Virtual assistants, or VAs as they’re called, are in high demand nowadays. The new normal we’re witnessing more or less demands that most activities of almost all kinds of businesses be online-only to prevent risks of the Covid-19 contagion. Therefore, if you’re thinking about starting a Virtual Assistant business, now is the right time to do so.
Understanding Virtual Assistant’s Role
Before I explain how to start a Virtual Assistant business in seven simple steps, I’ll explain a bit about what a VA does. A VA is like a secretary or an administration executive. They provide online secretarial and administrative services to individuals or even companies.
Nowadays, there’s another category of VA, too: the ones that handle social media pages and accounts for high net-worth individuals or companies.
In both these cases, a VA’s job is online only. A VA works from home or another location and provides its services remotely. This helps the company or individual maintain some secrecy around their business and other sensitive issues.
Therefore, if you’ve superb administrative, social media, or secretarial skills, it’s easy to start a business that provides virtual assistance to organizations and individuals.
Starting Virtual Assistant Business in Seven Steps
Now that you’ve some idea about what Virtual Assistants do, here’re seven simple steps to set up a business in this field. VAs earn much money because not everyone requires their services for eight hours of the work shift. This means you could work for two or even more employers simultaneously, on a freelance basis.
If this sounds interesting and you’d like to start a VA business, follow these simple steps.
1. Take Your Skills Inventory
As I mention above, there’re broadly three types of VA services you can provide- administrative, secretarial, and social media. The kind of service you wish to provide would depend on your skills. Therefore, take a skills inventory. Meaning, find out how comfortable and well-versed you would be in giving any of these services. Select the skills in which you’re strong because you’ll deliver what the client wants from you.
2. Create a Killer LinkedIn Profile
The next step that I recommend to anyone that wishes to start a VA business is to create a killer LinkedIn profile. Most Virtual Assistants get hired through LinkedIn. LinkedIn accounts for at least one employee every six seconds globally for different kinds of jobs. And VA is no exception. A great LinkedIn profile can help prospective buyers of your skills to contact you. It would also help advertise your services as a VA. And above all, you can network with a lot of other VAs around the world and keep yourself updated about the latest in this booming industry.
3. Know Your Market
After taking your skills inventory, you would know which kind of market you would like to target. Therefore, the next step would be to get a better understanding of the market you wish to serve. There’re lots of VAs around, so that the market can be pretty tough for a new entrant. However, this shouldn’t be a deterrent. You can select a niche in which you wish to offer VA services to clients. The narrower the niche, the greater your chances of finding clients. You could also go for broader niches if you’re confident in your skills.
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4. Fix Your Price
According to various sources, a VA makes an average of $30 per hour. Meaning, during an eight-hour workday, you should easily be able to earn at least $240. This works out to a fantastic amount when you calculate your monthly income. However, as a business, you could charge a little more. You can provide a price depending upon the nature of work and the duration of employment. Generally, most clients of your services would be interested in long-term contracts with your VA business. Therefore, it’s best to fix a reasonable price for your assistance.
5. Start Your Blog
One important thing that people miss out on while starting a business is opening a blog. A blog can help you a lot in branding the company. And it also provides you with an opportunity to showcase your skills and opinions about various things in the field. Therefore, while starting a VA business, consider starting a blog for your business too. All that you require is superb writing skills to create excellent blogposts, a domain name, and website hosting to create a fantastic money-making blog for your virtual assistant business. Nowadays, you can buy a domain name and host for as little as $9.99 per month.
6. Spread the Word Around
Every business needs to advertise itself, therefore, you would also need to promote your Virtual Assistant business in some way. The best way to get the word around for your Virtual Assistant business is through a superb Facebook page and Twitter account. You can gather many followers for these through your business blog. However, it’s essential to update your social media pages frequently- at least once a day- for people to remain interested in your business. The same holds for Twitter accounts, too; contribute at least once a day so that people are reminded of your brand.
7. Get References from Clients
References work miracles when it comes to finding new clients for your Virtual Assistant business. A superb reference from one happy client attracts others to try your services too. And the more references you get, the higher the number of clients you can bag. Getting references isn’t tricky. You can upload these references and recommendations on the LinkedIn profile of your Virtual Assistant Business.
In Conclusion
As you can see from these seven steps, starting a Virtual Assistant’s business isn’t the proverbial rocket science. It’s pretty simple. However, it does require some extra efforts on your part, especially to create a superb blog and operate social media pages. You’ll have to deliver high-quality VA services to remain in business too.
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