Being a stay-at-home mom is downright hard. You’re not only overwhelmed with endless torrents of childcare-related tasks, but also by financial issues lurking around just about every corner.
Paying off your mortgage, the lease on your car and an endless list of groceries can be budget-draining.
And being a stay-at-home mom is often a surefire way to financially ruin yourself. You see it happen on a daily level.
Now, how would you like to earn an extra $500-$800 while working from home as a stay-at-home mom?
This article will teach you how to stay afloat by working online as a Virtual Assistant.
So let’s get straight to it.
Why is Being a Virtual Assistant a Great Career Choice for Stay-at-Home Moms?
Online employment is undergoing massive growth around the globe.
There’s a huge influx of stay-at-home mums to the online job market. This is hardly surprising, given that you can work AND still be available to your kids.
Well, sort of. Nothing compares to being a full-time stay-at-home mom, but if you think of it like a regular job vs. an online job, working online as a virtual assistant (VA) makes it much easier to manage your family duties. And put some food on the table.
So, if money’s tight, we’d tell you to find a VA job. Why? The list is long, so settle in and enjoy the ride.
Becoming a VA allows you to:
- Take care of your kids and still earn money on the side.
- Recover your already drained budget.
- Plan your work around your daily childcare activities.
- Negotiate time off when you need to take care of your sick child.
- Work from just about anywhere you want. The park. The playground. A coffee place. As long as you bring a grandparent or maybe a friend who’s good with kids.
What Does a Virtual Assistant Do?
You might be wondering: What skills do you need to become a virtual assistant?
It’s hard to give a uniform answer to this question. That’s why we’ll break things down for you.
A VA can offer a wide range of services. Which is good because you can choose a VA role according to your inclinations and personality.
Now, let’s get to the meat of the most common VA specialties.
What Can You Specialize in as a Virtual Assistant?
Virtual assistant jobs can be diverse. For instance, you can work as an email marketing assistant or even try the extreme option of working in the travel industry as a digital nomad.
That is, when (one day) kids grow up, or you lose them in the supermarket (just kidding!).
Still, it’s legitimate daydream material for parents who’ve been bitten by the travel bug and never got over it.
Either way, popular online job boards are brimming with willing workers. So, your only safe bet to find a secure job as a VA is to undertake specialist skills training. You’re only really competitive once you master specific in-demand skills.
Want to find out which virtual assistant specialization matches your personality?
Below is an overview of the most common VA roles, tasks and personality traits needed for the job.
General Virtual Assistant Skill Set
Do detail-oriented, process-driven and administrative tasks suit you to a tee? Then the General VA role is just the ticket for you.
When you work as a General Virtual Assistant, expect to be given routine tasks. Anything from basic administrative tasks to managing social media.
Some of the most common general VA services are:
- Providing support via live chat
- Managing blog publishing schedules
- Manipulating data on spreadsheets
- Scheduling and posting Facebook insights
Virtual Assistant with Store Administration Skills
A store administrator is given all sorts of general, marketing and store admin tasks. The role is best suited for thorough, organized and technically-minded people.
Your key responsibility will be to manage an online store and keep it updated. To give you an idea, below is a list of typical VA store administration tasks:
- Ideate and implement necessary website changes
- Create performance analysis reports of online marketing campaigns
- Use performance data to come up with new ways of generating traffic to your online store
- Update the online store’s product and category pages
Virtual Assistants with Customer Service Skills
Consider yourself to be a friendly and reliable problem-solver? Then, by all means, you should seek to fine-tune your customer service skills.
Basically, it’s all about tending to your customers’ needs. To give you more to chew on, this is what you’ll be typically tasked with as a VA with customer service skills:
- Listening and responding to customers’ needs and concerns
- Servicing orders and processing product returns
- Providing information about products in your online store
- Building sustainable relationships and engendering trust with customers
Virtual Assistants with Graphic Design Skills
A Graphic Design VA role requires a worker to be creative and systematic. The key task here is to create a killer visual identity for the business you work for.
You need some decent computer software skills. As well as a knack for creating visual concepts that compel consumers on the Internet to take action.
Now, here’s a list of tasks you’ll be faced with most of the time:
- Design banners, logos, headers and infographics.
- Create a synergy of content and visual elements so you convey the message most effectively.
- Suggest visual solutions and pick suitable channels to reach the target audience.
- Manipulate color, image, text and layout elements to come up with effective design.
Virtual Assistants with Copywriting Skills
Are you an imaginative story-teller kind of person? Then the copywriting specialization is best suited to you. Obviously, here you’d be working with copywriting-based assignments, but you might be thinking to yourself, what specific skills should I be honing?
Writing skills are a must because you’ll be expected to produce tons of content for emails, landing pages, and more.
Below are some more typical copywriting tasks:
- Writing blog articles
- Creating LinkedIn, Twitter, Google and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads
- Writing product pages
- Devising an email marketing strategy
How Much do Virtual Assistants Make?
Now, here’s the best part. You can remain a stay-at-home mom and earn a decent monthly income of between $500 and $800. Sounds like something worth investing yourself in, right?
And that’s just the monthly salary of a General Virtual Assistant. Polish some specialist skills, and your future salary could range between $800 and $1,500.
Of course, your pay rate will depend on a multitude of factors, such as:
- experience,
- skillset,
- availability,
- region, etc.
It’s all about adjusting your lifestyle and your earning ambitions. And yet, honing the most relevant skills will boost your prospects of higher earnings.
Now, let’s zero in on some real figures.
Below are typical hourly rates for each VA job role.
| Different VA job roles | Rates for Beginner VAs | Rates for Experienced VAs | Rates for Expert VAs |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Virtual Assistants | $3 – $6 | $7 – $15 | $7 – $15 |
| Virtual Assistants with Store Administration Skills | $10- $25 | $30 – $45 | $55 – $70 |
| Virtual Assistants with Customer Service | $4 – $6 | $7 – $12 | $15 – $25 |
| Virtual Assistants with Graphic Design Skills | $7- $10 | $12 – $25 | $30 – $45 |
| Virtual Assistants with Copywriting Skills | $4 – $6 | $7 – $20 | $21 – $45 |
Forget About Being Broke as a Stay-at-Home Mom
If you want to earn money as a stay-at-home mom, going for a virtual assistant job is a great choice.
Believe me, it won’t take forever to go from not knowing the first thing about being a VA to having a PayPal account receiving your weekly wages.
Just take it one day at a time. And in time, you’ll learn a wide array of skills that will secure you a stable income.
Yet, striking out on your own isn’t easy. That’s exactly why Small Revolution helps people break into online work. Join our growing community of online workers to learn more about how to become a VA.
