If you have good administrative skills and secretarial skills, and would like to work at home, you might consider setting up business as a Virtual Assistant, or VA.
A VA is someone who works from home to provide administrative support to various business clients via the Internet, email, fax, and the telephone. In most cases the client and VA never actually meet in person; as long as both parties are connected to the Internet, where each happens to be located is “virtually” irrelevant.
As a Virtual Assistant you would be able to offer a range of services such as word processing, typing and correspondence tasks, data entry, transcription, proof-reading and editing services, online filing, email and voicemail, newsletter and brochure writing and handling, social media, website and blogging work, billing, database handling, book-keeping, party and event planning, Internet research… and anything else your clients might want to throw at you!
You would have to decide whether to offer a whole range of services or whether to specialize and concentrate on just one or two.
The Virtual Assistant industry is relatively new, but it is set to grow fast as more and more business managers come to see the advantages of outsourcing administrative tasks to online professionals.
The most obvious advantage is the cost savings for businesses. With the onset of recession you can expect companies to take this more and more into consideration, further stimulating the growth in demand for Virtual Assistants.
Cost savings go beyond the basic consideration of getting a particular job done more cheaply by outsourcing it. Unlike regular employees, VAs come with little “baggage” such as lateness, sickness, time-wasting, health and sickness, unions, pensions and employee legislation, plus the cost of maintaining an office in which they can work. All these factors suggest that more and more businesses will look with increasing interest on outsourcing their work to VAs.
So how much could you charge for your services? Anything between $10 and $80 per hour, depending on the service and your qualifications. Basic services such as word processing can start at around $10-$15 per hour, or you could choose to charge by the word, especially if you are a fast typist. If you offer book-keeping, document editing or composition services you should be able to charger higher rates and still offer your clients a saving when compared to the price of doing the job in-house.
As a VA working at home alone you may think that there is only so much that you can do, and therefore there must be a limit to the amount you can earn. However, that is not necessarily the case.
As your client base grows you could think about building your own team of VAs and subcontracting work to them for a commission. Many people would be only too pleased to have someone supply them with a means of income without having to go out and find it on their own account.
For those VAs in your team who want to build their own business, you can provide them with the set up services they need by affiliating with a web hosting provider and other necessary services and build an extra stream of residual income.
The basic tools to get started are a computer with an Internet connection, a telephone and a fax. A website where you can advertise your services and provide contact details would also be useful.
Warmly
Shenthil Ranie
@trafficdiva
