While browsing the net. My friend showed me a site in which you just register and do some clerical works or etc for clients internationally. This site manages to know your expertise and choose clients to whom you’ll work for. I find it really interesting because, here, you don’t find the job, the job finds you. You stay at home, go online, do your work and get paid. That easy.
Tori Sanchez recently posted..Social Media as New Business Tool
Stay at home and do your job. It’s one of the most desired work nowadays. You don’t have to go outside and be hassled by the days traffic. The internet offers a lot of online job. Virtual assistant tops the list. It’s easy actually, all you gotta do is go online, do your job(basically clerical works)then voila! You’re an Instant virtual assistant now.
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