How to Make MORE Money with Your Virtual Assistant Business
(This transcript may include affiliate links.)
Hello, hello! It’s your host Billie Gardner! Welcome to episode 14 of the Desire to Done podcast! I’m happy you’re here!
Last week I shared my journey from employee to Virtual Assistant and then to a VA mentor. In that episode, I talked about how I made my first passive income product, which was an ebook, soon after becoming a VA. And then I got hooked!
As a VA, you might think that your only option to make more money is to add more and more clients, but that’s not true at all! In fact, that’s a great way to burn yourself out, and we don’t want that!
Raising your rates is one way to make more money. But what if that’s not something you want to do?
Well, you’re in luck! In this episode, you’ll learn a variety of ways to make more money with your business, even if you’re already booked out or don’t want to raise your prices.
Are you excited? Me too! Let’s hop in!
THE FIRST OPTION IS TO HIRE A VA
Yep, that’s right! VAs hire other VAs to help them out too!
Handing work over to another VA will free up your time to take on more clients or focus on other money-making strategies that I’ll talk about in this episode.
You can hire a VA to either help you with your business tasks or client work.
So let’s talk about Your Business Tasks
You can hire a VA to help you with various tasks you already do in your business.
Examples of these tasks could be:
- Social media
- Email management
- Blog writing
- General admin work
- Website maintenance
Keep in mind if you hire a VA to help you with your business tasks, you’ll sign the contract they provide and pay them according to their terms.
The other option is to hire a VA to help you with your client work. It’s a little more complex than hiring help for your own business but it’s an excellent money-making strategy.
- Let’s say you’re a social media manager, a VA can help you create graphics, curate images, or write and schedule posts.
- If you’re a Pinterest manager, a VA can help you create pins, grab analytics, and use Tailwind.
- If you design websites, a VA can do the technical parts like setting up the domain and hosting or certain design pieces of the process.
- If you write and format blog posts, a VA can do the blog formatting.
If you hire a VA to help you with client tasks, you’ll need to create a contract and payment terms. You’ll find a VA Associate Contract that you can use inside my membership, the Introvert VA Club that you can use. Go to introvertvaclub.com to learn more.
And if you’d like to learn more about hiring your first VA, I have a book that I’ll link to in the description. I also have a free service that connects business owners wanting to hire a VA. I’ll link to that as well.
THE SECOND STRATEGY FOR MAKING MORE MONEY WITH YOUR BIZ IS CREATING AN AGENCY.
With this strategy, you’ll take on the role of CEO and no longer work with clients. Instead, your team will do all of the client work.
This route is quite complex. My recommendation is first to try hiring and working with several VAs at one time before trying to start an agency. If you find that you enjoy working with other VAs, feel comfortable handing over all your work, and want to focus on the marketing aspect of your business instead of interacting with clients, do some research on creating an agency to learn more.
A THIRD OPTION IS TO OFFER COACHING OR CONSULTING
If you’d like to shift things a bit, you can do 1:1 coaching or consulting. With this option, you’ll show people HOW to do something instead of doing it for them.
There are lots of ways you can offer this service. You could do 1-hour sessions, a week-long session, monthly sessions, group coaching, or a VIP day where you work with the client for several hours. I covered VIP days in episode 3 if you’d like to learn more.
To figure out what you can coach or consult on, think about what you’re really good at. What do your clients get stuck on that you can help with? What do you know a lot about?
With coaching or consulting:
- You’ll want to set up your systems and automate as much as you can. I was really happy with Acuity Scheduling when I was doing 1:1 coaching. People can schedule their coaching call, pay, and receive automatic email reminders and a follow-up email. Other tools you might want to look into are Honeybook or Dubsado.
- Get creative! If Zoom or phone calls make you nervous try Voxer coaching with the Voxer app, or if you’re doing consulting, consider recording a video of your suggestions instead of a live call.
THE FOURTH OPTION FOR CREATING MORE MONEY WITH YOUR BUSINESS IS PASSIVE INCOME
Passive income is exciting stuff! You create and sell something that doesn’t require much work to maintain. It also allows you to make money while you sleep, which is pretty damn awesome!
There are tons of passive income ideas out there. I want to cover a few of the more popular ways to bring in extra money, and in the description of this episode, I’ll add links to some helpful resources for each.
You can create ebooks, workbooks, ecourses, templates, printables, Skillshare classes, print-on-demand products like t-shirts or mugs, paperback books, Kindle books, audiobooks, Listenable audio courses, or a membership. You could also create licensed designs for products or create and sell fonts, clipart, and templates on places like Etsy or Creative Market.
THE FIFTH OPTION FOR CREATING MORE INCOME WITH YOUR BUSINESS IS PROMOTING AFFILIATE LINKS
Affiliate Marketing is another type of passive income. You’ll promote other people’s products with a unique link, and when someone purchases the product through your link, you receive a portion of the money earned, just like a commission.
Each affiliate program has different terms. For instance, how much you’ll make and how long the cookie length is, which is the amount of time someone has to purchase the product.
If you want to try out affiliate marketing, the best place to start is to make a list of all the tools, software, apps, programs, and educational products like books, ebooks, courses, and memberships that you thoroughly enjoy. Then check to see if they have an affiliate program.
A lot of times, you can go to the website, scroll down to the bottom footer, and you’ll see a link to learn about their affiliate program or become a referrer or ambassador. Then you can learn what their terms are and how much the payout is.
Sometimes you’ll have to dig a little or reach out and ask.
Sometimes, instead of money, you’ll earn a credit on your account.
Tips:
- Start small. Pick only 3-5 products to promote first. Promote the heck out of them, and then add more if you like.
- Create a spreadsheet with who you reach out to, their terms, and your affiliate link for quick access to info.
- Put a disclosure in your website’s footer and always disclose when you’re sharing an affiliate link.
- Using a link manager like Pretty Links for WordPress is a must. That way you can keep all your links organized and create shortened links that are easier to remember—for example, yourwebsite.com/affiliatename instead of affiliatewebsite.com/refferal/a-whole-bunch-of-numbers-and-letters! Also, if the affiliate program changes your link for any reason (it happens), all you have to do is update the main link in your link manager instead of all 100 places you’ve shared it!! Another option is Bitly.
- Don’t be afraid to share your affiliate links with clients! For example, if you help people set up their ConvertKit accounts, have them sign up through your affiliate link. Same with Pinterest management – have them sign up for Tailwind through your link (if they don’t already have an account). Or, if you design websites have the client sign up for the domain name, hosting, and website platform through your links, if possible!
Now that you have an idea of how you can create extra income in your biz, it’s time to decide what you want to start with first!
- Pick one strategy that you want to try.
- Once you have one strategy down, move on to another.
- Mix and match strategies to create multiple streams of income.
- Start as early as you can because some strategies take longer than others to gain traction.
If you’d like to learn more about these strategies and get support as you build your business, come join us in the Introvert VA Club! Go to introvertvaclub.com to sign up.
I hope you’re feeling inspired and fired up about the different ways you can make extra income in your biz. Even if you’re not quite ready to try any of these options yet, you can get an idea of where you want to take your business in the future!
Thanks for listening! I’ll chat with you next week!