The Best Virtual Assistant Training for Aspiring VAs

If you’d like to work from home, whether part-time or full-time, virtual assistant training can be exactly what you need to make it a reality.

Virtual assistants are able to benefit from a flexible schedule, enjoy high demand for their services, and make money by using their existing skills.

While there are plenty of side hustles ideas and ways to make money from home, working as a virtual assistant gives you the opportunity to build a business and start making money pretty quickly (within a few months). You can work around your existing schedule and choose how much you want to work.

The flexibility and income potential of working as a VA are appealing to a lot of people, but knowing where to start can be overwhelming. There are a few courses and training resources available that can be incredibly helpful, and we’ll hight the best options in this article.

Should You Pay for a Virtual Assistant Training Course?

If you’re considering working as a VA, you’ll need to decide if you’re willing to invest in a course that will lead you through the process of getting started and growing your business. Below, you’ll find links to some of the best courses, as well as some free resources that can help you to get started if you’re not ready to invest in a course.

A good course will more than pay for itself by helping you to start making money faster. You may be able to do it on your own without paying for a course, but if a course can help you to start making money a few months sooner, it’s easily worth the price.

With that being said, I want to provide some free options as well, so you will find both free and paid resources below.

The Best Virtual Assistant Training

If you’re interested in working as a VA but not sure where to start, these courses and training materials can help.

1. $10K VA

$10K VA is a course by Kayla Sloan, who has been working as a VA since 2014. The goal of the course is to help students make $10,000 per month as a VA! Kayla routinely reaches five figures per month as a VA, and if you want to learn how to run a profitable business as a virtual assistant, this is the best training that you can get.

I recently had the opportunity to go through the course material in 10K VA and I’m very confident that an aspiring VA will find this course to be extremely helpful.

The course includes 7 different modules:

1. What is a VA? This module includes help with designing your own business and deciding what services to offer.
2. How to Find and Pitch VA Jobs, including perfecting your pitch and how to get referrals.
3. Pricing Services and Getting Paid, including how to raise your prices over time.
4. Building Client Relationships the Right Way, including setting boundaries and overcoming objections.
5. Running the Day-to-Day as a $10K VA, including creating a schedule and juggling multiple responsibilities.
6. Making Your Business Legit, including building your portfolio, marketing your business, and taxes.
7. Up-Level Your VA Business, including earning more, creating systems, and outsourcing.

The course also includes several downloadable worksheets and checklists that are extremely helpful with getting your business up and running.

Everything described above is a part of the Standard package, which costs $497. There is also an upgraded package priced at $1,797 (monthly payment plan is available) which includes some valuable add-ons like:

• Access to an exclusive Facebook Group for $10K VA students.
• Bonus module that includes video interviews with successful VAs.
• Access to Kayla’s network of clients who are looking for VAs.
• Two 30-minute coaching sessions with Kayla.

While the core training is the same in both packages, the bonuses of the Lifetime package can be extremely valuable. Many new VAs struggle with landing their first few clients, so having access to exclusive job opportunities could be an invaluable bonus. And the two coaching sessions allow you to get some personalized help rather than relying exclusively on the course material. 

As I went through the $10K VA course material, I found it to be very practical and to the point. It covers all of the details that you need to know to get started, and can also help you to grow and earn an above-average income as a VA.

Learn more about $10K VA, or enroll to get started right away.

2. 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success

This is Gina Horkey’s flagship course that is designed to give you everything you need to build a successful business as a VA. Gina is an extremely successful VA and this course will lead you step-by-step through the process of starting, launching, and growing your business.

The course includes 90+ lessons covering things like:

• Launching your business. Defining your services and choosing your target market.
• How to make money as a VA. Setting your rates, offering packages, moving clients to a retainer model.
• Establishing your online presence. Website, newsletter, testimonials.
• Where to find clients. Your natural market, social media, networking.
• Pitching your services to clients. Templates and best practices.
• How to interview and get hired. Tips for online interviews and follow up.
• How to manage your business. Contracts, onboarding, parting with clients.

You’ll also get:

• Interviews with experts. Insider tips and tricks.
• 90-day access to an exclusive community (includes help finding clients). Monthly charge if you decide to stay past 90 days.
• 20+ enhanced templates and worksheets.
• 8 customizable pitch templates to help you land clients.

Gina and her course have a great track record. You can see plenty of success stories here. The cost for the course is a one-time payment of $498 or 3 monthly payments of $199.

Learn more about 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success, or enroll if you want to get started right away.

3. The Savvy System

The Savvy System is the course of Abbey Ashley. The mission of the course is to get you to $5,000 – $10,000 per month in income as a VA. The course includes step-by-step instructions that will help you to set up your own successful business.

Enrollment to Virtual Assistant Bootcamp is only open at certain times, but on the website you’ll be able to sign up for the waitlist. Abby also offers a few valuable freebies that are worth checking out:

• VA Checklist for setting up your business
• Become a Booked Out VA free video training

4. 5 Steps to Becoming a Virtual Assistant (Free)

Kayla Sloan of $10K VA also offers a free workshop that can serve as a great introduction. If you’re interested in working as a VA but you’re not 100% sure, attending this free workshop would be a great decision. As you can tell from the name, you’ll learn the basic steps that you need to take to become a virtual assistant.

5. How to Become a Virtual Assistant: Everything You Need to Know (Free)

This article by Gina Horkey provides a great introduction to the subject. In the article, she covers topics like:

• What is a Virtual Assistant?
• What Services Does a Virtual Assistant Provide?
• How to Become a Virtual Assistant
• How to Choose Your Business Structure
• Decide Which VA Services You’ll Offer
• Decide on Your Pricing Structure
• Launch Your Website and Create Your Online Presence
• Land New Clients by Pitching and Networking

If you have any doubts about whether working as a VA may be a good fit for you, be sure to read through this article. It may be enough to get you started and making money, and if you feel like you need more guidance, you can pay for a much more detailed course.

6. Start a VA Business: Create Services That Sell

This course created by Billie Garner is available at Skillshare, so it’s a bit different than any of the other courses covered above. Skillshare has a massive library of thousands of courses and you can get access to all of the courses will a Skillshare Premium membership.

The best part is, you can get two months of free access when you sign up through this link. Two months is plenty of time to go through several courses and decide if the membership is something that you want to keep. 

Most of the courses at Skillshare are fairly brief, although there are some that are much more in-depth. This one provides a great introduction to the topic of working as a VA, but it isn’t nearly as in-depth as the first the courses in this list (and it’s reflected in the price).  If you’re unsure about spending a few hundred dollars or more on a course, this one is worth checking out.

7. 150+ Services You Can Offer as a Virtual Assistant (Free)

This is another free resource from Gina Horkey and this one can help you to find some specific services that you could offer to clients. You’ll need to enter an email address to get access to the list, but it’s well worth it (plus, you can unsubscribe at any time).

Maybe you already know exactly what services you’d like to offer and this list isn’t necessary, but many people struggle with this early stage of the business.

Other Training That Can Help You to Develop Your Skills

The resources covered above are all intended to help you run your business as a virtual assistant. However, you may also be interested in brushing up your skills or learning some new skills that can be put to use for your clients. The courses listed below can help you to up your skills.

Social Media Management Bootcamp

Many VAs offer services related to social media management. There are a lot of small business owners that don’t have the time or knowledge to effectively manage their own social media accounts, so it’s a great service for VAs to offer.

This course teaches you how to set up your own business and offer social media management services to your clients. It’s more specialized than the two previous courses that give more general instruction on running a virtual assistant business.

Through the course, you’ll learn how to:

• Get results with social media marketing.
• Set goals (and achieve them).
• Recognize the best social media platforms for each of your clients.
• Create blog posts, images, and videos.
• Set up a freelance business and a website.
• Price your services and find clients.
• Create monthly reports for your clients.

The course is offered through Udemy and the price changes from time-to-time (Udemy runs a lot of sales and promotions), but it’s always available at a very reasonable price (and sometimes at a really great price).

Beginner’s Guide to Canva for Graphic Design

The services you offer as a VA may include things like creating social media graphics and images/graphics for blog posts. You don’t need amazing design skills to create these graphics, but you do need to understand the basics of using some sort of graphic design software.

Canva is a free web app that makes it easy to create all kinds of graphics. This course will provide an introduction to Canva and get you up and running quickly. There are 14 video lessons and the total time is 34 minutes, so it won’t take much of your time.

This course is offered on Skillshare, so you’ll need a Skillshare membership to get access, but you can get two months of free access with this link.

Learn more about Canva for Beginners and join Skillshare.

To learn more about other side hustles please see:

• How to Become a Transcriptionist
• The Best Transcription Jobs
• How to Make Money as a Web Designer
• How to Become a Freelance Writer

Thousands of Courses at Skillshare

I’ve mentioned two courses from Skillshare, but there are more than 20,000 other courses available on the site. You could sign up for the two months of free access and take several courses that will help you with the skills that you want to develop.

Why Take a Course?

If you’re looking to become a virtual assistant, there are some specific ways that a course may prove to be very valuable.

Define Your Services and Your Niche

One of the most important parts of starting your VA business is deciding what services you’re going to offer and what niche you want to serve. A course can help you to know the services that are in demand and assist you with finding the ones that would be a good fit for your existing skills.

While it’s not 100% necessary, targeting a particular niche or industry can be very helpful as well. Of course, if you have some experience in a particular niche that can be a good start, but a course can help you to make the best decision about a niche that you want to serve.

Fine-Tune Your Skills and Services

Some courses will help you with the actual skills or services that you’ll be using for your clients. This will depend on the course and on the services that you’re going to offer, but anything you can do to improve your skills will make your VA services more valuable.

Learn How to Present Yourself and Market Your Services

How you present and market yourself and your services is critical to your success as a virtual assistant. A course will teach you the best and most proven ways to attract clients and increase the demand for your services.

This is one of the biggest areas that many people benefit from taking a course. Even if your skills are great, you won’t be able to have success with your business if your presentation or marketing is off. The course instructors have great experience in their own businesses and they can help you in this area.

Help with Landing Clients

One of the most intimidating aspects of starting a service business is finding your first few clients. You may have a lot of interest in becoming a VA, but you could have no idea how to find clients who will actually pay you. This is where a good course can become extremely valuable.

While it’s definitely possible to find clients on your own without the help of a course, if you’re struggling, a course can be a huge help. The best courses will give you plenty of direction that will help you to find clients, and some will even offer assistance or leads from people who are looking for a VA.

Advice for Managing Your Business

Having skills and being able to offer quality services is a big part of what it takes to succeed, but it’s just as important that you are able to effectively run your business. If you struggle in this area, or if you simply lack experience, a course can give you the information and resources to manage your business more effectively.

Help with Contracts

Some courses will offer contact templates or provide you with some guidance on what you need to include in any contracts that you use with your clients. While this is not the most exciting part of any course, it can help to protect you and your business.

Speed Up Your Progress

It’s possible to start a successful virtual assistant business with or without a course. But by taking a course, you may be able to have success sooner, which means you can make more money.

Learn from Someone Else’s Experiences and Mistakes

The course creators have been through the process of starting and growing their own VA businesses. They’ve made mistakes along the way, and they have valuable experience that can help you to avoid those mistakes and give you a better chance to succeed.

Join a Community

Some courses offer a community aspect for students (like a Facebook group). Connecting with other students and with the moderators can be a great way to get your questions answered, to stay motivated, and to make friends.

Final Thoughts

If you’re ready to start working from home and making money as a VA, be sure to pick one of the training resources or courses mentioned above. If you’re unsure, start with Kayla Sloan’s free workshop, 5 Steps to Becoming a Virtual Assistant.

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