As with any work from home business, flexibility is important. Susan Valeri, who lives in the Central time zone, has a client on the West Coast. This can be both a benefit and a challenge.

“[It] works out great for me because by the time she wakes up, I’ve got her work done!” On the other side of the coin, “She’s getting revved up when I’m getting ready to have dinner. So I can hear my email going off while I’m cooking.”

In addition to administrative skills, soft skills are also integral. A successful VA is someone who can be proactive about how they can help a client to achieve their goals, and they need to be able to convey this to a potential client.

And as with any business, integrity is vital. One of Valeri’s responsibilities is to answer emails regarding her client’s business. “I’d better be honest, open and knowledgeable about her business,” she insists. “Get a good grasp of my clients business, how they want things run, what their product is, so that I can intelligently answer inquiries.”

Aside from the obvious impact that integrity has on the success of any business owner, it also affects the type of client that a VA attracts.

“If I act with integrity, then I’m going to get more business and I’m going to attract the kind of people that I want to do business with,” Valeri says.

Brice agrees. According to her, one of the smartest things a potential VA can do is to invest in their own life because, “you’ll become more attractive and be able to attract a more high quality client.” If your goal is to work with people of a high caliber and high ethics, you’d better demonstrate those principals yourself.

While most VA’s are generalists, many specialize in a particular field. For example, when Brice was a VA she was deeply niched and only worked with best-selling authors. One advantage of becoming niched is the ability to charge a higher hourly rate. According to Brice the low end of the pay scale is about $30 per hour. In fact, she feels that a VA cannot make a profit billing at less than that. She projects that by 2003 the average experienced VA will be billing at around $60 per hour, and “much higher for someone who’s deeply niched and incredibly good at what she does.” Brice herself commanded over $100 per hour for her services when she was a VA.

While this is a fairly new industry, there are several organizations that offer support and resources to VA’s. Many VA’s agree that becoming a member of one of these organizations can be a tremendous help to someone starting out.

Valeri says that looking back, she would have joined a professional organization earlier to start networking with other people doing this type of work from home.

And Brice offers this advice:

“Look at all your options. Look at what it would be to get trained, and really investigate that. Look at what it would be to go it on your own and investigate that, as well. And find the organization, whether it’s AssistU, or another VA organization. Find the organization that you believe is going to support you in the way that you need to be supported. And be honest with yourself about it. That’s where I see a lot of arrogance. ‘I’ve been an administrative assistant for 12 years, I don’t need any help.’ Trust me, you need help. This is a brand new world. Working virtually is not the same as being an assistant in the corporate world. It just is not.”

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Copyright (c) 2007 Thomas Husnik

With the various means of online, virtual, and direct communication available to us now, it’s little wonder why telecommuting has become such a popular work alternative. For both employers and employees, working at home offers considerable benefits. The flexibility of schedule, the inherent trust involved, and an expanded employee base no longer limited by geography are all major contributors to the explosion of the telecommuting sector.

While a good number of companies are now offering their on-site employees the option of part-time or full-time telecommute work, there are also now strictly online opportunities. These work at home online jobs do not have a physical office location to report in to. Rather, all communication is done online or sometimes by phone.

Such jobs are focused on results alone and measure performance based on objectives met. Supervision is not necessary, with many workers choosing their own hours. Indeed, one of the primary features of a work at home online job is the freedom it affords the worker. Time usually spent in traffic for instance, can be spent instead with the family, running errands, or working on a side project.

With an online telecommuting job, since the work is computer-based, it can be performed virtually anywhere. Work at home online jobs are referred to as “work at home,” but in truth, they can be done on the road, in another city, or at a coffee house. Flexibility of time also factors into whether the job is full-time, part-time, or spare-time. With work at home, this is usually left up to the contractor. Since everything is performance-based, the pay scale simply reflects how much time the person wishes to put into the job.

For the employer, work at home online jobs are a great way to minimize costs. Since there isn’t a central office for the work team to report into, there’s no need for an office building to accommodate them. There’s no overhead. Since pay is based on performance, nothing is paid in excess of what is produced. Since most of the work is by contract, benefits such as medical or dental aren’t part of the job offer. For the employer, a virtual office could be all that’s needed to network a staff of employees from around the world.

Many smaller Internet companies make the most of online telecommuting. Since budget is limited for these companies, it’s more feasible to hire contract workers who can work from home. The bulk of jobs available do rely on results to indicate the quality of performance and determine a pay rate. The most common work at home online jobs involve data entry, which can be learned via online instruction or tutorial.

A quick look at job banks finds that many of the work at home online opportunities include coding, such as litigation coding or medical coding. In addition, there’s medical and legal transcription, which requires the individual to transcribe audio files word for word. Mystery-shopping and clerical work like typing, word processing, bookkeeping, scheduling, and claims processing, are also common. Creative freelance work, from writing to editing to proofreading, can also be readily found. As far as freelance jobs, technical opportunities, like database creation and web design, are also assignments that can be performed from anywhere.

While technology continues to open new doors for us, it’s only right that we step through. Work at home online jobs are a sign of the times and are certain to expand in the coming decade. Companies are falling in line with the benefits of telecommuting, while the online job sector is truly taking the idea and running with it.