As a Virtual Assistant, will I love happily ever after?

MANILA - Being a virtual assistant, VA is only for those who accept mass email jobs and nothing more. How boring! And how undignified. I didn´t want to work just for the income but, even granting the income, I can´t be a VA and live happily ever after. Just not my style. Just not my cup of tea. I have to love what I´m doing to love happily ever after.

That´s what I thought. Until today, Wednesday, 17 November 2010 in Manila. My eldest son Jomar, who is into Internet Marketing, is naturally into training would-be VAs, and I have not been paying attention much. Maybe being a VA was good for an essay or two, but I didn´t think it was for me. I´m a creative writer; I don´t want to be a non-creative mass mailer.

Then about a month ago, Jomar asked me to edit his VA talks into a book, and that got me to thinking. If you talk about making a book, you´ve got me cornered. My youngest son Edwin transcribed the text from the video, and formatting in Word 2010, I found Jomar´s talks were not enough for a minimum-size book of 100 pages, so we have to add content. And that´s what I decided to do today, look for more content on being a VA, for suggested content. And that´s how I found out that being a VA is for me too, a writer, editor, desktop publisher, adviser, blogger, emailer, and American Chronicle correspondent. That´s how I surprised myself.

Brickwork India says that a "Virtual Assistant is a highly trained professional who provides quality off-site administrative & secretarial services to clients." That is correct; that is the traditional view - in that definition, "Virtual Assistant" is equivalent to "Office Temps," for temporary or contractual office support and assistance. But all that is not enough. When you equate virtual assistance with "administrative & secretarial services" sounds like virtual assistance is low-grade, inferior, simply mechanical work, not much mental - and that is not correct. Quality is in the details - the administrative & secretarial services are details.

Now, with the advent of modern information technology, IT, being VA includes not only office services but also promotion of products and services outside the office. These require more mental acumen than office work. So, virtual assistance involves either or both office and consumer support services.

The simplest definition that I have found is from Virtual Assistant Business.com, which states that a "A virtual assistant (or a VA) is a person who works remotely from his or her client´s office."

Being a VA is all about office and customer services, except that it is online and not onsite; the VA is at home and the office is somewhere else, perhaps a thousand miles away. Office temps, they used to be called, for temporary office support and assistance, contracted services. What I have just found out is that a virtual assistant is any or any combination of these:

1. Article writing for promotion
2. Autobiography writing
3. Banners
4. Biography writing
5. Blogging
6. Book review
7. Book writing
8. Book production
9. Booking tickets
10. Bookkeeping
11. Calendar maintenance
12. Call center assistance
13. Call taking, forwarding & follow-ups
14. Catering arrangement
15. Consultancy
16. Convention management
17. Copywriting
18. Corporate ID kit
19. Corporate Stylesheet / Template for documents
20. Create Presentations
21. Creative assistance
22. Customer billing
23. Customer service
24. Data entry & database management
25. Data management
26. Design (website)
27. Draft correspondence
28. Draft reports
29. eBook
30. Edit letters / reports / manuscripts
31. Email marketing
32. Event marketing
33. File conversions
34. File management
35. Flyers
36. Food catering
37. Ghostwriting
38. Information management
39. Internet connection
40. Internet support
41. IT support
42. Layouting (publications)
43. Legal assistance
44. Mail merge
45. Maintain calendar
46. Mass emails
47. Medical billing
48. Medical transcription
49. Mentoring
50. Microsoft Office support
51. Newsletter
52. Office supplies
53. Online research
54. Payroll processing
55. Personal Assistance
56. Phone service for customers
57. Posters
58. PowerPoint presentations
59. Press release writing & handling
60. Proofreading / copyreading documents / manuscripts
61. Real estate assistance
62. Reminders
63. Research assistance
64. Sales & marketing
65. Schedules and confirmations
66. Scriptwriting
67. Search Engine Optimization, SEO
68. Secretary
69. Social media setup
70. Speaking
71. Spreadsheets (Excel)
72. Survey coordination
73. Team writing
74. Technical assistance
75. Textbook writing
76. Training
77. Training manuals
78. Translations (English to Ilocano / Filipino)
79. Translations (technical to popular language)
80. Travel planning
81. Tutorials in Windows
82. Tutorials in Microsoft Office Suite
83. Typing and formatting
84. Venue booking
85. Voice mail
86. Website consultancy
87. Website update / editing
88. Windows support
89. Word processing support
90. Writing / design & layout / formatting / typesetting newsletter
91. Writing reports

Entries in the work list of 91 for VAs above are not mutually exclusive, but that doesn´t matter. And no, it´s not an exhaustive list; I´m giving the list just so you have a bird´s-eye view of the entire horizon of virtual assistance. Actually, the title or name of the VA service is not important. The quality of the output is, and the cost.

VA jobs are for moms, Nicole Dean says (howtobecomeava.com). Why not for dads, and brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers? I am a grandfather 8 times over, and I am ready, willing and able to be a virtual assistant anytime. Why me? I can do at least 30 of those in the list, as long as it has to do with writing, editing, desktop publishing, blogging. Try me! Send me an email message via my Profile - I´m sure to get it, and fast. Speed is of the essence.