Woman shares how she works remotely and earns around R100k a month
A virtual assistant shares her story on finding work that she enjoys and traveling at the same time...
Working remotely is sort of a dream come true for many people. Add in a salary of R100,000 a month and the wondrous ability to travel while you work, and, bam, you have a match made in job heaven.
If you're interested, then you have to hear what Erin Morris did to kickstart her career as a virtual assistant.
Whilst blogging and traveling full time between 2018 to 2020, Morris was looking for remote work. After dabbling in several jobs - ski instructor, deckhand and medic on yachts, and online English teaching, besides not enjoying it, she also wasn't making ends meet.
After coming across a 90-day VA course ad, she was intrigued. She didn't know much about being a virtual assistant and assumed that it meant being someone's personal assistant.
But she found out it is an umbrella term and can mean different things depending on who you work for.
"I did a bit of research into it, watched the free hour-long intro and thought, This is what I want to do." (Business Insider)
Besides housing her portfolio on Google Drive, she shares that she does, specifically, copywriting and basic graphic design.
"I paid $500 to take the course, and my first client, a bookkeeper for online businesses, hired me when I was just two months in. I created content for Pinterest, wrote captions for her social media, and made graphics in Canva. It was very basic graphic design. Some other early clients wanted me to repurpose their content and write captions for social media." (Business Insider)
In January 2021, she was earning around R25,000 a month - and now she is earning around R100,000 a month.
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Morris shares that packaging your work based on projects is highly advisable. But as a newbie, she started by charging per hour rates, so that she could build her confidence whilst completing projects.
"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 build up your virtual-assistant work." (Business Insider)
Her advice to people who are interested in joining the virtual assistant frontier is to not wait for clients to come to you. Rather apply for roles you are interested in. Sometimes you just need to have a good attitude, reliability, and be active oriented.
Image Courtesy of Pexels