What is FREELANCING?
You don’t have to be in a corporate setting to earn a living. Freelancing gives you the flexibility of working from home, and VAs (virtual assistants) handle a lot of the admin work that comes with that. Not everyone is really equipped to be a virtual assistant, though, so today we’re going to talk about what freelancing is and what a virtual assistant actually is. This is going to be your beginner’s guide into freelancing and being a VA.
This post is the introduction into a series on freelancing and virtual assistants. So what better way to start this new format and this new series than to talk about what freelancing is and what virtual assistance actually is. This is going to be your beginner’s guide into that. So come on, let’s start.
Freelancing is when you work independently. You’re not employed by any employer, and you’re offering different services to your clients. And that’s why you can do freelancing remotely, because you don’t have to be in a corporate setup. So that’s what freelancing is. There are different ways for you to be a freelancer.
Service-Based Work
The first one is you can offer service-based work, where you can be a virtual assistant just like me, a social media manager, or a writer.
Project-Based Gigs
Another way to be a freelancer is to have project-based gigs, like graphic design or web development. These are project-specific jobs that would only require you to finish a whole project in a span of 3 months, 6 months, and so on. So this is where your freelancing gig will definitely require you to continuously look for clients.
Retainer
And then another way for you to earn as a freelancer is a retainer. That means you’ll have long-term clients and a steady income. Now you’re going to say, but if you’re a virtual assistant, aren’t you supposed to be on retainer? It doesn’t have to be, because when you’re a virtual assistant, you specialize in different niches, which we’ll get into in an upcoming video. Right now, we’re focusing on describing what freelancing is and what virtual assistance is, especially if you’re someone who is just learning and getting your interest piqued about freelancing and virtual assistants. Now let’s talk about why freelancing is booming right now.
Why Freelancing is Booming (Remote Work, Cost-Saving, Flexibility)
Increase of Remote Work
That’s because of, first, the increase in remote work. Since the start of the pandemic — which is also when I became an executive virtual assistant — a lot of companies started opening their doors to hiring or outsourcing from another country, because everybody was working remotely. A lot of companies, especially in the US, the UK, or Australia, saw the savings potential of hiring a remote worker or freelancer compared to hiring in-office or in-person employees.
Cost-Saving
Why is it cost-saving? First, they don’t have to pay for an actual office. They don’t have to provide equipment to their employees. They don’t follow employee regulations, because they’re hiring a service-based provider. And as a service-based provider, you’re considered an independent contractor here in the Philippines. For the past few years, we’ve been producing a lot of amazing virtual assistants that a lot of foreigners have been raving about, and that’s something we should really be proud of.
Flexibility
But aside from that, why is freelancing or virtual assistance booming? Aside from it being fully remote work and cost savings for the employer or client, it’s booming here specifically for freelancers and VAs, especially in the Philippines, because of the flexibility. We know how hard it is to go to and from work. Based on news articles, it usually takes an individual 2 hours to travel from their house to their office and back, so that’s 4 hours total of just commuting.
And the thing is, our employers don’t pay us for those hours we spend commuting. They’re only paying us for the eight hours we’re actually working in the office. So the flexibility of being able to work from home, skip the traffic, spend more time with family, and save money on commuting is definitely what makes freelancing so attractive.
Global Demand
And on top of that, there’s continuous global demand for freelancers and VAs, because there are a lot of startups that also came out of the pandemic era, and we’re benefiting from that. There are a lot of companies that have seen the benefits of hiring VAs, and that’s why freelancing and virtual assistance keeps booming year after year. Now that we understand what freelancing is, why it’s booming, and the different ways for you to earn as a freelancer, let’s dive into what a virtual assistant is.
What is a VIRTUAL ASSISTANT?
A virtual assistant is actually one of the most in-demand freelancer roles. So let’s quickly define what a VA is: a VA provides remote administrative, technical, or creative support to clients or companies.
Common Industries & VA Specialties (Real Estate, E-commerce, Legal)
Real Estate
Common industries that hire virtual assistants include real estate, and I think that’s the one that started it all. They hire a lot of VAs to do cold calling, and they bring in transaction coordinators to help with documents and other technical work. That’s where administrative work comes in — that’s actually one of the first industries that started hiring VAs from the Philippines.
E-commerce
Another industry that hires VAs is e-commerce, where VAs help online shop owners post on social media, Amazon, Etsy, and other platforms. So anything that has to do with online shopping, that’s where e-commerce virtual assistants come in.
Legal
Another industry is legal, which includes lawyers, judges, and law firms. They hire what we call legal VAs. So there are specific niches. Virtual assistant is the umbrella term, and underneath it you have specialties like your legal VA, your social media manager, your real estate VA, your e-commerce VA, your bookkeeper, your finance VA, and more. We’ll go into those niches in more detail in upcoming videos in this series. So watch out for that. If you want to learn about those niche specialties, all you have to do is subscribe to this channel and wait for the next video, which comes out every Thursday.
What’s Coming Next in This Series!
Now I hope you learned a lot from this description of what freelancing is and what a virtual assistant is. We won’t be able to cover everything in one video, which is why I started this series for you.
Thank You & Subscribe!
This is the perfect series for you, especially if you’re just starting out and your interest is piqued about freelancing or virtual assistants. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and turn on that notification bell so you don’t miss Thursday’s episode. Thank you so much for watching, everyone. I hope you learned something from this video, and I hope it excites you to become a virtual assistant, because there’s so much more to learn and so many benefits to becoming one.
You’ll enjoy this whether you’re a Filipino or part of my audience from other parts of the world. This is something I’d really love for you to learn and start becoming a virtual assistant yourself. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day, and I’ll see you in the next video.
