How To Become a Virtual Assistant With No Experience

Start a Virtual Assistant Business From Home

Are you looking to become a virtual assistant with no experience to start making money from the comfort of your home?

Thanks to the internet, it is now possible to find work from home jobs that can grow into a lucrative online business.

If you are looking for a legitimate work from home opportunity and have an interest in learning and doing a variety of administrative tasks, then becoming a virtual assistant could be right for you even without any experience.

The demand for virtual assistants is increasing at a rapid rate. You can define your own working hours, chose which clients you want to work with, and earn a decent income.

But how do you get started as a virtual assistant? Read on to learn everything you need to know about how to become a virtual assistant with no experience or with experience.

Other work from home jobs you may also be interested in may include paid online focus groups, online transcription jobs, or scopist training to name a few. You could even do surveys that pay through PayPal for some quick cash.

This post may contain affiliate links.

What Is A Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant (VA) is an individual who offers support services to bloggers, companies, businesses, and entrepreneurs from a remote location. With virtual assistants on their side, businesses can benefit by focusing on the most important aspects of running their business while leaving some routine and administrative tasks in the hands of their online assistants.

The internet makes it possible to work from home using cloud-based services and offer services such as social media management, content creation, web services, etc. to organizations without being physically present at their offices.

Virtual Assistants: What They Do

A virtual assistant is actually just anyone who can help with various administrative tasks from their own location at home or anywhere in the world.

This means, you work self-employed or as a contractor offering services to clients on a daily basis. These services could include: content creation, social media management, email management, web development, graphic design, bookkeeping… and the list goes on!

Every virtual assistant provides different services that businesses need. Consider what you are skilled at and what you are passionate about. Then try to customize these based on your preferences.

When you are just getting started, it is very important to focus on a niche and offer the service to a specific industry. That way, you’ll become an authority in your niche and get paid more for each job you undertake as that specialist.

If you’re stuck on what services you can do as a virtual assistant, grab this list of 150+ services you can offer.

Main Types of Virtual Assistants:

Social Media Virtual Assistant

This suits those who are familiar with brand awareness and understand various social media networks such as Pinterest and Facebook as well as automation tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Tailwind. You may also be required to create content topics and manage published content.

Many social media specialists are now focusing on only one social platform. For example, one may chose to become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant.

Blog Management Virtual Assistant

This is a good fit for you if you can help with creating and publishing blog content, responding to user emails and comments, incorporating graphs and affiliate links, optimizing content, and more.

General Virtual Assistant

Small businesses and entrepreneurs are often in need of an assistant who can perform a variety of tasks for them. They might not have an in-office secretary or receptionist who works 9 to 5. However, they might need someone to help them complete more tasks on a daily basis – and that could be you!

The list of virtual assistant services is virtually endless. Just think about what you can offer and take inspiration from that.

Requirements to Become a Virtual Assistant

The good news is that there are no set requirements to become a virtual assistant. Every VA job opportunity you come across might have different requirements. Some businesses might want experience, while others will hire virtual assistants without any experience.

However, there are certain skills you need to succeed as a virtual assistant. These include good communication skills, good organization, creativity, reliability, and commitment to do your work well and on time.

You must also be able to work alone without asking a lot of questions so you don’t end up creating more work for your clients than you are already taking off their workload.

How Much Can You Make as a Virtual Assistant?

As with any other job, the amount of money you can earn as a VA will depend on your skills, experience, and area of expertise. However, the average virtual assistant earns around $35 to $50 per hour.

As a virtual assistant, you’ll be able to determine your hourly rate, which is appealing for a lot of people looking to make a decent income.

How to Start a Successful Virtual Assistant Business

Once you have chosen your specialty niche, you could then start your business. Here are simple steps to help you successfully start a virtual assistant business.

1. Focus on your service

As we’ve already mentioned, the list of services you can offer as a VA is not exhaustive. You can do virtually everything from social media, bookkeeping, marketing, emailing, writing, blogging and more. Focus on your skills and try to learn as much as you can. Choose the service that suits you best.

2. Build a Website

No one will know about your services until you spread the word. Since you work online, you’ll need a blog or website that showcases your skills and offers you an opportunity to get clients. It’s easy to start a blog if you follow a step-by-step tutorial.

3. Build a Strong Social Media Presence

You also need to build a strong social media presence so you can be contacted by potential clients. Use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube to get the word out and attract clients. Know where your prospective clients are and focus on one or two social media channels. Be an expert in your niche and follow potential clients to show them you are familiar with their business needs.

4. Get Virtual Assistant Training

With so many services for virtual assistants to choose from, it can be challenging to determine which option to choose. And this doesn’t even include all the other elements involved, including how to find and retain clients, the legal issues involved and generally how to create a successful home-based virtual assistant business so you can make the most money possible!

Luckily, Gina Horkey has created a great virtual assistant training course to help you every step of the way. The 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success course offers all the aspects listed above and much more!

You will also be able to read success stories from many of her former students discussing their experiences and success after taking the virtual assistant course online.

5. Network

Discover other virtual assistants in your area of expertise; support each other and share ideas with them. Learn from one another by sharing your skills or challenges with them so you can grow together in your field. A good way to do this is to subscribe to various online groups or forums where people discuss new ideas, problems, and solutions in your field.

If you’re already getting Gina’s expert training, you’ll be able to network with other VA’s in the private Facebook group included.

6. Get Quality Customer Feedback

Create happy, satisfied clients to get repeat business. Once you find a new client, work hard to deliver according to their expectations.

A satisfied client is likely to recommend you to many other clients, so be sure to do a good job.

Make sure you ask your clients to leave feedback. Use every positive feedback as testimonials and any criticism you receive to improve your services. This will greatly help you to get more clients.

How to Find VA Jobs

There are many sites that offer virtual assistant jobs, including the following:

• Remote.co
• Upwork
• Indeed
• Time Etc.
• People Per Hour
• Fancy Hands

Most of these websites will advertise virtual assistant jobs. For anyone looking for job offers they are highly recommended if you have little or no experience. This is a good way to start. Then, work on going solo with the help of Gina Horkey and setting up your own virtual assistant business so you could set your own rates to earn a higher income.

Gina Horkey’s Success Story

It was in 2014 when Gina Horkey was desperate for a career change. She was the breadwinner in a family of 4, but wanted to do something she was passionate about. It was in May 2014 when she started her business offering freelance virtual assistant work and freelance writing.

Six months later, she was making $4000 a month on the side, and still working at her full-time job! And she had a toddler and an infant to look after.

Within 8 months, she quit her job to focus on her online business.

Gina now teaches others how to run their own successful virtual assistant business and freelance writing business.

You can read more success stories here.

Final Thoughts On How To Get Started as a Virtual Assistant

Thanks to advances in technology and the internet, you can now become a real digital nomad and make money while working from home or wherever you wish! Cafe in Paris?!

How to become a virtual assistant with no experience and be successful at it, basically entails going through the steps above. Find work from the sites listed while getting some training for the field. Then, you can set your hourly rate higher when you’ve set up your virtual assistant business.

Setting up a virtual assistant business can be challenging, but with some help, can be quite rewarding and something to be proud of accomplishing.

Gina Horkey can help you in every step involved in creating and growing your VA business. Her training course, 30 Days or Less To Virtual Assistant Success is designed to help you throughout the entire process. That way, you’ll build a strong business foundation, identify your field and even find and retain clients.

Lastly, don’t forget to grab the free list of 150+ services you could offer to help inspire you to take action and help you prosper in your virtual business.