Becoming a VA with your Limited Internet Skills
By Michelle Schoen |
I get a lot of e-mails from women interested in working from home and wondering if they can use some of their existing skills to become a VA. It’s weird because I almost forget what it was like to NOT know what an autoresponder is or NOT understand the Internet sales funnel. But it seems to me that no matter what you may have done in your working life nothing REALLY prepares you for working on the Internet. It is like an entirely different world.
That is why I believe that most EVERYONE starts from scratch when they decide to pursue a career that is mainly based on the Internet. No matter which niche you choose you will still need to learn a ton of new things. I think you have to just decide how quickly you need to make money and if you can afford to take training to add to your limited skills.
Below is an e-mail I got this week from a reader with limited Internet skills who is interested in becoming A VA with a niche in Video creation. I though I would share it.
Dear Michelle,
Thank you for your email and congratulations on your achievements as a specialized VA. I have been thinking about becoming a VA for quite a while, but wondering if I have the skills to do so and each time I
research the field, I felt overwhelmed with all the skills some of the VAs have, specially their administrative & internet experience.I had a successful 25 year career in the Cruise Industry as a Sales Representative, but I am now ready to have a home-based job and stay away from the Corporate World.I also want to be able to work anywhere. Through my previous job, I have learned Word, Excel & specially PowerPoint as I had to create my presentations for Customer & Travel agent functions.Do you feel with my limited skills in the administrative & internet world that I could have a successful career as a VA? How long does your Camtasia course take? I am from Montreal, Canada are you aware of many other Canadians doing what you do? Would you recommend any other classes or certifications? i.e. on VA classroom.com
And below are my answers….
Do you feel with my limited skills in the administrative & internet world that I could have a successful career as a VA?
It depends on what you consider "successful", how long you can give it before you HAVE to make good money, and how good you are at marketing yourself. Lots of women get into this field with limited skills and earn about $15/hr and work 20 hours a week for a multiVA firm like the advertisement I sent you the other day and are perfectly content. You can get lots of VA jobs quickly by going onto a site like Odesk.com and doing a job search for Virtual Assistant.
Others think $50/hr is the least they need to replace their corporate salary and will take the training necessary to obtain the skills to get them this rate and will then market themselves well to be sure they have a steady flow of clients. When I was primarily doing VA work I charged $50/hr and stayed pretty busy doing webinar recording and video creation. Now I teach those skills to other VAs because I have found I like training and coaching even more. I earn about $60,000 year, but I only work about 25 hours a week. I have two kids and I home school one of them so I can only work part time right now.
How long does your LearnCamtasia.com course take?
If you are interested in learning how to get into video creation and webinar recording I highly recommend you take my Camtasia training course. As far as how long it takes to go through, well, you can do it all in a weekend if you have absolutely nothing else going on and then you can attend the live Q and A calls over the next 6 weeks. OR, you can do the six Modules more slowly and attend the calls asking questions as you go through each Module. I recommend the slow route so you will give your self lots of time to practice. if you are not sure you are ready to go full on into Camtasia you can start out with the course that teaches how to create video tutorials which runs about four hours.
I am from Montreal, Canada are you aware of many other Canadians doing what you do?
Tons- I think 75% of the VAs I know are living in Canada and work for American clients. It’s kind of strange. Why are you all hanging out up there?
Would you recommend any other classes or certifications? i.e. on VA classroom.com
I love the courses at VAclassroom and I teach a course at there called "Become a Virtual Event Specialist." It teaches you how to help clients with their on-line events such as multispeaker webinars and Internet radio. I get a lot of great feedback on that course. The benefit of starting out recording webinars is that you get all the training you need for free just by offering to record it at a cheaper price. That is how I started out 3 years ago.
Finally, I want to say that working from home and being a VA was by far the best career choice I ever made. Sure, you will have crappy clients once in a while but, overall, I just love the freedom and the idea that I work for myself and can say “no” to anything I don’t feel like doing. So, no matter what skills you come to the table with the field of Virtual Assistance is really open to anyone.
Great advice for Michelle and all the others who are thinking about becoming a VA. I got my Internet Marketing certification from VAClassroom, and think that is a great place to explore.
I would also add that one thing seems to lead to another in this business, so when you start where you are, you’ll discover that people always want something a little out of your comfort zone — If it interests you, go for it. The best way to learn something is when you have a purpose – If your client wants a Facebook page and you don’t know how to do it, figure it out (it’s all available on the Internet if you just look), and then Bingo! you’ve got yourself another marketable skill.
Virtual Assistants are invaluable to the small business person who really can’t learn how to do everything AND be a successful whatever-they-are. Come on in — the water’s fine (and the money is good!).
All the best,
Susan Fleming
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is magnificent blog. A great read. I will definitely be back.
Vivian- thank you so much for your input and I hope to see you around here with more comments.