What is a virtual assistant and why would someone want one?
A remote virtual assistant is generally self-employed and provides professional administrative, technical, or creative assistance to clients remotely from a home office. Working as a remote virtual assistant allows employers to cut out some overhead. They don’t need to have a benefits package for you for one thing, so that eliminates healthcare or matching 401(k) contributions, which will save them thousands of dollars. In addition to this, small businesses where the owner both creates products and has to juggle the many hats need to run a business might not be able to afford full time help. Hiring a remote virtual assistant means they can delegate tasks and free up more time to do things like create!
How does someone become a virtual assistant?
Becoming a virtual assistant is easy! All you need is a client or two (okay definitely more than that). How many times have you done something to help a friend and they say, “you could charge for this!” That’s what you do. Have you seen a post on your Facebook pages about how someone needs help doing this or that? Have you seen someone open a new business? They are going to need help managing all of the things and that is where you come in. Send them a link to your website, a Facebook page or wherever you can give them your pitch.
What do I need to become a virtual assistant?
You need to know your basic office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Beyond that is up to you. The more you know, the more services you can offer. If you can edit photographs with Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom you can offer to edit photos for photographers. If you know how to use film editing software you can offer to edit clips of film and help someone create and populate their YouTube channel. Are you great with social media; uploading and crafting captions and adding in hashtags? Social Media Management is a highly sought after task for remote virtual assistants.
Other types of tasks you might be asked to handle:
- Making phone calls
- Copywriting
- Schedule and calendar management
- Email correspondence
- Making travel arrangements
- General admin tasks
- Accounting
- Bookkeeping
- Social media management
- Data entry
- Zoom Meeting Management (break out rooms!)
You’ll also need some basic equipment like a laptop, reliable internet, a cellphone and some kind of calendar or scheduling system for yourself. You can try Monday, Trello, Asana, etc.
What do you do as a virtual assistant?
In my role as a remote virtual assistant I work with creators and artists. Everything from a soap maker, to adult industry content creators to a seamstress. I help them figure out how to price their goods, write captions for their social media posts and handle their customer service. I funnel emails, deal with some pretty gross DM’s and create listings on their websites or Etsy’s. It’s a lot of work and even though I only work 5-10 hours for each client I take on, they don’t always need me at once so I can rotate people out. When I can’t take on more work, I have a few trusted friends who refer clients to me and I do the same for them.
Does this sound like something you need? You can always see if I am taking on new clients by contacting me through my work with me page.