Want to be a WAHM? Why not a Virtual Assistant?
I know a lot of people want to be WAHM or WAHD (work at home mom/dad). Some people just don’t do well in large groups at work, while others want to be able to work and stay home with the kids, and not everyone has the luxury of owning their own business.
Each issue of WAHM we will be targeting a new, respectable and real paying, online job one can get. This issue is Virtual Assistants.
Until recently I had never heard of this, which may surprise some of you. A good friend of mine turned me on to the idea virtual assistance and I decided to look into it. During my course of research, I came across articles such as Starting a Virtual Assistant Business. In this article, they speak about how one woman dropped everything, moved to a farm and became a VA. Since she became a virtual assistant, she was able to buy her house and eventually completely pay it off. She had to make it work since there was no “Plan B.”
A single mother of three, Allen-Parker left her marketing post at a cancer research organization to start her new venture and moved her family from the city to a 25-acre farm in rural Kentucky. “I knew I had to succeed because there was no ‘Plan B,’” says Allen-Parker. Now she serves clients in the United States, Canada and Spain. She specializes in what she knows best-marketing. Her farmhouse is paid in full, completely financed through her work as a virtual assistant.
That article also outlines some tips on creating your own VA business, something I was told I’d be very good at. In the meantime, I’m attempting to expand PJMOMMY into the Web2.0 as a full fledged business, hence the paid posts, to support the complete overhaul and expansion.
There are tons of resources for Virtual Assistants. When I began to write this article, I simply popped over to Google and typed in the search term Virtual Assistants, and the results were staggering.
EWorkingWomen also offered a ton of information on being a virtual assistant.
Q: What is Virtual Assistance?
A: Virtual Assistance is a fairly new administrative profession. The professionals are called Virtual Assistants, or VAs. VAs are micro business owners who provide administrative and personal support while working in long-term collaborative relationships with only a handful of terrific clients. Using phone, fax and email, VAs support their clients without having to ever step foot inside the clients’ offices.
You set your own rates according to your experience, and if you have offline receptionist work, you can place that on your resume. However, some online VA’s offer 24/7 support and work 14-18 hour days, dependent upon the niche they target, so make sure you target the proper niche or niches you are most interested in.
There are tons of schools and places to learn and become VA.
Intelligent Office
Virtual Assistance U
I don’t think that it’s a luxury having your own business
It’s hard work – on and off hours beyond sleeping time.
It is very hard work however as I build it I see that it definitely is paying off.
[...] Harris presents WAHM Issue 1 posted at Pajama [...]
[...] Harris presents WAHM Issue 1 posted at Pajama [...]
Running your own business is a lot of ‘hard’ work – You have to find your clients and then do the work – maintain the office and grow it and not to forget taxes…In the initial phase it is a lot of long days (and nights)
Becoming a virtual assistant is really a great option – You can use your current skills and start off your business at a low cost.