Are you thinking of earning money working from home? There are many side hustles where you can earn money to supplement your income. You can even earn a full-time income working from home. Working as a virtual assistant is one of the easiest side hustles for many people. In this post, we will show you how to be a virtual assistant.
What Is A Virtual Assistant?
A Virtual Assistant is someone who offers services to help individual or business owners grow their business.
There are many entrepreneurs and businesses needs help with their customer service, websites maintenance, social media update, and so on. They are too many jobs to be done and the business owners do not have enough resources to manage themselves. That is why there is a great demand for a virtual assistant.
A virtual assistant job does not need to be the traditional administrative work like helping your clients in answering phone calls and live chat, responding to emails, scheduling appointments, make travel arrangements, and so on.
There are varieties of different jobs for a virtual assistant. You might be helping in customer service in one week, posting messages, and manage social media the next week and blogging the week after.
It can be challenging and interesting at the same time when you can expose to different jobs.
A virtual assistant can provide varieties of services, includes
- Customer Support
- Website Design and Maintenance
- Blogging
- Content marketing
- Social Media management
- Email Management
- Data Entry
- Graphic Design
How Much Does A Virtual Assistant Make?
On average a virtual assistant makes $19/hr, depends on experience and skill. The rate for a virtual assistant is also dependent on your clients, whether you are working with business/organization or private clients.
If you have your experience in your current or previous employment, you can ask for a higher rate. The rate for those with expert skills, for example, website design and maintenance, manage social media, content marketing, and so on.
The rate for virtual assistant can range from $10/hr for beginner to $35/hr for experienced and skilled.
In the beginning, you might be getting lower pay. As you gain more experience and working with more clients, you will be able to raise your fee.
If you have your own website in which you can showcase your expertise and skill, you could definitely be earning more.
What Skills Do You Need To Be A Virtual Assistant?
1. Computer skill
You will need to have basic word processing skills. It will be a bonus if you have knowledge of spreadsheets.
2. Good knowledge and understanding of the Internet
You need to be familiar with websites because most of the information is online. Knowledge about social media.
3. Communication skill
You will need to interact with different people online through email and live chat. Communication should include talking, listening, understanding, and explaining.
4. Writing skill
Some level of writing skill which includes good grammar because most of your jobs are online.
5. Organization
You must be able to organize your jobs properly. You might be having different jobs and different due dates each week. Organize your jobs in order of urgency will get the job done on time. You do not wish to have your clients going after the jobs.
6. Motivation and self-discipline
For every job, there is a dateline. Since you are working from home, you must be self-discipline and motivation to work. Do not be distracted by television, scanning social media, etc.
7. Ability to learn
You have to keep learning new information. You might be given a job that you never did before. Your clients will not expect you to know everything, but they will expect you to find out.
There is much information available online where you can learn new skills. The best place to learn new information for free is YouTube.
How To Become A Virtual Assistant with No Experience
1. Decide On The Type of Service
You have to decide what type of services you want to provide. What you are good at, your experience, your skill that will help other people. It is also important to know what type of services people need a virtual assistant.
2. Decide How Much To Charge
Base on your experience and skills, you have to set a rate for your service. How much you want to charge for a certain job. You have to ask for a decent rate that will cover your expenses and you make some money.
3. Learn From The Pro
If you are not sure how to get started, you can enroll in some courses which teach you how to be a virtual assistant. It is always a good idea to learn from an expert.
4. Build Your Own Website
You can have an online presence by having your own website where you can add your experience and portfolio. You can learn how to build your own website in a few easy steps.
5. Start Looking for Your First Job
You can start looking for a freelance job as a virtual assistant.
How To Find Virtual Assistant Job
As a new virtual assistant, it is slightly challenging finding legitimate job opportunities. It is best to join agencies that provide legitimate job opportunities in order to avoid potential scams. Below are a few sites you can sign-up finding legitimate virtual assistant jobs.
Conclusion
We have gone through the information on how to be a virtual assistant, how much can virtual assistants earn, and how to find jobs. A virtual assistant job is to help other people in completing given tasks, helping to make people’s lives easier and help business owners grow their business.
This is a good way to earn extra money working from home where you can choose your own clients and work on your own hours. If you landed on a few good projects, you can build long term relationships with your clients.
Are you ready for virtual assistant jobs? Are you currently a virtual assistant and would like to share your experiences with our readers? Your awesome experiences will help other readers to start as a virtual assistant. We would love to hear from you.
Thanks for your article outlining the basic requirements and pay levels of a virtual assistant. When I first started looking for ways to make money online, this was actually what peaked my interest first due to my business background. I majored in accounting in college so I figured it would be something I could get into pretty easily. However what I had found while searching for jobs is that a lot of the prospective clients were looking for VAs with at least 5+ years experience and they were only offering on the lower end of pay. I’m not sure if it’s due to clients underestimating the skills of a VA with 5+ years experience or if it’s due to the fact the market has become saturated with prospective VAs due to working from home growing in popularity. It’s still a viable career option but from my experience the barriers to entry may be just a bit too high for a beginner or someone looking for this to be their sole option for income.
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experiences. You are right, the virtual assistant job is getting more competitive for beginners. The demand for virtual assistance in variety of jobs is high too.
I wish you all the best.