To Specialize or Not, as a Virtual Assistant
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
When I decided to move my home based office services business
forward to the now popular Virtual Assistance niche, I saw a lot
of advice both for and against specializing my services.
Knowing where my strengths lie and where I have NO expertise,
I decided that specializing was the way for ME, personally, to go.
It is like when I worked in the *real world* as a Kelly Girl, which was a huge employer
for temporary office help, I only accepted assignments for file clerk, receptionist or general office. I could DO many office tasks but either did not feel qualified or frankly, did not WANT to perform several of the jobs that were offered to me.
I turned down several office management job offers although I was qualified TO do
the jobs – I instead opted to train someone else to fulfill the duties for those jobs.
I did not want the responsibility of running the offices and preferred to have set tasks
to perform daily as apposed to being in charge of staff and the stress that I saw coming with those jobs.
This said, there are Virtual Assistance services that I cannot do or do not want to do.
So I am concentrating on my strengths, which are:
Social Network Assistance
Research
Because each client is as different in his or her way of wanting things done
as each office is, I am constantly in training as I work with each person.
Since I love to work and love to learn, this is a great business for me to be in.
Kind of like when I had temp jobs with Kelly Girl, I am responsible to get my portion
of the work done but ultimately NOT having the headaches and stresses of the business owner. Of course, I do still have those with my OWN businesses, but that is another story.
Since I know that most of us are feeling this money crisis, to both ensure that I can work steadily and to help the budget of potential clients, I have come up with my retainer plans. This can be of huge benefit to those who need my services but cannot afford, or do not want to spend, my hourly fees. I have beaten every other reputable deal I could find
in my specialties to achieve this.
Here are my Retainer Services – Paid in advance ONLY:
* Proofreading, Editing, Social Networking Assistance, Help Desk Assistance,
Email Account Maintenance, Blog Posting, Web Page updates, Submitting your Blogs
& Articles to directories, etc. can be retained weekly or monthly to save you money
and assure continual work flow.
* Ten hours per week $15 per hour = $150
* Fifteen hours per week $13 per hour = $199
* Twenty hours per week $11 per hour = $220
* You can use your entire retainer fee on one project
OR mix them up in any categories as needed
* Monthly retainer of at least 20 hours per week, EVERY week,
booked and paid in advance for a month at a time = $10 per hour.
Limited to TWO monthly retainer clients.
Click here to schedule a retainer project.
Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing,
proofreading and transcription assignments!
Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance
573-775-4520 jan@tallentagency.com
