How to Become a Virtual Assistant
What is a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is someone who does tasks at home—away from the office. Technically, any job that you can do remotely falls under this category.
Being a virtual assistant, or VA, is not as easy as it seems. You are not employed in the usual manner, and most of the clients you find are those who need micro-jobs. Most have no repeat work for you.
However, many companies have been slowly moving to this model—with VAs, they do not need to pay for rent, computers, and utilities. VA work saves a ton of money for corporations, and these are your target clients.
But how do you become a virtual assistant? And what things should you do to become successful at it? We will cover these things today. Our topics are:
- Choose a niche specialisation
- Develop your skills as a VA
- Decide on a pricing structure
- Market yourself as an effective VA
- Build relationships with clients
By the end of this tutorial, you should be ready to launch your virtual assistant career, be a digital nomad, and earn money from the comfort of your home.
If you are looking to get started straight away to earn some money while you set up, I will have a link at the end of this article to a site where you can join that has various projects that you can choose from.
Choose a niche specialisation
First of all, what is a niche? A niche is an industry, and like any business, you need to choose a niche, so your marketing efforts are concentrated.
For example, a good niche is accounting. In this industry, you can offer bookkeeping services. But it does not end there. In this niche, you can break down your offer into multiple areas such as:
- Examining statements for accuracy
- Making sure that the calculations are compliant with the law
- Organising your client’s financial records
- Doing analysis work, so the client knows where they are spending the most
- Auditing services
- Cost-reduction and revenue stream analysis
If you do not choose a niche, you will become a jack of all trades. While this sounds good, this is bad for you in the long run.
Why?
A jack of all trades has no area of concentration. If you do accounting and social media management, you will never get to understand the industry so profoundly. Failure to understand your niche means that you do not know where to find clients. As such, you will not know what they need or what your competition is doing.
The other caveat of not specialising is lack of expertise. If you are doing several things at a time, you will have no time to bump up your skill level. You will get stuck doing small and basic tasks here and there.
No matter what niche you belong to, there are merging trends that you should know about. Over the years, expectations will change. If you are charging $20 per hour on a task now, there will come a time when many people will do this same job for $5 per hour.
You must also take virtual assistant training or lessons. If you never improve your skill, you are dead in the water. No one will pay you $20 per hour. Why would they when they could get the same type of service for $5?
Develop your skills as a VA
There is an endless list of what you can do if you become a virtual assistant. As discussed earlier, you need to specialise in one niche or industry. After choosing one, develop your skills and never stop improving. Here are some examples of VA jobs that you can consider:
- Social media manager – posts photos on your client’s social media accounts, engage with his audience, answer inquiries, drive traffic, and produce content that increases follower count
- Blogger assistant – write or edit blog posts, upload them in content management system like WordPress, add photos, and also use the right keywords to help the blog rank on Google
- e-Commerce assistant – upload product photos, add product descriptions, make sure the pricing is correct, process orders, manage customer complaints like refunds and returns, and make sales reports
- Office assistant – manage your client’s calendar of events, take phone calls for consultations and scheduling, answer inquiries about the service of your client, including prices, and many more. This may include accounting work and payroll, plus other documentation-type of jobs.
As an office assistant, it is also not uncommon to do data entry jobs. Many clients possess thousands of data points that they have on paper or Excel, and they want you to transfer these data in a customer relationship management software or CRM.
If we think about it, an accountant should not be classified as a virtual assistant, as it is a profession of its own. The thing is the internet changed how we think. Today, a virtual assistant is viewed as anyone who can do things from the other side of the world.
Regardless, you need to understand that a lot of VA tasks sometimes overlap. For example, you may work as a writer for a client. Your task does not end there—your client may ask you to do SEO, or also edit some photos that you will upload in the blog site, along with the material you wrote.
Decide on a pricing structure
Will you charge by the hour or by project?
This is a tough nut to crack. If you charge by the hour, you have a guaranteed income for every hour of work. However, many clients do not like this. You are not an employee, so you are expected to be 100% productive. If you charge by project, you may be short-changing yourself. For example, will you charge $25 for a project that takes you four hours to complete?
What makes sense?
Let me show you some guidelines on how you can choose between the two.
Tips for charging per hour:
- Charge per hour if the job requires work that is inconsistent—like answering phone calls from customers, or answering customer inquiries via chat. Tasks like this require that you sit and wait, so you need to be paid for every hour you work.
- Decide on the cost of your time – how much money will take to give you a decent life? Is it $100 a day? If so, divide that by eight, and you know what your hourly rate is; never charge anything lesser than that amount, or you will shortchange yourself.
- Double your rate – you see, it is not likely that you will get a full 40-hour workweek with being a virtual assistant. Given this, your basic hourly rate will not be enough to geed you and your family, much less fulfill other things that employer typically pays for like health insurance, comps, and other benefits.
Tips for charging per project:
- Charge per project if the work output is guaranteed – examples of these are website building, copywriting, social media marketing, and more. Make sure that the terms and expected output are clear before you make a price offer.
- Offer Tier Pricing – give your potential clients the advantage of choosing. Divide a project into three options. For example, you may offer to build a Shopify store. In one plan, it may not include a social media package, the other one does, and the other one includes product uploads and descriptions. Price them differently, or find some way for customers to save money as they upgrade.
- Offer bonuses – throw in some free stuff on high-tier project plans; if you are a writer, maybe you can throw in some loyalty points for every dollar spent. The loyalty points can be converted into a free article.
As a recap, you should charge by the hour for work that is inconsistent—these are tasks where you have no control over your activities. Charge by project if you are providing services where you are in control of your workflow and output.
Market yourself as an effective VA
After deciding what areas you want to specialise in and how much you want to charge, it is time to market your services. There are three main methods to do this, as shown below:
- Freelance marketplaces
- Your own website
- Apply for jobs
Let us take a look at each one.
- Freelance marketplaces – examples are Fiverr, UpWork, and GoLance. These are websites where clients and freelancers meet. Depending on the marketplace’s model, you either have to bid for a job or wait until somebody buys your services.
- Your own website – what you can do is to build your website and position yourself as a real business. You can write blogs to get traffic, or you can advertise on social media and Google. You can Build Funnels and Sell your Product Online.
- Apply for jobs – there are many job boards out there, the most popular of which is LinkedIn. Over these platforms, you can find employers who will give you full-time work, but without the government-required compensation and benefits.
You do not have to limit yourself with one marketing option, you can do all three. The important thing to consider right now is that you need a client.
Just a word of advice; freelance marketplaces have a cut-throat competition. You will be competing against people from around the world—people whose economies and standards of living may be lower than yours.
In many cases, some people would charge $5 per hour for a job that costs $33 per hour where you live. Only cut your costs if you are a beginner—build your reputation, get experience, and then increase your rates.
Build relationships with clients
The last important step to become a virtual assistant is building a relationship with your clients. As you know, business thrives because of returning customers.
You cannot go round and round inside a hamster’s wheel—getting new clients, getting paid, looking for new clients—the cycle is just vicious, and there is no guarantee of a sustainable income.
Be professional at all times—keep your commitment and submit your deliverables on time. Well, not on time, but earlier. Always ask your client for clarity if there is something that is confusing you.
Never forget to thank your client, and always position yourself in your client’s shoes. Will you be happy with this output if you were the one who paid for it?
Final Thought
Now that you know how to become a virtual assistant for free, it is time to wrap this up.
A virtual assistant is a critical component of an entrepreneur’s team. Without a VA, a businessperson will be forced to do things on their own, or hire a full-time employee. Both are not great business practices, and entrepreneurs know this.
Your success as a VA relies on your capacity to solve problems. If you think about it, the only real reason a person will hand you over his money is if you solve a problem. The more complex problems you solve, the more money you can charge.
Bear in mind that whatever virtual assistant services you offer, there are thousands more who offer the same. Balance your price between what others are charging and what amount of money your clients can bear. And most importantly, never compromise quality.
Customers will only come back for your service if you consistently deliver impeccable work.
As mentioned at the start of this article, if your ready to get started, Register Now and get your feet wet while you build your online business.
Regards
Ben @ Beka Products
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