Considering Becoming a Virtual Assistant, VA or Work from Home
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@BMarie are you looking for a new career path?
You gave quite a list of things there, it's pretty rare that any one person would be very proficient at all of them - instead you'd need to narrow your focus - but then I'm trying to see how these services aren't already out there.
As @Nic mentioned - you're just an outsourcing person/company at that point.
Am I missing something?
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@johnhooks said:
I don't have any experience with the others, but graphic design is a very hard one to do. I tried some with elance and 99 designs and you will always be low balled by people working for next to nothing, and the designs they will choose are usually pretty bad.
Maybe the issue is trying to get the cheapest bidder
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I have an actual assistant, but she is remote. So does that make her a VA?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
I don't have any experience with the others, but graphic design is a very hard one to do. I tried some with elance and 99 designs and you will always be low balled by people working for next to nothing, and the designs they will choose are usually pretty bad.
Maybe the issue is trying to get the cheapest bidder
Oh ya that's definitely the issue. Well on Elance anyway. 99 designs you can see how much they are going to pay for the finished product, but you have a ton of people submitting designs in the open. Then if they happen to pick you for the final round, it's almost guaranteed they are going to want you to do about 40 revisions and it won't look anything like it did originally. Then after all that, there have been times where they just decide they don't like any of the submissions and don't select anything.
This doesn't even touch on the people that steal your designs and use them other places, or even try to use them in the same contest.
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I'm not doing all those that I listed just something to compare to. I have a few things I can narrow it down to. Just mainly putting my feelers out and getting options.
I can do anything software related, data entry, building websites, etc.
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@BMarie said:
I can do anything software related, data entry, building websites, etc.
Just to be clear, building a website is "web design", it is in no way "virtual assistant." A VA is just a Personal Assistant that is remote. Data entry would qualify, web design would not.
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@BMarie said:
More info: like writing, ghostwriting, graphic design, researching, editing, tutoring, desktop publishing, counseling, audio / video / photo editing, coaching, consulting, bookkeeping, copywriting, social media management, project management, transcription, programming, data entry and anything else you can do without having to be in the same physical location as your client.
I think some source you looked at confused "work from home" with VA. These are unrelated terms. Nothing implies that a VA is at home, nothing makes working at home a VA. I work at home, I'm not a VA. @Minion-Queen works at home, she's not a VA. We both have VAs, though.
These days, people tend to assume a PA will often be remote and VA often refers to software that tries to do the job of a PA (the only thing that makes it virtual, at all.) Kind of like an advanced Siri.
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@scottalanmiller the things I've seen which I've not done to much research. Need to do more when I get home. It is a tad confusing thanks for clarifying that. I'm trying my best to get back out there.
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@BMarie said:
@scottalanmiller the things I've seen which I've not done to much research. Need to do more when I get home. It is a tad confusing thanks for clarifying that. I'm trying my best to get back out there.
If your goal is to be a secretary or PA, then the VA title makes sense. Otherwise, you are looking at specific careers that just may allow work from home. My cousin, for example, is a graphic artist as is my aunt. They both work from home. My aunt was a graphic designer for Xerox for decades, she did loads of their catalogues. But she wasn't a VA, she was just a normal graphic artist.
Nearly all professional fields have work from home and have for a long time. Computers ones only for the last two decades or so, broadly. I've been working from home since the 1990s.
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Every time I've seen VAs mentioned outside of this thread in particular, it's been in Be An Entrepreneur Today-style books like The 4 Hour Work Week etc where the advice is essentially: "Hire a VA who lives in some country where you barely have to pay them anything. They'll keep you on top of things without costing you a lot of money!"
In other words, there's a demand for VAs but I have a feeling a sizeable portion of people specifically looking for them will only be interested in those with dirt-cheap rates.
This isn't insurmountable - for example, many VAs are tasked with social media ghostwriting so their clients look more "connected" than they actually are. If you can do that clearly better than others and people know it, you'll be more attractive to clients who are looking for that skill in particular. Despite that, you will still be compared to people who are willing to do the same job for less money.
Personally, I wouldn't try to go down the VA path myself despite being interested in working from home. It sounds like you have some technical skills that would likely end up being wasted more often than not if you brand yourself as a VA.
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Yeah - Scott is breaking it down - I was trying to understand how a graphics design person or a web developer was a VA... as he said, they aren't. If they are doing those thing from home, they are just VOing (virtual Officing).
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@WingCreative said:
for example, many VAs are tasked with social media ghostwriting so their clients look more "connected" than they actually are. If you can do that clearly better than others and people know it, you'll be more attractive to clients who are looking for that skill in particular. Despite that, you will still be compared to people who are willing to do the same job for less money.
So that's @scottalanmiller secret.
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@WingCreative said:
Every time I've seen VAs mentioned outside of this thread in particular, it's been in Be An Entrepreneur Today-style books like The 4 Hour Work Week etc where the advice is essentially: "Hire a VA who lives in some country where you barely have to pay them anything. They'll keep you on top of things without costing you a lot of money!"
In other words, there's a demand for VAs but I have a feeling a sizeable portion of people specifically looking for them will only be interested in those with dirt-cheap rates.
This isn't insurmountable - for example, many VAs are tasked with social media ghostwriting so their clients look more "connected" than they actually are. If you can do that clearly better than others and people know it, you'll be more attractive to clients who are looking for that skill in particular. Despite that, you will still be compared to people who are willing to do the same job for less money.
Personally, I wouldn't try to go down the VA path myself despite being interested in working from home. It sounds like you have some technical skills that would likely end up being wasted more often than not if you brand yourself as a VA.
This is true, I never call @ataylor14 a VA, she is my PA. It makes zero sense to call her a VA, she's not virtual. The term VA is commonly only used in reference to offshore workers getting paid under minimum wage.
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@Dashrender said:
@WingCreative said:
for example, many VAs are tasked with social media ghostwriting so their clients look more "connected" than they actually are. If you can do that clearly better than others and people know it, you'll be more attractive to clients who are looking for that skill in particular. Despite that, you will still be compared to people who are willing to do the same job for less money.
So that's @scottalanmiller secret.
Yes @ataylor14 is actually writing most of my posts.
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Very good points. Thanks all
