If you are looking out for freelance opportunities, working as Virtual Assistant is one of the best alternatives for a great pay package. Out there are hundreds and thousands of small to medium firms, top executives of large companies and entrepreneurs that hire Virtual Assistants for their day-to-day work. Read further to know more about the world of Virtual Assistants (VA)

1. What is a Virtual Assistant?

• Virtual Assistant is a person hired by an individual or a company to provide assistance in numerous work and activities.
• VAs provide diverse categories of services ranging from administrative, technical and even designing and assistance for creative work.
• Virtual Assistants work as ‘VA to Individuals’ and ‘VA to Companies’.

2. Why the employers hire VAs?

• Saving time on unproductive administrative activities.
• Saving money on the salaries and long term and recurring operational costs and overhead expenses of temporary or permanent employees.
• Employers can devote more time for expanding their business and doing more creative and productive work.
• Hiring a VA is the most cost-effective way instead of hiring temps or permanent employees.
• Above all, VAs are independent contractors and hence the persons hiring VAs do not have to bother about employee insurance, sick leaves, vacations of employees and employment taxes, among other.

3. What are the advantages to VAs?

• VAs can work from cozy comforts of home and from anywhere even if they are traveling.
• VAs can simultaneously work for multiple employers.
• Overall, a VA ends up earning much better packages instead of working as a full-time employee with a company.

In Conclusion

As most of the employers and their clients are from USA, Indians and Asians wanting to work as VAs must remain available during normal USA business hours. Generally, the offers as VAs are allotted on short-term basis spanning from 3-6 months. However, sometimes the opportunities could also be available for pretty long durations, maybe from 12-months to 2-3 years. Read another article on this website to learn more about how much you can earn as VA.

Checkout for Virtual Assistants Jobs at freelancing sites like GetAFreelancer, ScriptLance and Elance.

Out of loads of freelance writing and copywriting jobs, E or Electronic Book writing can offer instant fame and monetary benefits in the form of fees and royalties. Even after a couple of years after your books are published, you can still earn money from the royalties whenever anybody downloads your E Book. Besides the computers, people also read digital books on their mobile phones or other exclusive hardware devices such as ‘e-book readers’.

E Book is the digital or electronic equivalent of a printed book. Initially, most of the electronic books were targeted to a very small group of interested people and mainly written for technical manuals and brochures. However, with the burgeoning popularity of Internet over other media, E Books have become the easiest methods of reaching to the masses. Over the years, the formats of electronic books have changed drastically with some supported by major software companies and some supported by independent and open-source programmers.

Unlike conventional hard copies or print books, E Book is relatively shorter in the content, being more oriented towards ‘to the point’ approach. Electronic books on the Internet generally tend to feature numerous web links for further informations and cross-reference. As compared to the conventional books, you can quickly finish writing an electronic book. Nevertheless, you are required to allocate almost equal amount of efforts, research and resources to make it compelling and well structured. You can write on a wide range of categories such as arts, music, photography, spiritual, psychology, health and fitness, alternative medicines and therapies, crafts, hobbies, law and legal, science, engineering, nature, politics, global warming, biographies, self-help, and many more.

If you are toying with an idea to write E Books on your own or for any client, it is necessary that you must possess an in-depth subject knowledge besides being aware about what goes into the publishing aspects of e books. There are many success stories of people making four and five figure incomes just by freelance writing, copywriting and writing E Books.

Freelance writing and copywriting is considered as one of the most lucrative segment of work at home businesses. It offers diverse opportunities of earning attractive packages for the right persons. Here are few things that can help you in taking up a career as a freelance writer.

1. First of all, make sure that you have the flair for writing and the basic skills to become a freelance writer.
2. You need not possess any literary skills or prior experience as a writer; however, knowledge in the specific fields would be an added advantage.
3. For the beginners, I would suggest to start looking out for online freelance writing work rather than offline writing assignments for magazines, newspapers and journals.
4. Initially, you might as well start with writing very short reviews, opinions etc (not more than 150 words – about two paragraphs, each of 5 lines) on forums and blog posting. Although it would fetch negligible rewards but it will give you an idea about where you stand and provide you the necessary experience before you make it big.
5. Freelance writing is all about ‘easy to read and understand’ style, ‘to the point’ and factual contents and little awareness about keywords and search engine optimization techniques.
6. The online readers generally tend to move away fast and therefore whatever you write must be lucid and effective.
7. Teamwork is one of the best ways to ensure steady flow of work.
8. You can join teams through your friends or through freelancing platforms such as GAF, where you can find regular job postings for inviting people to join the teams.
9. Advantages of working in teams far outweigh its minus points.

Summing Up

Freelance writing and copywriting might not always provide consistent workflow, feast and famine type of cycle being the common feature. You might find yourself sitting idle at some occasions and sometimes you might pass through a phase when you are overloaded with work, which you would have to refuse or pass away to others.

Get started with these two freelancing sites: GetAFreelancer and ScriptLance