Working as Virtual Assistant is the most realistic way to make good money online. You are completely free to choose your place of work.
Working as a virtual assistant gives you the greatest possible freedom in organizing your working hours. You can work online for clients all over the world and don’t even have to leave the house.
Concentrate on your strengths and make your manpower available to the various clients.
Thanks to the increasingly complex world of work, more and more entrepreneurs are using virtual assistants in order to be able to concentrate on their own core competencies.
Virtual assistants take on a wide variety of tasks for their clients and impress with their flexibility and speed.
As a virtual assistant, you don’t sit in the office, you are completely free to choose your place of work. Of course, you only need an internet connection.
What exactly is a virtual assistant?
As a virtual assistant, you provide online support for a company, website, or person by working remotely. Imagine a company has a job but no money to hire a full-time employee.
Most companies often outsource the task to virtual assistants who work remotely and don’t even go to their clients’ offices.
This gives you the opportunity to make money online from the comfort of your home.
You can also work part-time as a virtual assistant for one company since you work full-time for another company. Your options are limitless as there is a wide variety of work available.
What kind of work can virtual assistants do?
There is no limit to the types of tasks you can do for a customer. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
- Social media posting
- Reply to email
- Creating graphics for posts and social media
- To research
- Create content
- Moderating forums or groups
- List product
- Repair and optimize old content
- Comment on other blogs
As a virtual assistant, your job description can be consistent with that of a writer or PR person. Check out best virtual assistant jobs for beginners
What qualities do you need to be a successful VA?
To become a successful virtual assistant, you need to possess some of the characteristics:
1. Honesty
Your client is relying on you to deliver the assigned work and any late delivery must be accompanied by a real statement.
It is advisable to exercise the necessary care and always adhere to the deadlines. However, if it doesn’t, always tell the truth about why it didn’t happen.
Your customer will also entrust you with private information that must be respected. It is important to establish yourself as honest and trustworthy from the start.
Take a look at your online presence now. Do your pictures and social media posts create an honest atmosphere?
Having pictures of your party and lengthy political clashes on your personal media pages can send the wrong message to potential customers that you googled.
2. Good communication skills
If you can’t communicate well, you’re not connecting with your customer. Remember, you are working virtually so connection is key.
It is important to give clients a daily and / or weekly progress report on what you have achieved and how your work is benefiting them.
It doesn’t have to take long, but you have to show that you are worth the money. Good communication skills make a smart way to make money online as a virtual assistant.
For example, your weekly summary could look like this:
- 2 Contributions are saved as drafts and can be reviewed by you
- I pinned 150 pins and you have 30 new likes and 20 new followers
- I’ve updated your Twitter account as usual and you have 10 new RT and 20 new followers
3. Passion
Your passion for the job keeps you updated and motivates you. Also, be passionate about getting chores done on time. Sometimes you’ll work on fun projects, but often times you can work on monotonous tasks.
I think it is very important to get excited about your client and your client’s work, otherwise it will show in your work.
For example, if I had to write the social media posts for a plumber, you could imagine these posts being a little dry because I don’t know and don’t want to learn about plumbing.
Online working passion will motivate you to make money online as a virtual assistant too.
4. Don’t be afraid to say no
Communicate clearly with your client about your working hours so they know your schedule. This prevents them from overloading you with extra work outside of your working hours.
You need to draw clear lines for your client as a client who wants you to do A and B for $ 100 every week can slowly transform into a client who wants you to A, B, C and D every week run for $ 100.
If you are not careful, you can increase your hours without increasing your rate and therefore earn less.
5. Be flexible
In most cases, your customers are from a different time zone, dialect, or culture. It is therefore important to respond flexibly to your needs.
Most customers will respect your schedule, but they also need to be comfortable if they need help from you in rare emergency situations.
To avoid these emergency situations occurring too often, let your customer know from the start that you will try to make yourself available for emergencies beyond your regular working hours (i.e. the website is down and customers get angry) , but you will charge 1.5 times your hourly rate for hours worked in an emergency.
Basic knowledge Every virtual assistant has to be successful
So do you think you have the basic skills to become a successful virtual assistant? Some of the basic skills required include:
- The ability to type more than 45 words per minute, the better the faster
- Convenient with Mac or Windows
- Knowledge of dealing with the Internet and e-mail
- Have good time management skills
- Know the basics of social media marketing
- Understand how newsletters are created
- Ability to customize a brand or person’s voice
Get the right toolset too. Have a good computer or laptop, at least two up-to-date browsers, Skype or other chat software, a good email account, and a high-speed Internet connection.
It’s also important to be up to date with social media posting tools like Tailwind and Buffer, as well as management tools like Asana and Trello.
Keeping up to date on social media trends and best practices makes you a valuable tool for any customer too.
Why virtual assistants need to pick a niche
There is a common misconception that a virtual assistant is supposed to do all things. However, you will be a more productive and successful VA if you focus your talents in one niche.
What do you like to do? To do quality work, you need to find jobs in an area that you are familiar with and enjoy researching and talking about.
After all, there is no point in quitting a 9-5 job that you hate and then doing online work that you hate too.
For example, if you enjoy researching and talking about natural health topics, you will be exhausted from tracking clients who need help with investing awareness.
Not only should you choose a specific field for which you want to offer your virtual assistance services, but you should also specify which services you offer.
If you rock social media but can’t stand writing blog posts, just offer up your social media management services.
4 Things You Should Know When Starting Out as a VA
1. Set a fixed schedule for yourself
You need to establish a fixed schedule to work with. As much as you have the flexibility to work from home as a virtual assistant, you need to get into the habit of working every day.
Create a schedule that fits into the hours when you are least likely to be distracted. This will also help you stay productive and let customers know what to expect from you.
2. Deliver more
The first time you try to get your name out there, you want to provide quality service to existing customers. Deliver more than your customer expects as it pays off in the long run.
You want to impress your original customers so that they will refer you to others and get you a referral offer from them.
Let them recommend and leave a personal quote about your work on LinkedIn for everyone to see. Then copy and paste the quote with the image on your website as part of your customer testimonials.
3. Decide on your prices
You can decide whether you want to be based on the hour, project, or even withheld. A website that clearly states your specialties is an added benefit.
Your prices should depend on your specialty, industry, and customer base. Don’t sell yourself. As you grow in business and your expertise increases, so should your prices.
4. Market and network
The best way to let the world know that you are available for rent is to have a LinkedIn account that posts your experiences, testimonials, and an inviting photo. Connect on LinkedIn but avoid spamming yourself.
Also, having a personal website is a great thing for potential customers to see your work and contact you for awards.
I strongly recommend choosing your own domain name and a domain that reflects your name.
For example, YourName.com or YourNameVA.com sounds a lot better than Elnacain.blogspot.com or a creative name like TheBestVAEver.com. Create free account with paid domain.
Since you’ll only be using this website to showcase your skills and available packages, you don’t have to choose a fancy host.
Having a social media presence is also important as it improves your visibility and SEO. However, if you’ve been on Twitter or Facebook all day, you can’t get any work done.
Pop online when you need to network and build relationships, but don’t need to be a pesky promoter of your business.
Also create relationships with other virtual assistants. Do not think of them as competition, especially because you may be in different specialties.
Having someone who understands your challenges is extremely beneficial as you can pass your work on, share resources, teach each other new skills, and continuously support one another.
Also join online groups such as B. Facebook groups for bloggers.
Learn More:
Resources to Get Started as a Virtual Assistant and to Make Money Online
Stay up to date with new developments, not only in your niche, but with new technology and opportunities to work online. This will keep your skills current and varied and make you worth a lot more.
I firmly believe in investing in your knowledge and skills.
If you say, “I don’t have the money for this book or course,” you are stagnating in your skills and income.
Yes, investing in a course is a risk, but it is one that will help you learn and make the connections you need to earn more.
About you – are you interested in VA work or paperwork? Starting a service-minded business is one of the best – if not THE BEST – ways to make money quickly online.
Conclusion
Now you have learnt that VA role , what types of jobs you can do being a VA , how to start and finding a VA job. The most important VA skills will enable to you to make money online a Virtual Assistant.
