Working from home: Becoming a Virtual Assistant?

Who is a Virtual Assistant?

Generally, a virtual assistant is someone that offers skilful/technical service to persons from his/her house and gets paid for it. A virtual assistant is there to assist businesses or high ranked persons who got other things to handle.

As a virtual assistant, you’ve got to have a good network connection and the right things like a personal computer, so you can be able to deliver services quickly. The most important is that you possess the skills, so when the opportunity or job comes, you would be up to the task.

As the name boldly says, being a virtual assistant means you’re assisting the person or company from the comfort of your home or any other place. It is a nice business to do as the world is advancing daily and jobs are now done from home.

Being a virtual assistant still comes with its advantage and disadvantages, a few of which we will take a look at below.

Pros of a Virtual Assistant

1. Working from home

Working from home is one of the greatest benefits you would get from working as a virtual assistant. There would be no need to stress yourself daily in going to work.

All you’ve got to do is attend to services or orders from your clients at any point in time and then proceed in delivering the service.

2. Minimal startup and mind-blowing earnings

Of course, it takes a little capital to start as a virtual assistant, as far as you have a lucrative and high demand skill.

As they say “opportunity without ability is useless”, so, being a virtual assistant that possesses good skills and techniques in delivering a service, you would certainly be a hot cake in this online platform.

There are a lot of businesses and persons that are willing to pay you a good sum per hour of your service.

3. Freedom in running your business

Yes, as a virtual assistant, you’ve got the freedom to run your business without getting scolded or restricted to carry out certain activities during business or work hours.

Being a virtual assistant would give you the freedom to set time or hours to carry out your business.

You would have the freedom to decide your charge or rate for carrying out certain services. There would be no stress as you can sleep, eat, and even do whatsoever you like, as long as you are delivering quality services and at the right time.

Cons of a Virtual Assistant

1. Home distractions

Working from home as a virtual assistant can cause distraction which could make you not deliver excellent services unlike when you’re at your office desk in your place of work.

This could be a major problem for those who have kids and are also nursing mothers. Also, when you’re at home, you could be visited by friends and other family members which, would make you distracted and not able to provide quality service to your clients.

2. No company trips/paid benefits

Of course, this is a big disadvantage of being a virtual assistant as you wouldn’t have the chance to enjoy benefits that comes with being a company worker.

As a company worker, there are benefits like;

• Paid trips abroad for vacation

• Retirement plans for several years and other leave plans.

You wouldn’t have the opportunity to enjoy these benefits and plans since you’re a boss on your own and would have to pay the expenses to enjoy these amenities from your own earnings as a virtual assistant.

3. You’ve got no assistant or partner

As a virtual assistant, you are your own boss with no personal assistant or messenger. You would have to do your things yourself unless you plan on getting someone to work for you.

There are several benefits that come with being a virtual assistant, however, you would be the one to handle all the stress or work that comes with it.

Everyone who is aspiring to step up his/her game in online business, being a virtual assistant is a good opportunity. You would be able to offer a lot of services that matches your skill.

Few of the jobs that you could do include;

• Email management

• Project management

• Bookkeeping

• Proofreading

• Transcription

• Social media management

• Content research

These are just a few of the services that a lot of businesses and companies are looking for daily. Possessing the skill is the first thing and knowing where and how to put it to work in the next.

You can call a virtual assistant job a freelancing business because you’re working from home and in your comfort.

How do you become a Virtual Assistant/ training?

It is an easy process to become a virtual assistant, as far as you’re determined in achieving your goal. It involves;

1. Setting your business structure/platform

2. Choosing the right niche or skill to work on

3. Setting price tags for your services

4. Create an online presence through websites and other productive platforms like LinkedIn.com

With the above, you can start working as a virtual assistant and start making enough money. All of the above ways of becoming a virtual assistant is important but most important is choosing the right niche to work on.

Free Virtual Assistant Training

One very good site I have know for a while and have become a member of is VirtualSavvy.com. The site provided a lot of resources on how to become a virtual assistant working as a freelancer or starting your own business.

Some niches are more important than others as it depends on what people need the most. For example, you could be a content writer or a social media manager.

Businesses and companies need skilled persons to handle these projects.

If your services are top-notch, you can increase the rate at which you offer these services, because clients would value you and wouldn’t want to lose you for any reason.

There are a whole lot of opportunities online like being a freelancer in Fiverr, Upwork, working as a social media/project manager, affiliate marketing, and others.

They all involved in sales/marketing as you either sell goods or services and that is what the modern age business is all about.

Conclusion

As a Virtual Assistant, you can offer almost any kind of service as long as you offer good quality service. You just need to set your mind and get your business booming.

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