Hottest VA Skills You Need to Increase Your Rates

Welcome to The How She Quits Show – Episode 3

One of my most asked questions from the How She Quits Community is…

How do I increase my rates as a Virtual Professional?

This is actually a really smart question to be asking because you could double or triple what you’re able to charge as a lower dollar VA who is just starting out. Imagine being able to charge $25-$50 per hour for your services, that equates to you being a $50,000-$100,000 employee if you are working full-time.

Remember too, these rates are for Virtual Professionals. We are here to elevate the quality of our skills, the breadth of what we have to offer and build long term high value relationships; the hallmarks of higher dollar work opportunities.

In speaking with my own clients and colleagues, I’ve identified 5 themes for what clients want

Creative Talent – This will never go out of style or not be a need. Example: logo design, video storyboards, writing.
Marketing Insights –What content is going to do well? How to research that content. How to re-purpose it efficiently for reach.
High Value, Low Touch Work – Can you do something end to end and know all the steps without having to ask me (the client) a zillion questions?
Efficiency in doing more – We have a good report. You KNOW ME. What more can you take off my plate? (it’s more efficient to interface with fewer people)
Trusting Your People and Communication Skills to Put You In Front of My Customers and Partners – Can you represent my name, my brand and my reputation with quality and integrity? (This is more than answering customer emails. This is helping with the sales cycle and the delivery of services processes.)

These types of skills are going to elevate your rates and make you a higher caliber VA. Now let’s get specific and talk about:

What’s Hot

Project Management (but don’t market it as such- this should be conveyed in the words you use to describe yourself in your profile)
Video editing. Period. It takes a long time and is a hot marketing tool.
Knowing and executing the process of the content machine -> research, create, polish, distribute and repurpose, keep it organized
Lead Nurturing -> who to follow up with and how inside FB groups, with messages and email
Defining processes for better efficiency and organization

What’s Not

Being a task checker-offer. That’s $6 / hour overseas VA work
Canva skills – still needed but a commodity and low dollar (ex. Design Pickle)
Being limited to knowing only how to post a blog post
FB Group community management that ends with a simple welcome post
Saying you are good at organizing but only knowing how to do things in ways that work for you.

Now, you’ve likely got questions or things holding you back and that’s good. You’re an active learner and a critical thinker- those are high dollar VA traits!

Worried that only large corporations pay these rates. And you don’t want the stress and challenges of working for and landing contracts with large corporations
- These are all online entrepreneurs. People who share my values, work from home and have become trusted colleagues.
Are you putting in the time to learn new skills.
- Get focused and get practicing!
- It’s a FAST learning cycle in online marketing
Hanging in the wrong circles can cost you
- I.e. free FB groups with lots of mompreneurs who aren’t showing the savvy skillset
Don’t take the WRONG courses
- Do you want to be another VA or a Virtual Professional?
- Think about who those courses are trying to attract. What’s their business model.
  - (So what’s mine? My mission here is to elevate the quality of professional services in online marketing and make a path for high quality, high value, long term work from home careers.)
Where can you find these clients?
How can you develop higher value skills?

You all know that I have a passion for helping you start and grow your Virtual Professional Businesses so you can have the life you want, away from the day job that is holding you back. To do that I have some exciting new programs for you!

FAST CLASS: High Dollar Virtual Work Finder

Insider Intel on finding quality clients and projects for virtual professionals who want to work from home and make $25 – $50 / hour

In this 90 Minute Class You Will Learn:

Where to look for clients who will pay $500 – $1000 / month for ongoing work
What projects have the best potential to become long term client relationships
How these clients are finding their next Virtual Professional
My private list of the programs / groups / businesses to network and find this kind of work

FAST CLASS: Rapid Skill Development for High Dollar VA Work

How can you fast track your learning of these higher dollar skills? The experience curve is FAST in the online world and this can be used to your advantage.