If you’re organised, smart, capable and willing to work to deadlines, you could start your own virtual assistant business. A virtual assistant is essentially an administrative assistant who works in a virtual capacity. Essentially this means that you run your own business, operated remotely from your home (or office) for one or more clients. You can offer services ranging from word processing and transcribing to a virtual receptionist and call centre or acting as a research assistant.

It’s a great way of using a diverse set of skills to run your own business from home. By the very nature of the job, you’ll be working on a wide range of projects at a time meaning it’s unlikely to become repetitive.

The downside is despite being your own boss you’ll have little flexibility to set your own hours – simply put you need to work when your clients need you, which is likely to be at least during normal office hours.

To get started you’ll need a computer, typical office software, an Internet connection a mobile phone and a phone line.

When marketing yourself your biggest challenge is likely to be explaining how to use your services to prospective clients. I would suggest you focus all your marketing on the main benefit you can offer them, that is, doing the administrative work so they can get on with their own business idea.

Useful URLs

• Alliance of UK Virtual Assistants
• The Society of Virtual Assistants

This post is part of a series in my home business ideas week.

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