This is based on a conversation @sidney and I were having. Does anyone do virtual assistance online? I know a good site is ELance, but I am looking for other suggestions of sites you have used and are legit.
I have no experience in doing virtual assisstant work yet, but you might want to try Freelancer, Upwork, (formerly Odesk) and Fiverr and it's clone sites. Those are all legit sites.
It would be better to stick with sites such Elance and Upwork because there at least the guarantee that you'll get paid for work done. There are other sites I've heard of which offer VA jobs but save for just knowing that you can get VA jobs on those sites, I don't know anything more about them: Log In You could also try looking through Monster.com. I've seen lots of VA jobs posted on the site.
I was initially very interested in doing freelance online work as a virtual assistant as they usually offer full time hours, and the money's good, but was very quickly sorely disappointed. It would appear most of those virtual assistant jobs are only available to US residents. Quite often, the companies prefer to conduct training on their premises too. The people they serve are in North America, so I guess it makes sense. So I stopped looking for those.
I wouldn't mind doing this on a part-time basis for someone, say so many hours a day or so many days a week as you can then fit it around and organize things. Unfortunately many of these agencies as the middle man promote VA jobs as one offs, and these aren't really worth your while as you have to do it around the clients time frame. Say they say they need dentist appointments for their kids, you have to then be on the phone to organize that until it's done and you get paid by the job and not the hour, so you could be on hold for a long time. Assistant jobs where someone sends you things to do to be done is much better than the random jobs, but via an agency to get those, you need to do the other small one off jobs first.
I have, in the past, been very interested in finding virtual assistant jobs online. But every website that I have come across, that offer these opportunities, has had something about them that I wasn't happy with. So I have found myself not taking part in any virtual assistant jobs.
I wanted to try this but I think what happened was out of the ones that I had found you still had to compete as much as you do in the "real world" for the chance to work there. You would think that getting a job online would be easier.
Unfortunately, most virtual assistant positions are either scams or for less than minimum wage. If you know how to avoid the scams, though, you can find a pretty lucrative opportunity being a virtual assistant. I've done it before, but I prefer working on my own rather than working for someone else in whatever capacity. The work isn't that difficult, depending upon who you work for, which is always nice. Plus, you're working from home.
Yes, I have come across many virtual assistant scams. And then for some of the online virtual assistant jobs that are legitimate, they are not available in my country, so I can't participate in those. I am also someone who prefer to be left to my own devices when it comes to online work activities.