The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many companies to close their doors and send employees home. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, several people around a broad range of industries have been without earnings. Although it is too early to assess exactly whether the pandemic would rock the job market, and according to the Labor Department, 281,000 unemployment claims were lodged during the week ended on March 14. That’s 70,000 over the last report, from the week before that.
If and unless there’s a solution or the condition improves for the best, we’re trapped at home. So, why don’t you make the best of the opportunity and do something productive — like mastering a new skill set? Did you know that Taking up a new side hustle will not only help you raise a few extra bucks but can also help push out stress to an extent during these difficult times? And, it’s also a good idea to do something constructive, rather than stay idle doing nothing productive.
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While helping out those companies who might use any external support, you could transform your management and networking expertise into extra cash.
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Who is a virtual assistant?
The Virtual Assistant (VA) is an individual offering support services to businesses from a remote location. Virtual assistants are particularly popular among startups and online companies that need support but do not want to send their workers to their locations. That being said, many small and medium-sized businesses use virtual assistance, particularly for unique tasks such as social media management.
Reasons Why a Virtual Assistant is Needed
Here are the reasons why a virtual assistant is needed by most businesses and entrepreneurs require the services of a virtual assistant.
- To rapidly scale up business operations
Virtual assistants will, however, help in scaling up the business operation. Since they provide businesses with the opportunity to rapidly attract talent on a project-by-project basis, entrepreneurs can comfortably cope with an ever-increasing job demands without thinking about rushing through the recruiting phase.
Businesses use the services of virtual assistants to rapidly contend with rapid changes in scale, and then gradually recruit full-time staff when things have calmed down.
- Offering round the clock customer service
Today, most businesses have clients all over the globe. However, if the business and employees are based in just one location, it may be challenging to satisfy global demands and foreign time zones.
For instance, if a business is located in Lagos, their hours of operation would be midnight for their customers in Melbourne, Australia! The only way they can tackle this type of challenge is if their Lagos office runs 24 hours a day!
Fortunately, since virtual assistants typically work from home, these businesses may employ them across the world to adapt to various time zones. This way, the business, and their staff can maintain a good work-life balance while still being able to serve customers 24×7!
- Help businesses achieve more free time for strategic thinking
Ideally, virtual assistants help businesses perform their non-core activities so that they can have more time to focus on expanding their network.
Instead of spending time and money on day-to-day activities, they can spend it to think creatively about business from a long-term perspective. This helps them set goals that guide their business towards better performance and long-term success.
- Help businesses improve efficiency by performing non – core tasks
Another reason why businesses hire virtual assistants is that it lets businesses focus on their core competencies.
Here is how:
There are tons of non-creative activities performed by entrepreneurs and companies, tasks like;
- Internet research
- Sending Emails and newsletters
- Data Entry
- Schedule Meetings
- Handling Customer Queries
Though these are requisite tasks, they are not core tasks that need to be performed by an in-house team. Forcing the in-house employee to perform these duties requires resources to concentrate on items that need to be completed in person.
By assigning your non-core tasks to a virtual assistant with the right skills and knowledge, you don’t have to think about handling certain things at home. This allows you to invest your time and resources in the tasks that you’re in-office team needs to perform.
10 Ways to Make Money as a Virtual Assistant During a Pandemic
While the type of work you do as a virtual assistant differs and will rely entirely on things like your skillset, niche, interest, previous career and even location – several other services are in higher demand than others. Offering a variety of various services ensures that your clients won’t have to outsource to several freelancers, making their life smoother, and making your lives more appealing.
Here’s a list of 10 ways to make money as a virtual assistant during a pandemic
- Become an Administrative Support
Admin functions are relatively simple – so they are more often aligned with virtual assistant jobs. Administrative assistance jobs can include:
- Drafting emails, internal communication, etc.
- Preparing PowerPoint presentations
- Managing files (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)
- Setting up spreadsheets and data entry
- Booking in appointments and calls
- Managing a client’s the schedule/ calendar
- Monitoring voicemail
- Making travel arrangements
- Creating reports/ PDF documents
- Perform Outreach(Increasing Business Exposure) For Businesses
Creating partnerships and boosting visibility is important for any company – if a competitive brand is to be established. But rather, although there are many ways to boost your exposure as a business, they’re incredibly time-consuming – which is why companies can hire a virtual assistant to do that.
There are several outreaches Virtual Assistant services you could offer, such as:
- Writing up and distributing press releases
- Reaching out to advertisers or sponsors
- Participating in relevant forums
- Starting conversations with bloggers
- Managing affiliate programs
- Contacting influencers and discussing collaborations
- Generating Leads
- Perform Email Management For Companies
No-one enjoys viewing dozens of unanswered emails in their mailbox. Sincerely, it sometimes ends up getting too much, and they are most of the time compelled to accidentally hit “archive all ” – and pretend they never got them.
However, this isn’t a smart move. If anything, companies, and entrepreneur? And that’s exactly what peoples are looking for people to stay on top of those unanswered emails, and they can hire a virtual assistant to help with, and this something that you can do.
Activities that you are likely to perform under email management may include:
- Drafting replies (e.g., to common questions)
- Following up on important sent emails m
- Managing spam (e.g., creating junk mail filters)
- Archiving emails (not “archive all,” though)
- Flagging important emails
- Unsubscribing from unwanted promotional activity
- Offer Email Marketing Service to Businesses
Although certain marketers claim that email marketing is extinct, figures prove that it’s far from accurate. Not only are there more than 5.6 billion active email accounts globally, but the U.S. is expected to invest $750 million on email marketing in 2021.
Here are a few email marketing services you could offer to your clients:
- Managing the subscriber list
- Managing product launches
- Tracking the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns (e.g., click-through, conversion, unsubscribe, etc.)
- Designing email templates
- Scheduling emails
- Writing and sending the newsletter
- Online Marketing
The number of Internet users is rising! most companies need to do their best to optimize the impact of their digital ads.
Connecting with customers is the main aim of any company – of necessity, whether they choose to market their product or service.
Having experience in the area of online marketing would mean that you’re immensely beneficial as a virtual assistant.
Here are some services you could offer:
- Creating SEO-friendly landing pages
- Creating flyers and brochures
- Setting up paid advertising campaigns
- Measuring advertising effectiveness
- Setting up webinars (and providing tech support, if needed)
- Creating sales pages
- Managing promotions and giveaways
- Managing new product launches
- Web and Blog Management
Many companies also hand over the management of their websites and/or blogs to virtual assistants. As such, if you know your way around WordPress, this might be the ideal service to append to your Virtual Assistant package.
If you don’t know a lot about WordPress yet, there’s a lot of information about how to get started and you can also check online for a Free ‘7 Day How to Start a Blog Email Course.’ Writing your blog will teach you everything that you need to learn, and you might even think about monetizing your blog to create additional revenue.
Here are a few of the website/blog management tasks you may be asked to perform for your client:
- Repairing broken links
- Improving the website’s SEO
- Gaining a good understanding of the blog’s performance (KPIs)
- Reporting on hot topics and trends
- Tracking performance metrics (e.g., Google Analytics or other tools)
- Setting up redirects
- Removing old, outdated or unwanted pages and posts
- Moderating and replying to comments
- Updating plug-ins
- Content Creation
Business owners always need good content to create and maintain engagement with their audiences.
Providing content creation services can strong competitive advantage over other virtual assistants.
Here are a few content production services you may offer:
- Researching and suggesting topics
- Creating Infographics
- Transforming business data into engaging content
- Adding affiliate links
- Scheduling posts for publication
- Writing and formatting blog posts
- Proofreading and editing
- Keyword research
- Making posts SEO-friendly
- Sourcing and editing photos
- Social Media Management
Being a virtual assistant isn’t all about spreadsheets and other shipping orders! If you understand (or are interested in learning) how and when to maintain social media profiles, companies will hire you since they need help with all of that.
Getting involved in social media as a company is important today – but creating a good social media profile, again, needs significant time commitment and some advanced expertise.
That’s why business owners can outsource social media management tasks to people who know more about this than they do.
Social media management tasks may include:
- Responding to comments to keep up the engagement
- Coming up with SM campaign ideas – and launching them
- Reaching out to new potential customers through social media
- Staying informed about promotional rules on each platform
- Posting on social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram)
- Keeping profiles up-to-date
- Knowing about social SEO and using it to optimize your posts
- Financial Management
Staying on top of their financial situation is something a lot of people need to help – whether it will be personal finances, business finances – or both. If you have any experience in this field and keep up with statistics, you might be able to provide financial management services to your customers, such as:
- Processing payments
- Calculating profit and loss
- Bookkeeping
- Planning for taxes
- Managing retirement funds
- Tracking debt repayment
- Creating, sending and logging invoices
- Customer Service
One of the most common tasks that a virtual assistant may help with is customer service. Making consumers satisfied is vital to any company that wishes to succeed – but somehow it takes a substantial investment of resources.
But instead, business owners do not have much time to spare, which is why they hire great people like you and pay you to make the work easier.
Here are a few customer support-related tasks you may perform as a virtual assistant:
- Processing orders
- Managing shipments
- Chasing payments
- Handling customer inquiries
- Supporting customers in real-time (e.g., Live Chat)
- Keeping records up to date
How to Become a Virtual Assistant Without an Experience in 5 Easy Steps
So, now that you understand a little so much about what it might be like to work as a virtual assistant, you may be wondering what measures you’d need to take to get started.
As clearly stated before, you don’t need decades of work experience to begin; however, you’ll need to be precise about what you want.
- What Service Will You be Offering
The first step in starting as a virtual assistant is getting clear about what types of services you’ll offer.
It may well be worth listing the skills you have and comparing them to the services a virtual assistant may offer (listed above).
You may operate your website or forum, or you might learn how to edit social media images (which would make the most famous social media influencers jealous).
You may well be the expert of advanced Excel formulas that can simplify someone’s finances by clicking a button.
Take time to think about something you’re good at – and you’d love to do it. Compare what your skills are and what people need to help with – and decide what services you’re going to offer
- Decide on How Much You Will Be Charging
How much you consider charging for your services will rely on your skill set, knowledge, as well as the type of services you choose to offer.
Whether you’re somebody who has a lot of managerial expertise or served as an intern, you shouldn’t be scared to press for a better salary per hour.
Nevertheless, if you’re fresh to becoming an assistant and are hoping to build up your portfolio and skillset, you may also need to begin at the low end of the scale to attract more clients and gain more experience.
Something to bear in mind when setting your rates includes:
- You’ll, therefore, need pay self-employment tax, so make sure that whatever you start charging covers for that;
- By being a virtual assistant you’ll also build up other expenditures, such as web hosting, software subscription services, and office expenses – so make sure you’ve got those in mind when making a decision how much to charge;
- There are no benefits, finally. No paid vacation, no sick days, no health insurance, no pension contributions. If anything goes wrong, you’re going to need to cover it out of your purse.
It’s important to consider this when attempting to set your rates. No matter how much of a beginner you are, make sure you don’t end up in debt because you’re massively overburdening your clients.
The way around this would be to think about how much you would earn if you’d do the very same job in an office – then add 25% to cover those costs. It’s no joke that freelancers sometimes earn better than employees — when you think of how much money they tend to take into account.
- Build Presence Online
As a virtual assistant, you’re going to provide an online experience – and the clients need to be convinced that you’re fantastic at this. This ensures that you need a good online presence. To become noticeable to your clients, and to get their attention.
How else will your clients know what you’re doing if you don’t market yourself?
If you want prospective customers to learn about your services, you’ll need a website or maybe even a blog post (see How to Create a Blog for suggestions about how to set things off). That, of course, would focus on the sort of services you want to deliver. However, having an online presence is the key to anyone looking to build a profitable virtual assistant business.
- Start Scouting for Your First Gig
Searching for the first gig is thrilling – and, honestly, very overwhelming. It might feel like looking directly across a barren desert.
The truth is, you’ve got to expect a few ‘no, thank you’ along the way. Or to be ignored by prospective clients now and then. Truth is, each freelancer has been through that. The most crucial part is to be consistent – not to take it too personally and seriously.
- Learn From Experts; You are not alone
After you’ve whittled down your focus and grasped how much you’d need to start charging for your services to make it worthwhile, it’s time to have some inspiration from the pros. there are many people out there who turn this into a highly profitable career and make thousands of dollars monthly.
Are you just trying to make this a side-hustle? That’s pretty sweet, too. Side hustles are could help you achieve financial freedom at the age of 30, so you should get excited about the opportunity!
You can find out all about launching a lucrative side hustle. It is recommended that you take a course to know and understand more about the ins and outs of continuing to work as a VA, so you know precisely what it entails.
What skills do you need?
Although the skill sets and service you are offering as a virtual assistant differ a great deal, some skills needed will indeed make the role easier (and probably more enjoyable). I’m talking about things like this:
- Interpersonal skills
- Good knowledge and understanding of all-things-internet
- Organizational skills
- Communication skills
As a virtual assistant, you’re likely to communicate digitally with various individuals, so it’s pretty crucial to be able to determine the perfect approach to each individual. When it comes to management skills, being able to organize your time and set priorities is another one of those transferable work skills which will help you in any job – but that’s extremely significant if you’re a VA. In short, you are likely to have a long variety of suggested tasks dumped on you every week – so organization is essential.
Or, if you don’t understand how to do the stuff, you should know how to practice it (hint: YouTube).
The majority of the skills will be learned at work and incorporated into the portfolio and CV when you move.
So, there you go. Not only is becoming a virtual assistant a versatile way to earn extra money during a pandemic without leaving the safety of your house, however, if you’re willing to put in the work and do your very best, but it can also become a rewarding career that you can undertake from anywhere in the world!
