by - Erin Morris, 32, is a virtual assistant who has worked in places like Northern Europe and Myanmar.
- She’s held various jobs, but says becoming a virtual assistant gave her true location independence.
- Her advice for getting started is to sign up for volunteer opportunities and proactively seek clients.
This essay as stated is based on a conversation with Erin Morris, a 32-year-old virtual assistant from Jindabyne, Australia, about her work. Her income has been verified by Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I was trying to find the perfect remote job for years while blogging and traveling full time from 2018 to 2020.
I quit my job as a paramedic in 2014 and worked as a ski instructor during ski seasons in Switzerland and worked as a sailor and doctor on superyachts. I then tried teaching English online for Whales English as suggested by other travel blogs, but I didn’t enjoy it and I didn’t have enough hours to make ends meet.
I found the 90 day VA course in an ad online
I didn’t know anything about being a virtual assistant. I thought it meant you’d have to be a personal assistant, but it’s a general term. It can mean many different things, depending on who you work for.
Erin Morris.
Courtesy of Erin Morris
I did some research on it, saw the free one hour introduction and thought: this is what i want to do. In addition to teaching 11 modules of new skills, the course dives into building a portfolio, finding and applying for jobs, and topics like bookkeeping, taxes, getting paid virtually, and submitting contracts—it’s the whole deal.
My portfolio is on Google Drive. Any of the documents I made for homework and assessments during the course, like social media or Canva templates, I keep there to show potential clients.
You can specialize as a virtual assistant. There were four of us in my training course accountability group and a network of classmates, and we all went our separate ways. One of us has become a web developer, another is doing business coaching, there is a social media manager, and I mainly do copywriting.
In January 2021 I was making $1,500 a month, but now I make $6,000 a month.
I got my first client before finishing the course.
I paid $500 to take the course, and my first client, an online business bookkeeper, hired me when I was only two months old. I created content for Pinterest, wrote captions for their social media, and made graphics in Canva. It was a very basic graphic design. Other early clients wanted me to repurpose their content and write captions for social media.
I got some of my first clients through Funnel Gorgeous, a company that offers courses and publications on building funnels, marketing yourself and your services, copywriting, and funnel design. My first clients found me through this platform and I built funnels for them. I’m also part of a couple of online directories, HerHQ and Hire a Marketer, plus potential clients contact me through Instagram and referrals.
A funnel is how you present your offer, from the moment people discover your service or product and then go to your website, read your copy, love the design and buy your product or even jump on your mailing list and subscribe. become customers. . I had a ton of clients who kept hiring me to do copywriting, and I realized that this is my favorite thing to do, so now I specialize in sales copywriting and funnels. I focus on doing sales page copy or email sequences, which are a chain of five or six emails that people receive after signing up for a mailing list.
Being a virtual assistant is the best role for me because I love to travel.
I was always that person who worked, saved, quit work, traveled, ran out of money, and then started again. I was in that cycle, even though I knew it was not a sustainable lifestyle.
I love working abroad because I like the freedom of my lifestyle. I have worked in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Myanmar. Ninety percent of the time I stay on Airbnbs, unless the role includes hosting, and I’m thinking about house-sitting in the future. I travel alone, but sometimes I meet friends on the road.
I am currently back in Australia and preparing to move to Portugal soon. I can choose when to work during the day and generally stick to regular work hours since my work is subject to deadlines, but if there is a yoga class in the morning I want to go to or if I want to walk and explore in the afternoon, have that flexibility. I feel like I’m living my life more fully when I’m abroad rather than at home in Australia full time, but it’s great because now that I have a steady income, I can also visit home whenever I want.
At first, he charged clients an hourly rate and I worked with two to four clients at a time
Most online trainers recommend charging for packages as you stop trading time for money and are valued for your skills, but without having the experience to know how long something was going to take I didn’t know how to package my services when I was beginning.
I started out charging $20 per hour, and for overtime, I worked my way up to $28 per hour. I’m sure I could have gotten a little more, but at the same time, I had a bit of a limiting belief. Now it is much easier for me to package my services, which are tailored to the needs of my clients.
Most of my clients are abroad and in the last three months my business has grown significantly. Three months ago, I was charging $600 for a sales page, and now I’m charging $1,500.
This month I have a client who asked me to do three sales pages and three email sequences. I quoted him $6,500. I am potentially writing a sales page for another client for $1,500. It took me two years to get to the point where I really make a lot of money, but it was worth it.
A good way to make starting out as a VA affordable is to sign up for volunteer opportunities through sites like Worldpackers, where you work a few hours a day in exchange for free accommodation. You still have time in your day to develop your virtual assistant work.
My advice to people starting out is don’t wait for customers to come to you. Apply for all the roles that interest you, because it’s a great practice. You don’t need years of experience; Soft skills like having a “figure things out” attitude and being trustworthy and proactive are actually more important.
