30 Virtual Assistant services you could offer

Another popular question from new Virtual Assistants is what services they should offer their clients. Obviously, this will depend on lots of things such as demand, your niche, your skill set, your interests, your previous career and your location, but here are 30 different services you could consider offering to start you off.

 Services you could offer

1. Creating/updating/maintaining databases and CRMs
2. Collating business cards into an Excel sheet for uploading to CRMs or address books
3. Data entry
4. Basic bookkeeping (Click here to read HMRC’s money laundering regulations (AML) for VAs)
5. Data mining / online research
6. Typing up notes
7. Minute taking (This pays incredibly well and I have a course if you want to learn how)
8. Video creation/editing/uploading
9. Social media set up/maintenance/content research/scheduling
10. Facebook, Twitter or Google ads – creating, monitoring and analysing
11. Setting up/managing webinars and podcasts
12. Forum commenting/monitoring
13. Setting up LinkedIn groups
14. Photoshop work
15. Transcription
16. Marketing – creating sales pages/squeeze pages/pop up email boxes
17. Creating/editing/formatting templates and guides
18. Event coordination – venue finding and confirmation/collating attendees and documents/on-site support
19. Chasing outstanding invoices
20. Diary/calendar management – scheduling meetings, syncing with devices, adding upcoming events
21. Email management and detox
22. Writing/editing/formatting reports and presentations
23. Researching/making travel and accommodation arrangements
24. Lifestyle management – personal duties inc buying gifts, dry cleaning, booking restaurants and events, house moving, researching cheaper utility companies, paying bills etc
25. Blog set up/writing/SEO/editing/scheduling
26. Website set up/writing/SEO/editing/scheduling (Learn to build your own site)
27. Newsletter set up/writing/autoresponders/editing/maintenance/scheduling (remember that you and your client have to comply with data protection laws or you may be fined. It’s all covered in my newsletter course)
28. eBook editing/formatting/publishing
29. Gmail set up, importing and creating labels/filters/folders (I have a free Gmail course)
30. Designing/formatting infographics, logos, banners, social media profile images

Don’t offer

Call answering services.

It’s up to you, obvs but in my experience, call answering is a right pain in the bum. It’s not cost-effective for the client, you’ll never get a minute to yourself, calls will disrupt work and focus, and the phone will always ring when you’re in the supermarket or on the loo.

Not a professional look.

I would suggest a professional call-answering service instead because your job is to ‘sort stuff’ for your clients, you don’t actually need to do everything yourself.

By using a call-answering service, you’re demonstrating that you have the client’s best interests at heart, and freeing yourself up to get on with some ‘proper’ work. These companies are cheaper, will answer the call with your client’s business name and can even be given a list of FAQs or common support ticket responses.

If you like, you can choose to get summary emails sent to you from the call-answering company and follow up if required.

Tips

• Think about your niche and what tasks people in it might need doing.
• Keep learning so you’re constantly honing your existing skills and adding new ones. You can find lots of free and paid courses on my Downloads and Training page.
• Consider charging a monthly retainer for ‘bitty’ tasks.
• A VAs job is to ‘sort sh*t out’ – you don’t necessarily need to do the job yourself! A client might want a website building, it would be insane to learn to be a web developer when you can just find one and project manage the task.
• Don’t take on anything that doesn’t fit in with your other clients, existing tasks or your business model such as being completely virtual or being able to work around family commitments etc.
• Basically, don’t take on anything that doesn’t tie in with why you decided to become a VA in the first place. A client or task you don’t like/want may provide money now but will prevent you from taking on work you do actually want.
• Watch out for people trying to save money by hiring a VA when they should really be hiring a professional copywriter, web designer/developer, graphic designer, marketer etc instead.