Hello Everyone,

I have a meeting tomorrow and in this meeting I need to show that starting a VA business is a viable option. Does any one know where I can find some market research on VAs? Anything that shows this is a growing industry, but that the market is not over saturated?

How many of you have to turn away work or out source other VAs?

Thank you
Rayvin

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Brightest Blessings
Rayvin Nyte - www.Rayvins.com

Here are some articles I have linked to from my site that may help your cause:

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/eu...ual.assistant/

http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/19990811_vtassistant.htm

http://www.bankrate.com/ust/news/biz...s/19990802.asp

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...ed-think-again

I haven't done any marketing in over 6 months and yet i get an average of 2-3 calls per month of people looking for a virtual bookkeeper. i don't have the physical time to take on new clients right now.

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Lily Chambers, The Virtual Office Goddess, LLC
Author "How to Do Your Own Small Business Bookkeeping"

I do only general transcription. So far I'm not turning away work, but I am swamped--more so than I've been in a long time. I have also been in business for over 14 years, so it's partially an increase in my regular my clients' work, plus a few new clients. I recently picked up a client that was using someone in another state but wanted to go local since a lot of what they have are tapes (the got tired of mailing the tapes back and forth). Currently, all my clients are local.

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Pam Deyerle - Transcriptionist in the Richmond, Virginia area
The Perfect Word Transcription Services

I wanted to tag on to this question as I am a new member and have a similar question. I recently established my business as an LLC as I have acquired a pretty consistent client that is pursuing government contracts and therefore I support her in areas of proposal writing, Small Business Administration 8(a) certification, marketing and other areas.

Most of my skills are not true administrative services, more business management and marketing services and therefore I am a little hesitant to market myself as a "Virtual Assistant", however, I fully have the capability to operate as a VA as well.

I have received a lot of beneficial information from the International Association of Virtual Assistants, but I was seeking a community where virtual and/or administrative professionals could share ideas, workload and knowledge of their particular expertise to foster business development in their own businesses. Seems like I've found it in Virtual Assistan forums. If anyone would like to share business development ideas, I'd love to hear from them; specifically how to effectively market virtual services to business that are government contractors.

What kind of meeting Rayvin? One with a bank for finance or a business network for other business people? There's a lot of info out there but unless we have a more specific idea of your need...

I can tell you personally that I started in this business over 16 years ago so I could be home for my 5 daughters. At the end of my first year in business I matched the gross income of the previous year in a corporate job (1994). So that convinced me I was on the right track.

Business has its ups and downs and there are times when I wonder where the next $$ is coming from but these days I'm more set with regularity and have a client base who is fairly regular in their work needs. However, it's important not to become complacent and stop networking because clients can die, move on, change their minds, change their businesses, go back to a job, have a baby or a ton of other things and then you need to replace them with another client. Been there, done that.

What I am saying is that with time and effort you can run a viable full time (if you want) VA business but it doesn't happen overnight and will need consistent and persistent action to make it work.

With respect to outsourcing to other VAs, very early in my business (around 2 years after I started) I sought out others who were likeminded (this was 1996 and the Internet was just making itself known) and had them as backups for when I had a full client base. That group of support has grown over the years and is still available. I don't take on many new clients myself these days but regularly refer clients on to my backup team.

Hi Rayvin:

I couldn't have said it better than Kathie! I have been in business since 2004 and have found that networking is a major key in ensuring business continues to grow.

As far as the market being saturated, I don't find this to be true there are many people of different skill sets and working in different niches that keep the industry strong and I believe this industry is in for the long haul and will continue to grow.

Doreen