Regardless of your motives for leaving the office – be they flexibility, freedom, growth opportunities, or something totally different – the truth is that we all need to make money at our work. 

And sometimes that can be the toughest thing to crack about moving into the virtual assistant world. How do I make a good living? 

When I’m just getting started, how do I make enough to really get going as a virtual assistant?

In today’s blog post, I’ll share the highest paying virtual assistant jobs in 2020 – and how to leverage your expertise to take advantage of them! 

If you’d rather watch than read, you can check out my video here! 

I often receive questions from aspiring virtual assistants about which jobs will pay the most, and what a VA should do to make the most money. When you’re first beginning as a virtual assistant, however, years of experience have taught me that it is best to focus on getting into the field rather than on “making bank”. That doesn’t mean to forget the latter – but what you need to get there are the skills and experience you’ll gain by simply working.

Rather, focus on the things you can do – the things you have experience in – so you can get in the door and start doing the work. Then later you can increase to higher-paying jobs (unless you already have the skill set to start at an increased wage). 

And when you’re ready to jump in deeper, here are some of the highest-paying virtual assistant jobs in 2020!

Executive Assistant. A virtual executive assistant works for someone who is often running many different areas of a company – and because of that, your knowledge will need to be correspondingly extensive. Most virtual executive assistants come from an office where they have already been working as an executive assistant (as I did). 

In this background, your breadth of knowledge will serve you well. The executive you are working with will likely need you to have some experience in many different aspects of support, be it operational, marketing, or even personal management. Executive assistants typically get paid a higher wage because they are required to know more – and know how their executive thinks and what he/she needs done (and how). 

It is sometimes possible to start handling individual tasks for an executive (such as calendar management) and then move into a position where you take on more and more of their work. If this is what you want to do, focus on gaining the skills you’ll need – even if you’re doing different tasks for different clients – and then look to switch over to a single executive. 

Social Media Assistant. A virtual assistant who handles social media is an incredible support to any business or individual in today’s age. This sort of assistant is often responsible for not only creating excellent social media posts, but also handling the analytics side. Do you understand how to maximize a Facebook business page? Do you know how to grab an audience’s attention on Instagram? 

These skills can be applied to almost any business, and they’re extremely handy to have in your pocket. If you enjoy social media, polish up your copywriting skills, research social media analytics in your field of interest, and start putting together your portfolio – and you’ll be a great asset to almost any entrepreneur or company. 

Web Designer. Another high-paying VA job is web design or web editing. This is not typically a skill that we bring from the office, so it may be something that you need to learn on the side. But if you understand website creation, web editing, and coding, you can absolutely make good money with this. 

Nearly every single business or entrepreneur needs a website – so there is a great deal of demand for this skillset. Begin putting together your portfolio sooner rather than later and build as much experience as you can – and you’ll be able to charge more for your expertise. 

Graphic Designer. If you’re skilled in graphic design, you can leverage those abilities to support many different kinds of businesses. If you have a natural eye for design, you can combine your ability with a mastery of programs such as Canva or Adobe – and get paid more as a virtual assistant, because many people don’t have that skillset (and need it!). 

Do you love putting a cutting-edge look on a proposal? Making an ebook top-of-the-line? Designing eye-popping lead magnets? This might be your sphere. 

Travel Coordinator. As a travel coordinator, you can handle travel for several different clients, or work for someone who travels a great deal. It takes a lot of experience to coordinate flights, trains, rental cars or ride-sharing services, etc. from a distance – and you can leverage this. 

Do you enjoy balancing itineraries? Coordinating flights? Handling the plethora of details that come with a trip? Can you take care of flight changes or adjust plans on the fly – and make it work? Then you might be cut out for this job.

At the end of the day, you can trade experience for higher pay in most virtual assistant fields. If you have niche experience in one of these fields – or in another area, such as the legal or real estate fields – you can be paid more because that experience is harder to come by. 

An important note: What if you don’t think you have any of these skill sets? 

You can learn them. 

Truly. 

Think of this as a normal career progression. When you first begin a job, you often have a set series of tasks you’ll stick to. When you first started work in the office, you’d probably be hired as a receptionist rather than as an executive assistant.

But once you get into it, you can identify new skills you need to learn, or new tasks your clients need. For example, I might find a new system a client is using and decide, “Great, they need “X”! I can learn that easily.” I’d do whatever it takes to learn that – and I would then charge for it correspondingly. The more experienced you are and the more relevant skills you have, the more you can charge. 

So start in what you CAN do. Then begin pulling in other tasks and skills on the side, master them, and add to your packages of what you can offer your clients. 

Of course, we want to be able to just jump into a high-paying field – but we have to be realistic about that, and we don’t always have the necessary experience starting out. So if you’re not in a position to be able to snatch up a niche virtual assistant job, be willing to put the work in. Develop the skillset you need. 

And when you’ve built the experience, you’ll be able to trade it for a high-paying job – doing the work you love.