Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Monthly Archives: August 2009

Seeking a VA to support you?

A recent comment on an older post here has sparked this post.

The post related to VAs undercharging their work and a comment was made that it was thought VAs assumed they (the industry this person represented) was making a lot of money and could charge a lot higher.

I want to say VAs don’t work their rates according to what they think the client might pay. They do work their rates according to their own skills and abilities, cost of living and running a business and what is seen as a fair rate in the industry in their particular area.

Yes, I’ve had prospective clients who have called me and wanted to know how much I charge and then say they couldn’t afford me and hang up.  I’m really sorry if that’s the case but I can’t change my rates or drop them to try and carry someone else’s business.

I’ve been in business for over 15 years and have had few rate rises in those years but when I have, it’s been important to do so.  I provide a range of services from word-processing, to database management, website maintenance, setting up of blogs, even advising clients about social networking tools.  I simply cannot afford to charge a very low rate for these services. They take time and often the client is paying for my expertise – not just my time.

The commenter also made reference to retainers and having to pay upfront before any work had been carried out.  I see this as a legitimate concern and understand why that can be. Unfortunately many VAs have carried out work for new clients and been left without payment too – it kind of works both ways. There has to be an element of trust that the work will be carried out and the work will be paid for.

On my own part, the only time I’ve worked on retainer is for not-for-profit associations where I’ve been on 12 month contracts and this helped me to know I had a certain income each month during the time I was doing that work.  I managed associations for 10 years in my business and really enjoyed the work.  However, I’ve never put any of my other clients on retainer and have always invoiced them at the end of each month, expecting payment within 7 days – some clients don’t honour that and although they do pay it does disappoint me that they can’t hold up their end of the bargain and pay me on time if the work is delivered on time.  But that’s the nature of business everywhere and does not happen only in the VA industry.

If you’re a prospective client looking for a VA then do your due diligence and place requests with reputable VA networks who provide a form that goes out to their team members. That way you’ll get several responses and won’t have to keep contacting people to find the right VA – they’ll contact you instead.  Or if you know others who have VAs they’re happy with, then seek to be referred to them because you know that VA is already ‘proven’.

Social networking – good or bad?

We’ve recently had a very interesting discussion on the VA forum about the use of photos on websites and that then grew into a discussion on social networking.  Is SN good or bad? Is it necessary or time wasting?  Does it work?

And then recently on LinkedIn a question relating to the same thing was asked and I thought I’d share with you my response there and some of my response at the VA forum.

“Spam is probably the ‘worst’ part about it.  Geez people/spammers, get a life!  But apart from that I love the social side of connecting with people and learning about them.  I love meeting people that I might not have met during the normal course of my business day.

“Social networking takes me out of my office and into the world beyond literally.  I can tell you that I’ve been given opportunities I never would have had, if I hadn’t taken up social networking and it alone was responsible for my being asked to speak at a conference last June in Niagara Falls – I live in Australia.  So I’m a real advocate for social networking.

“I currently use Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin as my main tools which are added to existing tools of blogging, discussion forums, attending local networking events close to home and so on.”

Most of you know I spoke at the Forum on Virtual Assistance (FoVA) in June but might not realise that it came about because of a webinar I was giving last year on Linkedin for VAs to a US/Canadian audience.  They knew about me because of my involvement with forums and different networking tools like Linkedin.

Below is a partial copy of my response at the discussion on the VA forum:

“Many of us choose to use the new tools as they become available because we need to keep ahead of our clients.  I know that my own clients were the ones that drove me towards blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. I’ve tried several others too but decided that they weren’t worth pursuing. And my clients expect me to tell them about these tools and how to use them and what they could mean to their businesses.  It’s been through client demand that my own service provision has become what it is today.

“So, for those of us who want to use the Social networking tools, it’s a great fit! That doesn’t mean everyone has to or should.  It’s not about ‘having a case’ because it’s not about ‘for or against’.  It’s about what’s out there and what’s available and if people want to use those tools, then they can go ahead and do so.”

So, what do you think?  Good or bad?  Do you use Social Networking or don’t you and would you like to share why?

What is a Virtual Assistant?

Interesting question.

10 years ago I would have told you it’s a virtual secretary, someone who had left the corporate world and was now working at home and providing secretarial services virtually.

However, as with most things, the industry has evolved and today Virtual Assistants provide many different services, depending on their particular skillset.  So it’s easy to see how people can get confused and wonder what a Virtual Assistant is?

On the front of my website I have this explanation:

We are like a PA only virtual – we operate from our office, not yours, providing virtual admin and secretarial support. VAs provide a wide range of support.

Here in Australia, a PA or Personal Assistant is like a Personal Secretary from older days – she/he supported the boss in every way possible in the office, but did not necessarily run personal errands as I know PAs have done in some other countries.  They were a personal or private secretary, usually supporting one person in the office or sometimes more.

That’s my background.  I was an EA (Executive Assistant) or PA for most of my corporate working life so I came into working at home with that mindset.

Today, though, if you have good office based/computer skills then you could be providing VA services to many clients without actually performing secretarial type work.

Wikipedia has its own description.

Whatever type of work you are providing it is important to remember that you are providing a personal service to your client base and they will become dependent on you for those particular things.  Each client should be treated ‘special’, like the boss was back in the corporate world.  Each should feel they have your undivided attention at the time you are providing their support needs.

It is equally important for clients to remember that VAs or Virtual Assistants are not employees but rather service providers and are therefore, individual business owners.  They might belong to VA networks where it will be easy for clients to find them, but they are all individual business owner/operators and usually liaise with the client direct and bill them direct as well.

Can a Virtual Assistant make a good income?

On the weekend just gone there was an article published in a couple of major Australian newspapers in the My Career section about our industry and based on an interview I had with the journalist.

A comment was made on one of the forums I moderate that ‘it will take a long time and hard work to make money, if any at all’ and I want to address that comment here.

I agree that to establish a good VA business (or any business for that matter) it takes a lot of hard work and it does take time – the length of time really depends on that person and what they do to generate business.  But I disagree that you won’t make any money unless you do nothing to get your business going. Nothing was ever said about ‘big money’ in the article but did give some idea of what clients might expect to pay for services here in Australia.

I’ve been in business for over 15 years and know many, many VAs who have also been in business for many years. I doubt very much they would continue with that business unless it was generating some kind of income.  I know VAs who have bought houses and are paying mortgages, some whose husbands have left jobs and joined them in their home offices to work,  some who have husbands who are ‘retired from a fulltime job and working part-time’, others who have been able to put their children into the schools they wanted because of the income they are generating from their home based businesses.

When people leave the corporate world to work from home two things are affected relating to the need for income:

1.  They no longer have the same set of expenses incurred in going to a job such as travel, clothes for their ‘job’, meals to pay for while away from home, long childcare hours to be paid for, wear and tear on their vehicles and the list goes on.

2.  They will be earning a lesser income until their business has been built up but they won’t have to distribute their income to those items listed above.  Therefore the amount of income they need will change. And often they can work around the hours that their children are home with them therefore being available to their families when needed.

I found in my first year of business I worked while my children were at school and didn’t get a lot of work done while they were home and not in bed.  There were often times I worked very late hours to get work completed.  My marketing mainly consisted of networking – meeting people face to face at networking events and as the internet grew and changed I began networking online as well.  I did try flyers in letterboxes but gave that away as not effective.  I do advertise in the Yellow Pages and that has been worthwhile. I also advertise online and you may have found this article as a result of that advertising. Not all of my marketing efforts have required money to be paid but it has definitely required my time and my willingness to share my expertise and knowledge to help others.

Today I earn a fulltime income and have done so since the end of the first year of my business.  However, I no longer work 7 days a week as I did when first establishing my business thanks to the guidance of my business coach and the years spent in developing this business.  Not all VAs have that experience and it may take 2-3 years to build up a fulltime income – if that’s what a VA is seeking. However, not all VAs want that because of their circumstances and some are happy just to be working 5, 10 or even 15 hours a week.  Do the sums and work out what your needs are financially and what time commitment you can make and you will find that the time and effort is very much worth it.

Help is in good hands

That’s the title in today’s My Career page 3 article about the Virtual Assistant industry.  I was called by the journalist about 3 weeks ago and interviewed about the industry here in Australia.

We talked about various influences on the industry and how Tim Ferriss helped highlight the industry to the public at large, particularly those who wanted to travel and still maintain their businesses.

It also covered the different type of virtual assistants globally and looked at forums here in Australia and overseas.

If you buy today’s The Age (Melbourne) or Sydney’s Morning Herald you’ll find the article inside the MyCareer pullout.

Let me add that working from home is not a bed of roses, nor does it provide a quick way of earning an income. Unless you have the relevant skills and equipment you will find it hard to get started.  But good skills will definitely get you on the road to developing a worthwhile VA business that will, over time, provide you with a good income – it takes time to build up a client base and will not happen overnight, or even in a month or two.  Hard work and perseverance will pay off.  And joining VA networks to learn from your peers will help considerably too.

I do need to correct one error in the article below:

I do moderate two virtual assistant forums (one Aussie based and one US based) but neither have anything to do with the Virtual Assistant group which was mentioned and has 10,000 members. That’s a separate group again of which I am a member. It’s a Canadian based group.  Unfortunately that information got mixed up in the article.

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