How To Become A Virtual Assistant With No Experience

If you’re looking to work from home and make money online, there are plenty of amazing opportunities to keep in mind.

The simple idea of being a virtual assistant can make a huge difference, and it has the potential to help more than you imagine. In fact, many people make 4 figures per month just by working from home and serving their customers online.

There are great virtual assistant jobs for beginners and experts too, and the market is thriving. So if you really want to earn money without experience in a certain field, it’s a good idea to tackle the virtual assistant world.

What is a Virtual Assistant and What Do They Do?

Millions of business owners out there have a ton of work and are super busy all the time. They don’t have the time to tackle smaller tasks independently, so they need someone to assist them as much as possible. That’s where the virtual assistant comes into play.

A virtual assistant’s role is to help someone with their tasks and help them save both time and money.

The great thing about learning how to become a virtual assistant is that you can easily provide various services. You can stick to a specific type of service, or you can offer dozens of services literally if you want. That being said, every virtual assistant job for beginners will differ.

Even if you have no experience, you can still provide virtual assistant tasks like customer support, processing orders and refunds for an online store, content research, data entry, email management, project management, social media management, community moderation, transcription, proofreading, and editing, calendar management, editing, and many others.

However, as you offer these services and make money, you can start investing in other services, which will help you with your education and learn new things. That’s what you want to do to become a virtual assistant and grow your business.

You need to start with simple services you can offer without any experience. Then, as you make money, you can study and improve services or offer new ones. It’s the right way to expand your reach, bring in more clients, and evolve in the long term. It’s exactly the right approach, and it will be well worth the effort every time.

Should you offer a single service or multiple ones at first?

When you’re a beginner, you first want to check the virtual assistant jobs for beginners on the job boards and see their requirements. Sometimes the job requirements are simple, and you can tackle them. Other times it might not be as simple to do. There are different situations that you need to keep in mind here, as you can imagine. 

However, if you’re new to this field, you can’t overload yourself with too many service offerings.

Try to show that you can deliver value and quality on a single service or just a few of them. Once you feel that you mastered them, adding new services to the mix will be well worth adding. That’s what makes the most sense, and it will surely offer you a degree of growth and value unlike anything else on the market. 

What skills do you need for virtual assistant jobs?

Thinking about going for training for virtual assistant remote jobs?

Not a necessary one.

Think about skills you can develop yourself without much effort.

Keep in mind that we are not talking about business or professional skills. Instead, we are focused on quintessential life skills that can make a huge difference.

For example, if you want to become a virtual assistant, the excellent idea is to have organizational skills. The persons hiring you expect organization and quality services. If you’re not that organized, you must deal with that because a virtual assistant is expected to have excellent organizational skills.

A good virtual assistant will also have excellent communication skills. You need to talk with the customer, understand their needs and also improve or adapt as needed. Staying in touch with your customer will help a lot, and it shows that you value their time and order. In the end, you will have better results if you are an expert communicator.

Interpersonal skills also matter because you connect with the customer and always ensure he receives the best value and experience.

Lastly, it would be best to have a good understanding of everything related to the internet, such as research, how to use applications online, etc.

Having this kind of knowledge will assure customers that you have what it takes to complete their tasks most of the time.

As you can see, learning how to be a virtual assistant is not that complicated. You start by acquiring or accessing these skills and implementing them properly.

That doesn’t mean it will be a simple thing to do, but it will certainly offer you the results and experience you want.

How Much Do Virtual Assistants Make?

As you can imagine, different things will define how much a virtual assistant makes every month. The hourly pay, the amount of time you work every month, and the overall experience you have, and the services you provide will matter a lot.

Based on information from Payscale, the average virtual assistant hourly pay in the US for a virtual assistant is $15.70. However, some are making upwards of $28 per hour. 

On average, that means a salary of anywhere from $32000 to $57000. But since virtual assistant jobs are mostly remote, professionals tend to pick their own price point. So you will find situations with virtual assistants making $60000+ or more. Yet there are also those with a lower price point that make less than $30000.

The benefit here is that you get to set your own price. That’s the thing that really matters, to set your own price and value your work accordingly. If you’re undervaluing yourself and your services, then that can be a challenge, so you have to address the problem accordingly. 

Since we are talking about a virtual assistant without a lot of experience, you can expect to be on the lower scale of that in the beginning.

Yet as you learn new skills and acquire more expertise, you can become one of the top virtual assistants and increase your prices. This is a field where you need a lot of patience. It’s not going to offer an extraordinary amount of money from the start, but you can make quite a lot as you improve your skills. 

How to start a home-based Virtual Assistant business?

Learning how to become a virtual assistant is not that complicated. In fact, you can easily establish a virtual assistant business with ease if you know what steps to follow. Here’s exactly what you want to do in order to create a stellar virtual assistant business!

1. The first thing you want to do is to select a business name. Even if you are a virtual assistant working from home, you do need to establish a business. The good idea is to choose a name for your business and then find an adjacent domain with that name. Buying a website for that business will help with your exposure, so that’s something to keep in mind.
2. Once you do that, you want to handle the legal side of the VA business. That means making sure you register your business, select the business structure and then see how you can pay your taxes. All these things might seem secondary, but they are essential. That’s why you want to handle them in the beginning, to be safe.
3. Identify what type of virtual assistant services you want to offer. Remember that you can provide a variety of different services or stick to a single one. The trick here is to identify a couple of VA services and specialize in certain niches. For example, if you’re a writer, you can focus on real estate or finance writing. You are bound to set higher prices and be more competitive when compared to a general writer.
4. Get the right equipment. Thankfully, if you want to become a virtual assistant, all you need is a computer and a good internet connection. Depending on the services you provide, you may need certain software, but this is usually an inexpensive type of service you can offer online. 
5. After you have everything ready, it’s important to figure out what prices you want to ask for your services. You can study the market and see the current prices for both the low and higher-end services. A good rule of thumb is to start with the lower-end price points. This will help you get the ball rolling and accumulate reviews and testimonials. Then you can up the price accordingly as you grow and also improve your skills adequately. 

Now that you have all the specifics in place, your primary focus is to find the right virtual assistant jobs. In the next section, you can see where you are able to find virtual assistant jobs and how you can complete them properly. 

Where to Find Virtual Assistant Jobs?

One of the best things you can do when you want to find a virtual assistant job for beginners is to visit Google and browse the first search results. These will give you a good insight into local virtual assistant jobs that you can focus on right from the start. However, you will notice that you don’t have many local jobs in some cases, at least not shown on the first page. Thankfully, there are many other options for beginners. 

Freelancing websites

A good place to find virtual assistant jobs is on freelancing websites. Many businesses come here and try to outsource their work, so it makes sense to browse websites like Freelancer, People Per Hour, or Fiverr. Fiverr is a great option because you create an ad, share your expertise, and you can wait for orders. In the case of most freelancing websites, you need to bid on projects, which may or may not give you access to the job you always wanted.

Social media

Websites like LinkedIn are where you can find lots of amazing virtual assistant jobs. Some businesses don’t bother with freelancing websites because they had awful experience. So it makes a lot of sense to browse LinkedIn for virtual assistant jobs and see which ones suit your needs. Ideally, you want to start with the virtual assistant jobs for beginners and then go for the more challenging tasks based on the situation. 

Virtual Vocations

Virtual Vocations is a great website for those that want to find a lot of virtual assistant jobs. They add a ton of new jobs every day, and the great thing about this site is that it’s mostly for virtual assistants. There are some other jobs here and there, but overall you can get a lot of amazing jobs here, and that’s what matters the most. Plus, the fact that they are constantly updated means you can have access to new jobs all the time. There’s not as much competition when compared to other websites, so it makes a lot of sense to check it out for yourself.

FlexJobs

FlexJobs is a great job marketplace, especially when it comes to remote jobs. You can easily find virtual assistant jobs for beginners and experts alike. On top of that, you will like the fact that they have a lot of filters. So you can easily specialize in a virtual assistant niche and find the type of job you are interested in. One thing to note here is that they have a membership system, but it’s still a good option even if you create a free account.

Which are the most sought-after virtual assistant jobs?

• Customer service jobs are by far the most appealing for a virtual assistant without experience. That’s because you get pretty much all the information you need from the business itself. It will help a lot to start with this because it’s a task that won’t always keep you working, and you can serve multiple businesses simultaneously, which is very important to keep in mind.
• Administrative support jobs are also prevalent for virtual assistants. These include managing files, preparing presentations, setting up spreadsheets, performing data entry, monitoring voicemails, creating reports, managing the calendar, booking appointments, and many others. 
• Social media management is another great pick for virtual assistants. The reason is simple, working on social media management involves often posting, interacting with customers, and anything similar. It’s a pretty simple thing to do, and you will find it very rewarding from a financial standpoint. That’s why we recommend you give it a try for yourself since it’s easy to get into and the results can be great.
• Blog management is also widespread. It’s similar to social media, but the virtual assistant must manage a blog in this case. Why do people want this type of work? Because they lack the time needed to manage their own blog. Either that or they want someone else to do this for them. It helps a lot, and it does bring in a variety of creative ideas. It really is a great opportunity for you since there’s no specific skill required here.
• Content creation is also highly sought after. Content is king in the online world, and businesses always need blog posts, video creation, and so on. The idea is to specialize in creating a variety of content types. It would be best to specialize in things like editing, keyword research, making all posts SEO-friendly, infographic creation, topic research, and many others. That alone can be well worth the effort every time. 
• Email and phone call management. You might not think people outsource these tasks, but they do. Business professionals are very busy, so they will hire a virtual assistant to manage phone calls, emails, and calendars. Having a VA can be very helpful for them, and you get to work from home and manage all those tasks for your client. Everyone wins, and that’s the crucial thing in the end. 
• Data management is crucial for many businesses. As you can imagine, many business owners don’t like the idea of creating databases and managing them. It’s very time-consuming and challenging. This is why you should offer such a service. Yes, it will eat up time on your side, but you get to charge for it and earn quite a good income.

Tips to help you become the best virtual assistant

1. Always focus on improving your skills. Even if you start to take virtual assistant jobs without experience, you need to invest in yourself first. Sure, that new gadget might sound appealing, but investing in yourself and studying new things will help a lot. This will make it easy for you to diversify your offers and make more money in the long run.
2. Advertise your skills online. You can also check job boards and browse the current offers for remote workers. The truth is that every virtual assistant beginner needs to try and use as many websites as possible. It takes a while until you get to reach a certain reputation, but it will be worth it if you stick to it.
3. Make sure that you deliver your work before deadlines. Your reputation depends on it, so make sure that you deliver only the best work and results. The better the work you offer, the more impressive your results will be. Delivering your work quicker means you can make any revisions faster, which matters a lot for customers.
4. Stay motivated at all times. Being a virtual assistant and working from home can lead to a lot of solitude and not enough social contact. But it would be best if you found ways to stay motivated, such as hobbies or talking with friends and family as often as you can.
5. Work in time blocks. Not only does it allow you to organize everything better, but it will make things more convenient. You get to eliminate constant stress since you have a bit of downtime in between tasks.
6. Rely on software tools. They can help you automate many of your daily tasks. This helps you save both time and money. You should always invest in the appropriate tools based on the services you provide.
7. Stick to certain working hours. When working from home, it can be effortless to overwork yourself, and that’s not ok. The best thing that you can do is to figure out the right schedule and stick to it. If you do that, it will be constructive in the long term. Also, create your own office at home. It would help if you took things seriously, and establishing your own office at home will make things easier. 

Key Takeaways

As you can see, becoming a virtual assistant is a great way for people without experience to make money online. Sure, there’s a lot of competition, but you can find a vast range of virtual assistant jobs for beginners and experts alike. The fact that you can work from home and whenever you see fit does make a huge difference. 

All you have to do is to take your time and identify the services you want to offer and the platforms you want to use. After that, it all comes down to doing a business out of it and staying consistent.

You should also invest in quality software and ensure that your business is fully legal. Not only will it eliminate concerns, but you can be 100% sure that your company will grow and expand properly without any worries. In time, you can outsource your work and hire other people too. Yes, it’s possible to establish a large virtual assistant business in the long term. All you need is to know how to make those first steps in the industry.

Use our tips and ideas, and if you have any questions, drop a comment below!

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