Start a Virtual Assistant Business
Five Steps to Becoming a Virtual Assistant
1. Assess your skills.
There are some skills that any virtual assistant must have in order to manage their workload and handle the most basic virtual assistant tasks. You must be:
- well-organized
- detail oriented
- willing to work hard
- committed to helping others
There are also basic competencies that you should have. These include:
- excellent word processing skills
- familiarity with several different email programs
- excellent writing and communication skills
- basic bookkeeping skills (unless you want to employ your own virtual assistant for bookkeeping and billing)
Do you have specialized skills? If you understand medical terminology or are conversant with legal terms, you can add those to your skill set. Web design and graphics design know-how are also in great demand among those who use virtual assistants. Accounting and bookkeeping skills open a whole segment of the market for virtual assistants. Even unusual and typically un-marketable skills like writing poetry or fiction can open doors for virtual assistants.
2. Research the market.
Now that you’ve evaluated your skills, take some time to do some market research. Do a basic internet search for virtual assistants and read up on the skills and services that are offered. Pay attention to how often you say, “Hey, I could do that!” Be sure to add any of those “I could do that” services to your list of skills.
3. Get more training.
You should never stop learning, but if you’re just starting out and have never run your own business or worked as a personal or office admin assistant before, training could be valuable. There are a number of organizations that offer virtual assistant training and certification. You’ll learn about business ethics, the equipment and skills that you need, and how to advertise your services, as well as how to manage your business and communicate with your clients.
4. Turn your list of skills into a list of services.
Every skill that you listed can generate any number of services. Put together a list of services that you can offer as a virtual assistant and work to polish it into a flyer or web site.
This is also the time to create a business plan for your business. A business plan will help you determine your goals, study your market, flesh out your business offerings and lay out a step by step plan for success. Remember, one of the most potent things you can do to make your dreams into reality is write them down.
5. Market your skills.
The key to turning your skills into a viable business is marketing yourself. It’s not enough to put up a web site, though a web site is an important part of your professional image. You’ll need to scramble for business at first. Create a polished, professional profile that you can post at freelancing job sites like elance.com and guru.com, then start sifting through the proposals. Once you start bidding on jobs and delivering stellar results, you’ll find that your business grows by leaps and bounds.
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