What's involved in being a virtual PA? Just answering phones? Or creating letters & emails etc?

[newstartamiready]

I always thought virtual pa's just answered the phone? I'm looking into it as an option to work from home.

How much do they realistically earn?
Is it better to work for yourself or a company / agency?
If you work for yourself how do you find the work?
Can you do it parttime?
What is required apart from answering the phone?

Following

Hi, being a virtual PA in fact does not involve phone answering it is more of taking up on admin related tasks like data entry, creating newsletters, email and diary management, social media management, web content updating, blog writing. I have been looking to do start this a business myself. I have done a lot of research on this. Others who have been successful, seem to have found their clients through getting involved in networking events - a lot of them; they also value linked in as well when finding their clients. I have joined many facebook groups for VA's; I read a lot of others' experiences - so far I have seen that more experienced VA's tend to offer their own experiences as an added service to other newbee VA's, they sell training programs, or e-books that they prepared and so on. I could not find the realistic earnings on this yet. Good luck in your search xx

A friend of mine has a Pink Spaghetti franchise - google their website, it'll tell you about what a virtual PA does.

I think it will completely vary based on who you are working for and what their individual needs are. I have a friend who is a virtual PA and she does answer the phone a lot. The client bought her virtual numbers through United World Telecom www.unitedworldtelecom so she doesn't have to use her personal cell and the calls made to that virtual number get automatically redirected to her cell. There is a special ring for work calls. It's pretty cool, actually. Now, I have done some virtual PA work in the past (I work for myself now) and most of my work involved writing letters, drafting contracts, and things like that, but I still also had to make some calls. I used my cell at that time, but now I use virtual numbers also.

Interesting. I hadn't heard of the Pink Spaghetti franchise. Looking forward to seeing more replies on this one!