Introduction to Virtual Assistant Work
I’m just about to reveal how you can make a decent amount of money working as a virtual assistant so let’s give it a try and I’m gonna cut right to the chase take a look at this if you search for a virtual assistant on Fiverr or any other freelancing website you will find a bunch of options. I mean Fiverr alone displays over 34,000 different services available in multiple different languages. Some of these Freelancers are charging as low as five dollars for their services, while others are charging significantly more. It all depends on their skill set, their degree of previous experience, and what kind of service they can offer.
What Virtual Assistants Do
Now generally speaking, working as a virtual assistant is not necessarily the most profitable side hustle ever. Here’s what you would have to do: we’re talking about data entry services such as structuring data, doing a little bit of research, data collection, extracting contact details, doing all sorts of admin work. That’s your responsibility as a virtual assistant. You’re just helping a business or helping an individual with your admin work, thus saving them a lot of time.
Specific Responsibilities of a Virtual Assistant
Let me be a little bit more precise when it comes to the responsibilities you will have as a virtual assistant. We’re talking about responding to emails and phone calls, scheduling meetings, booking travel and accommodations. Again, these are things that would take people a lot of time to complete: managing a contact list, preparing customer spreadsheets, and keeping online records or doing a little bit of market research and collecting information, creating presentations, organizing calendars, and the list goes on. The more tasks you can complete, the more money you can charge for your service.
Getting Your First Client
Ideally, you want to deal with everything. You want to make your client’s life as easy as possible by trading in a little bit of your time. Now, you can either trade this as a side hustle or even a full-time job. But now as you might expect, getting your very first client is the most difficult part because you don’t have a portfolio of previous work, you don’t have any testimonials or previous experience, so you’re brand new to this process and you don’t have any credibility.
Challenges on Platforms like Fiverr
That’s why I’m going to help you out with this. Now, of course, you can set up a gig on Fiverr, but as you can see, there are 35,000 different other sellers, so your chances of landing a client here are close to zero. I won’t lie about that—it is pretty difficult to get things started. That’s why you may want to consider connecting to a platform that does some sort of crowdsourcing.
Connecting with Platforms for Virtual Assistant Work
In other words, you can connect to billasolutions.com and work for them. You will find the clients and basically work as a middleman. They will put you in contact with your clients, you do the work and get paid for it. As simple as that. They do provide all kinds of different services from virtual assistants to accounting, social media management, and website services as well.
Other Platforms to Find Virtual Assistant Jobs
What you want to do is head over to the job section at billasolutions.com/jobs and this is where you can see the current job openings. You can simply choose the category that you’re interested in and go for that. They are accepting applications now, but they are looking for people based in the US.
Opportunities with Fancy Hands
However, if you happen to live outside the United States, billing.com is not the ideal website for you. Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a few other options. If you are lucky enough to live in the US, all you need to do is fill out this information and then submit your application and you’re good to go. Alternatively, you can connect to fancyhands.com.
Requirements and Payouts for Fancy Hands Jobs
I want you to switch over to the job section right away, and this is where you can apply for the assistant position. What I really like about fancy hands is that they are very transparent about the process. Once you qualify for the virtual assistant job here, here is your work: making phone calls on behalf of people, scheduling appointments, tracking down the best price for something, finding hotels that miss certain criteria, data entry jobs, and more phone calls.
PeoplePerHour as Another Option
Now, in order to accomplish that, you will need to have a specific skill set. For instance, you need very strong written communication skills. You’re going to talk to people, you need a computer, and a reliable internet connection, but chances are you do have those. Knowledge of different fields is appreciated, and you should want to take on more responsibility and try new things when it comes to the payout.
Other Freelancing Sites for Virtual Assistants
To start, the tasks are worth anywhere between three and four dollars and go up from there. Those will be issued on a weekly basis and you can define your own hours, which means that this is not necessarily a full-time job. We want people around 24 hours a day, so if you’ve got time at 4 a.m., that’s great. If you want to work nine to five, that’s perfect. It’s all up to you.
Expanding Your Reach on Multiple Platforms
But once again, fancy hands is looking to build a team of virtual assistants from the United States, so if you’re not U.S.-based, this is not going to be too suitable either. That brings me to the third option, which is peopleperhour.com. Now virtual assistance is not the only service you can provide here.
Reaching Out to Businesses Directly
If you happen to have other skills such as video editing, digital marketing, design, whatever that is, you can set up a gig just like you do on Fiverr and wait for people to find your services, or you can even apply for jobs. The competition here is definitely not as furious as it is on Fiverr, but it is still considerable.
Connecting with Microtasking Websites
I would recommend connecting to every single freelancing website—Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, Upwork, Freelancer. As a matter of fact, if you look up more Fiverr alternatives, you will find a bunch of them. So there is no shortage of websites to connect to, and that’s how you get in front of more people.
Microtasking Websites and Gig Platforms
That’s how you increase your chances of getting hired sooner or later. But now, guys, here is a whole different approach. Instead of setting up a gig on people per hour and waiting for people to find you, what you can do is actually reach out to them yourself.
Setting Up Your Own Virtual Assistant Agency
Now remember, most of the time it will be businesses that will hire a virtual assistant just because they don’t have time to deal with admin work. So you can simply find your contact on Google Maps and reach out to them yourself by promoting your services and letting them know exactly what you can help them with.
Crowdsourcing Platforms for Simple Tasks
A different approach would be connecting to micro tasking websites. Now, you’re not necessarily working as a virtual assistant anymore. You’re just completing easy tasks, but the payout is very similar. Remotasks.com would be a great example of that. Likewise, microworkers is a great place to go.
Amazon Mechanical Turk for Microtasks
These are places where you can find very simple data entry jobs or data research jobs that you can complete within minutes and get paid for your services. We are also talking about sprout gigs over at sproutgigs.com.
Exploring Drop Servicing
If you switch over to the freelance and earn section, you will understand precisely how it works. By the way, these are people from all around the world that are making decent amounts of money.
The Drop Servicing Business Model
Now, let’s take it one step further. You see, instead of working as a virtual assistant yourself either by setting up a gig on a freelancing website, connecting to one of these microtasking sites, or by reaching out to people yourself using their email, what you can do is set up your virtual assistance agency.
Virtual Assistant Income Potential
We’re talking about drop servicing now. Let me explain how that works. This is very similar to dropshipping in a sense. Instead of you doing the actual work, you will also receive everything to a freelancer, so you’re just working as a middleman and keeping a cut of the money.
Final Thoughts on Virtual Assistant Work
Just by connecting the freelancer to the client, here’s a very basic example: you’ve just set up a gig on Fiverr, it’s doing pretty well, it’s getting reviews, you’re getting orders. Instead of you trading in your time for money, what you can do is stick your client’s cash, go over to a different freelancer on a different freelancing website, if you want to, and pay them for your service.
Earning Potential as a Virtual Assistant
As time passes and you scale up, you can hire multiple virtual assistants and have them all work for you simultaneously. They get deals, you get a cut, so everybody is getting something out of the deal. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
