How to become a virtual assistant: step-by-step
List your skills, choose your niche
If you’re thinking of becoming a virtual assistant, it’s likely you’ve already got some of the skills listed above.
Take a moment to list them. Being clear about the range of services you can offer will help you market your business to clients.
After that, you can choose a direction. Will you lean towards marketing support primarily, or will your service revolve around office administration?
A business plan will help you answer those questions (and plenty more) when setting up.
Download a free business plan template to make writing yours easy.
Wondering how to become a virtual assistant with no experience?
You can do the exercise above to list your transferable skills. What jobs have you done before that you can market to clients as a virtual assistant?
Whether it’s customer service or content writing, they could be a great base to start your business with.
Ideally though, you’ll want to build your skill set to win more work. Think about taking online courses and qualifications to help you showcase your expertise.
Udemy is a paid online learning resource that has courses on learning the must-have skills for virtual assistants in 2022, as well as specific skills-based lessons on bookkeeping, for example.
Set up your business
Every new business needs to:
Discover the nine steps to starting any new business.
Check your budget and funding
You can get started as a virtual assistant without needing to spend too much initially. But there are a few basic things you’ll need to budget for, including:
a computer or laptop that runs well and has the necessary software (like an office suite, for example Microsoft Office 365)
a broadband internet connection
- a separate phone line (or number) for your business – you might want to look at a virtual landline
office stationery and equipment to keep you organised
You can use our budgeting template and calculator to keep your finances organised.
You can also check out our cash flow forecast template to assess how much money you’ll have coming in and going out from your business over 12 months.
Sort your branding and marketing
When thinking about marketing, go back to your niche and skill set. These can help you work out what sort of clients you’re hoping to get.
Once you know your audience, you can develop a marketing plan to reach them.
While your marketing will be unique to your business, here are some guides to its specific elements:
As you’ll be working remotely, it’s important to have an online presence so that people can find and get in touch with you.
This means creating a business website, developing your social media accounts, and getting to grips with SEO.
For more on these parts of the process, read our in-depth guide to advertising your small business.
Find work as a virtual assistant
Once you’ve set up your business, you can get on with finding clients.
The Society of Virtual Assistants can support you in getting work as well as running your business in general.
Membership is free, although they ask for a recommended £10 donation. But you’ll then get their newsletter and have access to their forum.
They also have another level of membership: ‘approved’. You need to agree to their Code of Practice, but you can then be added to their ‘find an approved VA’ listings.
Here are some more ways to find work:
use a specialist virtual assistant agency – you can join the books of a virtual assistant agency, but make sure you research your options (and avoid scams that ask for money upfront or make claims that sound too good to be true)
- sign up to freelancing websites like Fiverr and Upwork – businesses look for freelance virtual assistants on digital platforms and online job boards
- use social media like LinkedIn to self-promote – we mention LinkedIn as it’s the professional networking platform, but social media in general can be a powerful tool when looking for work
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