Becoming a virtual assistant is easy. Choosing your niche, however, can be a little harder. Spending a little time narrowing down what services you’ll offer will keep you lean and mean and more focused on what you do best
One of the trickier things to figure out for yourself as a new virtual assistant is what services you’ll offer. You likely already have some idea of these services, though if you don’t you needn’t worry. There are a slew of resources available to you to help you distill down what it is you can do (or even better yet — what you can learn to do).
As the old saying goes, find a job you enjoy and you’ll never work a day in your life. After all that’s the dream, right? To find meaningful work that we enjoy?
Take inventory
The first thing to do is to critically look at yourself. What do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? At past jobs or chores or obligations, what are the things that stand out to you as either interesting or something you’re particularly adept at? Maybe you’re a savant at Instagram or TikTok, and would be a natural at social media management, etc. Maybe you love building spreadsheets, or photography, or sorting email. Maybe you just love creating systems for efficiency. Everyone has talents and proclivities—try to identify what these are and use them to your advantage.
It can sometimes be hard to even know what we mean by the above. A good first step is to see what needed services are out there. Check out our “100 Niches for Virtual Assistants” article for a look at some of the many different services that freelance virtual assistants take on.
Maybe there’s something you’ve always thought you’d be good at but have never tried. Learn it! It’s so easy now just to pop onto YouTube to learn almost anything. There’s also great sites to help freelance virtual assistants learn new skills like The Savvy Vault or Hubspot Academy. Both offer several classes to get you started on the path to your dream job, delving into a wide range of subjects above and beyond just learning new skill sets.
Dig deeper
Once you’ve isolated a few possible freelance virtual assistant services you may offer, do a little more research on each one. You might find that what you thought would be a dream is more of a drag. Or you might discover new things along the way that pique your interest.
It’s important to keep your mind open as you develop your business. You may think that you know exactly what you want at the outset, but be open to that changing and evolving. As sure as we are of anything, there’s always more to learn, and that’s how we grow.
Don’t mentally lock yourself too tightly into anything. Down the road if you hate what you’re doing you may feel stuck, and that’s exactly the opposite of what being a freelance virtual assistant is all about. There is always room to pivot your business to move to something you find more suitable. Free yourself to being open minded and you may be surprised at what you find out.
Matthew Ogden is a Minneapolis-based copywriter and content writer and editor. He’s written for national retailers and lobster roll companies alike. When not writing he can be found nose deep in a book, writing and performing music, or nerding out about guitar tone.