I don’t have one of those dramatic stories about how I barely got my high school diploma, worked as a cashier in Walmart and am now making millions of dollars as a VA.  It is quite a bit more ordinary, which I think is more the typical way most people get into this business. I also am not going to end this story where I am making six figures either.  Because I am not, but I think I could, if I were willing to work more hours, but I never set out to have a huge business. I just want a great quality of life and that means having time for my daughter, Danielle’s, cheerleading and homeschooling my son, Joshua and lunch with my girlfriends and even the occasional roll in the hay with my husband (Michael). So here it is… 

In My Twenties

After spending my twenties as a model (and a waitress when jobs were scarce). I decided to go get more education because I always loved school and knew the modeling thing couldn’t last forever. The cellulite was already creeping up my butt. Initially I tried for a graduate degree in Social Work but couldn’t get into the program, so as a second choice I picked a field called “Instructional Technology” because I thought it might lead  to becoming a college professor.  Somewhere in the program I figured out that I was being prepared for a career creating web based training courses, which is now called “E-learning”.

Making my First $100 as a VA

During my graduate internship at AT&T I learned how to make websites to hold these web training courses. Back then, we worked in big teams and we used to charge from $50,000 to $200,000 to create one Internet training course with, maybe, some animation in it. Insane. Now I make the same courses all by myself for a few thousand dollars. After AT&T came IBM, and another Masters degree(this time IBM paid for it) in Project Management and I got to tell everyone else what to do. This was pretty fun but when I started having my babies it just got too stressful so I took a leave of absence and stayed home for a couple of years trying to decide how to get something going from home that didn’t involve selling candles, tupperware or my body. That is when I discover Internet Marketing and I probably spent about $2,000 that first year on e-books and teleseminars to learn as much as I could about it. It was like going through graduate school all over again.

I loved everything to do with the Internet and just wanted to provide a service helping people learn how use it to market their businesses. I kept hearing about Internet Marketing VAs and it sounded perfect for me so I decided to call myself that. Up went the website, in Feb 2008, and through some referrals from people I had taken classes from I started getting some jobs. My first year as a VA I probably averaged about $400/month mostly creating websites for people.  Not a lot money compared to the corporate job I left, but I only worked, maybe, 10 hours a week; Five hours billable, the rest trying to market my business.  The extra money paid for my mani-pedis and cheerleading camp and math tutoring for the kids.

Finding my Niche

Somewhere along the way a client asked me to make a video for their homepage and after some research I stumbled upon the Camtasia software. I took a really good class on how to use it, then started making screencast videos for local businesses and using it to record Webinars. It was so creative and fun I decided that it was going to be my new specialization and because there was “0” competition I was getting tons of work.

Starting in 2010

After a year of doing screencasts and other types of video for clients I decided I wasn’t going to hog the entire niche for myself so I started offering classes through Hotskills for VAs and VA Classroom. And, eventually, opened up my own shop over at LearnCamtasia.com. Now, I still do VA work for a few Internet entrepreneurs. I also have one a corporate client for whom I make a lot of Camtasia training videos. But a nice portion of my income comes from the classes I teach. I say “passive” because I created them quite a while ago but they continue to sell and earn me monthly income.

Even though I did spend quite a bit of money this last year (2010)on more Internet training- Mostly from Robert Plank (I think I have taken EVERY one of his classes- I just love him) I still ended up with a net of over $4,000/month which is ten times what I earned in 2009. Because I don’t want to work more than 20 hours a week, my goal this year (2011) is to average about $6,000/month, which I think is very reasonable at this rate. Ideally, I’d LOVE to make $100,000 year as long as don’t start feeling burned out.

So, if you get anything out of this-

1. Specialize- don’t try to be everything to your clients in this business. It’s too stressful and there is too much competition.

2. Try to find a niche that everyone isn’t doing then use those keywords all over your blog. Be the “Goto person” for that particular skill

3. As soon as you get really good in offering a specific service, create video tutorials showing others how to do it and then sell them.

If any one wants to share what specialty niche they are in or has any question about making a training course just comment here.

Best,

If you find yourself trying to be everything to all your clients it may be time to step back and make some decisions about where your VA business is going. I happen to have chosen just two areas to be really good at: Creating and recording Webinars and creating and training on screencast demos (esp. Camtasia).  Those are the only service I offer. Yes, I CAN do shopping carts and PPC and blog/Website creation and many other things that Internet Marketing VAs learn along the way but I don’t choose to offer those skills to clients. I have chosen an area that very few VAs offer so I get a lot of work and have become known as the Go To person for just those specific areas. That makes it a lot easier to market myself and organize my time. And I don’t have constant learning curves that I can’t charge my clients for.

So take some time and decide if you have a specific area of Internet Marketing that you really love then become the “Shopping Cart Queen” oops taken- or the “Ezine Queen” oops taken again- Or the ” Blog Girl”- that one might still be available. Better hurry!

Best,

My Client’s e-mail:

Michelle,

For me, the crux of the issue is that not all tasks/skills are worth $45 an hour. Some tasks require high-level skills while others require
low-level skills.

For instance:
Copywriting = $500/hr
SEO = $200/hr
Conducting interviews = $50/hr
Emailing/uploading files = $10/hr

So, if I paid you $50/hr for SEO, you’re actually losing $150/hr. Is that fair to you? The hourly-based billing system that’s so prevalent in the VA industry is flawed. Completely flawed. VA’s are leaving a ton of money on the table by charging a flat hourly fee. And this is a wonderful opportunity for you to revolutionize and dominate the market. Trust me on this. I’m a marketing specialist and pricing is a critical component in marketing. VA’s are NOT pricing their services correctly.

Sincerely,

Client

My Response:

Client,

I see your point and I believe that Virtual Assistant rates and flat price or hourly is an area that could/should be up for debate in the industry but here are a few things that need to be considered.

When you quote a flat fee instead of an hourly rate you need to take much more time up front to scope out the full project and create a set of requirements and let the client know what is in or out of the scope of the work. That means when a client asks for things that are out of scope (such as additional research or changes) it is necessary to revise and renegotiate the price. I prefer to simply do the additional work and let the client know
how much time it took me instead of constantly reworking the bid price.

Yes, of course, there are some parts of anyone’s job that require low level skills and some that require high level skills and I have accounted for this in my hourly rate. Because I am a specialist with audio and video I should be charging closer to $65 or $75/hour for these skills. But since I also
will edit Podcasts or do Usability testing on your Website which are lower level skills (and not ask you to go out and find another VA for that) I feel comfortable quoting an average price of $45-$50.

I do feel that in many cases the flat price per project would work out in my favor but I prefer (and my clients seems to also) the flexibility of changing the project around and adding and deleting tasks as they see fit without having to renegotiate a new price every time.

Michelle

What do you think?  Is our pricing model leaving money on the table?

Best,

Well, basically that is what I am telling you and those of you who are interested in growing your business need to take a look at my latest demo of the upcoming “Hot VA Skills Training” course.

Tina Forsyth and Cindy Greenway tell us straight out that:

“We don’t often brag about it, but we’ve been in the Virtual Assistant Industry a combined 10+ years and our own businesses are full. In fact, they could probably be full close to 100 times over if we took on all the clients we’re forced to turn away, with no one to refer them to.”

Sounds like they have some good information to share and may be looking for some great VAs to pass on some of their extra work.

Check out my demo below where I go through the list of all the topics they will be teaching us in their upcoming 12 week long Hot Skills Training. I think getting to know and hear from these ladies would be worthwhile for any VA who wants to be in this business for the long term.

Click here to see the full description of the course Hot VA Skills and sign up for the free teleseminar taking place on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008.

• referrals as a means to get their clients and to not to spend much on advertising.
• the amount of work out there(very encouraging)
• the isolation they face as VAs tend to just work by ourselves all day.
• their rates and how they charge
• how they organize their time
• how they handle getting paid

Most of the VAs on this call don’t do Internet Marketing task, as I do, and it is interesting to hear about all the other types of work Virtual Assistants can do to earn a good living.

Enjoy,

In a future demo, I will show you how to add additional domains to your site but for now watch and learn how to set up your hosting with Hostgator.

You probably already know that VA stands for Virtual Assistant – someone that remotely assists another business person from a remote location. VAs offer their professional expertise to help other professionals -VAs can work part time and full time and not all VAs are the same, everyone offers their own unique abilities and talents.

Assisting can be as simple as answering a help email or doing transcription to more complex skills like setting up a Shopping Cart or managing an Affiliate Program

For the client, it is a great deal. Basically, VAs relieve the person they work for of time consuming duties so they can focus on large goals. And they do this all remotely using their own equipment and software. You just pay the VA for the hours they work for you. That is much better than having a regular employee as you don’t need to pay for their vacation, sick days, health insurance, place to work or training. And, if the relationship between you and your VA does not work out there is not usually any type of contract between you and you can move on to a VA that may work out better.

For VAs the deal is just as good. We get to work where and when we want to. If we can concentrate enough to do our work well with the kids running circles around us who is to tell us we can’t. If we need to take off some days we can and once you get to a certain place in your business you can outsource to other VAs and go on vacation for weeks. It is the perfect work at home job.

Look for my next article in this series next week called ” Who would Benefit from Using a Virtual Assistant.”