Working from home: finding your niche as a virtual assistant
According to business experts Paul and Sarah Edwards, and a long list of other publications and experts, virtual home assistance is a booming business. Wikipedia defines a virtual assistant as an independent contractor who provides virtual assistance in the form of administrative, technical, and sometimes creative services to clients, typically other independent entrepreneurs, and individual and small business practices, such as that of a lawyer or real estate agent. . Virtual assistants work from their own home office, which is why it has become quite a popular and growing profession. Today there are around 5000-8000 virtual assistants around the world. Common modes of communication and data delivery include the Internet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and fax machine. In other words, it is very similar to an assistant who is telecommuting or telecommuting.
There are many reasons why business owners, especially those who work from a home office or telecommute, are hiring virtual assistants. In a home based business, what do you do when you need help? After all, you can’t do everything when you work from home. You could hire someone as an employee. However, you probably don’t have a place to put them in your home office. Plus, having an employee means needing health insurance coverage, payroll taxes, legal obligations, and not to mention higher utility bills. A virtual assistant will take care of all these problems because virtual assistants are probably working from home too! Some virtual assistants earn up to $38,000 per year working full time. In the world of work, this would be good pay for an administrative assistant or even an executive assistant, especially when you factor in the savings on transportation and childcare.
So what are some successful virtual assistant careers? What jobs exactly do employers need from a virtual assistant? They are: bill payment, data processing and management, transcription services, bookkeeping, proof reading and editing.
Bill Payment
There are two types of bill payment businesses. The first is a virtual personal assistant. In this case, the customer has all invoices mailed to a PO box near you as your virtual personal assistant. Next, you set up a checking account with payment authorization for both the customer and yourself. As invoices are prepared for payment, it notifies the customer how much money to deposit in the account. Then the bills are paid. In addition, if it is available at the customer’s bank, it is possible to use online bill payment services. An accounts payable virtual assistant will provide the same type of service to businesses. A small business will outsource bill payment to you and make sure the customer maintains good credit by paying all their bills on time. Often it is possible to combine accounts payable with accounts receivable. In this situation, the virtual assistant is not only in charge of paying the bills, but also depositing checks into the client’s bank account and sometimes even collecting past due accounts.
Data processing and data management
Various things can be included in data processing and management. The following are some examples where this would be useful. After collecting business cards throughout the month, they are mailed to you as a virtual assistant. It then enters the data into the customer database and returns it as an email attachment. This would also work if your client sent you emails of new leads and you entered the information into a contact database. An insurance agent can fax you the new policyholder information. You would then enter the information into the customer’s database, zip the file, and send the database to the customer as an email attachment. As a virtual assistant, you would also prepare and send a standard confirmation letter to the policyholder. Tracks the policy’s annual expiration date and, on the expiration date, sends a reminder email to the insurance agent. Another possibility is to help a client who is preparing a drop shipping and needs to verify the legitimacy of their database. The database is sent to the virtual assistant via an email attachment. He then calls each name on the phone and checks that the name, spelling, title, and address are correct. Sometimes clients really need you to build a database by researching names and contact information within pre-specified criteria.
transcription services
Transcription is the process of converting voice-recorded reports to text. Many clients can use a virtual assistant for this. An example might be a lawyer sending you a microcassette overnight for you to transcribe. Then he would write the report and send it to the attorney via email. As a virtual assistant transcription service, you can also receive a phone conversation that needs to be recorded and then typed up and sent to everyone involved. A client can dictate letters and memos on cassette, CD or MP3 format and send them to you for writing. Authors sometimes use this type of service to obtain a typewritten copy of their work.
Bookkeeping
Accounting is the record of all financial transactions made by an individual or organization. The organization can be a business, a charity, or even a local sports club. Accounting may be keeping records of what is bought, sold, owed, and owned; what money comes in, what goes out and what remains. Although this position follows the rules of basic accounting, you do not need to be an accountant or have accounting experience. As a virtual assistant bookkeeper, you could be responsible for writing the daily books, which would consist of purchases, sales, receipts, and payments. The bookkeeper is responsible for ensuring that all transactions are recorded in the correct journal, vendor ledger, customer ledger, and general ledger. Typically, a business scans its business documents and uploads them periodically to a secure location or to an online accounting application. This allows the bookkeeper to work remotely with these documents to update the books.
Correction and proofreading
Proofreading traditionally means reading a proof copy of a text to detect and correct any errors. Editing is the process of preparing language, images, or sound for presentation through proofreading, condensing, arranging, and other modifications. These are other sources of income for a virtual assistant. A client might be putting together a marketing brochure or website and needs help with copying. So then I would go through and edit any marketing literature. A client might be a writer and has prepared a manual that needs to be edited. A virtual assistant can format, proofread, edit, and grammar-check documents and then return them to the client via email as an attachment.
Now that you have an idea of what are some popular work from home business opportunities as a virtual assistant, how about a little help? There are work-at-home business opportunity kits available to help you start your own virtual assistant business. Remember, working as a virtual assistant has many other benefits besides earning money from home.
So go ahead and quit your day job sooner than expected! Become that entrepreneur you know you can be! Will it be easy money? No. Will you be able to make a living while taking control of your own future? Yes. Critical information about the Virtual Assistance industry is available to you right now. Spend no more time racking your brain on what to do next, find a work-at-home business guide.