Episode 318: My Top 4 Favorite Ways to Find New Virtual Assistant Clients (Plus 2 I Don’t Recommend)

Full Episode Transcription:

Hey y’all, welcome back to the Virtual Assistant Mama podcast. In this episode, I’m going to share with you my top four favorite ways to find new virtual assistant clients. Plus a bonus of two that I do not recommend. So let’s just go ahead and jump on in. Number one, my probably top favorite way to find new VA clients is in business or entrepreneur Facebook groups. There are seriously hundreds, if not thousands of Facebook groups out there with business owners constantly posting, looking for help, looking to outsource. And all you have to do to apply is comment on the post. You can send them a DM if they say that’s okay. They don’t always want that. And then bam, you’ve applied for the position.

Sometimes there might be a form for you to fill out, but most of the times it’s as simple as starting with a comment. application, if that’s what you want to call it. Okay. So it’s really easy. Like I said, there’s seriously hundreds, if not thousands of business owners posting every single day, looking for help in these groups. And you don’t even have to look for specific job postings. If you see any sort of posts that’s similar to the service that you offer, if somebody is asking a question, whatever it is, you can answer that question. And then If they get the help they need from you, they’re more likely to reach out to you to maybe go look at your profile, see if you have your website or your social media or your portfolio linked there. And then they’re likely to hire you because you took the time out of your day to help To quickly answer a question they had. And so that’s happened to me multiple times. So it’s a really great place to network with people that aren’t necessarily looking for help, but might be willing to outsource. And then it’s also just a great place to actually apply to open positions. So I’ve found most of my clients from Facebook groups and so have many, many, many of my virtual assistant mama academy students. So that would be my number one place for you to check out. All right. A second way that you can find new virtual assistant clients, which I think is really great is through people that you know.

There are probably so many people in your world that could use the help of a virtual assistant But they don’t even know that that’s a thing that they could do They think they’re gonna have to hire someone full time Pay them all these benefits and all these crazy things in order to get the help they need and so they’re not gonna do that They’re just gonna keep doing it themselves or however, they’ve been doing it But with a virtual assistant they can hire you for just a couple hours a month whatever it is and And they would probably be so willing to do that if they knew you existed. So what I always recommend is to just put up a quick post every now and then on your Facebook and let people know what you’re doing. Let them know what you can offer, what you can help with as a virtual assistant and just ask people to share it with someone they know that could use that help. If you keep it open like that.

Asking them to just, you know, share it with someone they know, instead of being like, Hey, do you want to hire me? They’re more likely to say, Hey, actually I could use your help. I’ll share it with people I know as well, but I need you. Okay. So one of my first clients was somebody I know, and it was because I did that Facebook post. So I highly recommend that as a method for finding people. new virtual assistant clients. I know some people are like hesitant to do a post on their Facebook because they don’t want some people to see. You can go into your privacy settings on the post and you could set it to only show, like show to most of your friends list, but you can exclude certain people. So when I first jumped into the virtual assistant world, I wasn’t teaching anymore, but I still didn’t really want like my admin knowing I was doing this in case I ended up going back to teaching. I wasn’t too sure. So I just blocked them from seeing those posts. And it was only like that specific post I blocked them from, they could still see my other stuff.

So that’s totally a possibility for you. The third way you can find a new virtual assistant client is through local businesses. Again, this is kind of like the people, you know, local businesses, if they’re not online, if they’re like a brick and mortar store, they might not even know virtual assistants are out there and can help them. So if you frequent a local business really off, like pretty often, you could just let them know, Hey, I am a social media manager. If you guys ever need help, With your social media presence, I would love to help you. Some local businesses too will let you like post your business card or something at their location. I’ve done that with our chiropractor back in Texas. So that’s a good option as well. But yeah, a lot of local businesses don’t know that virtual assistants can help them. So you can just kind of go. You know, casually pitch your services to them. You don’t have to make it this big old spiel and too formal. Okay. All right. The last one I have for you, the last way to find new virtual assistant clients is on Instagram. So let’s just say, for example, you know, you want to work with photographers. That’s like your niche you want to work with for clients. You could go and like research photographer hashtags, go into those hashtags, see what, like, different accounts are using those hashtags and you can start networking with them.

You can follow them. You can like their stories, comment on their posts, whatever it is. You don’t even have to directly say, Hey, I work with photographers. Want to hire me? Cause I know some people I don’t like cold pitching. I don’t either. So you don’t have to do that, but you can just start to build that relationship organically with that account, with the hopes that if they see your name popping up enough, that you’re interacting with their community, they’ll be likely to go and see what you do. And then if they’re like, Oh, She offers social media management. I need help with that. She’s already engaged in my community and really active in everything that I do. I’m going to hire her instead of looking elsewhere. Okay, so Instagram is a really good way, again, to build that community, to just show others that you care and you’re invested in their business with the hopes that they’ll come and love what you offer and hire you. All right. Now for the two places that I do not recommend finding virtual assistant clients, number one is Upwork and number two is Fiverr. Either of these places, I never, ever, ever recommend looking for them. For virtual assistant clients, the reason being one, you have to pay to apply to the positions on these platforms, which is silly. And to most of the positions on the platforms do not pay enough. They are way undercharging. And a lot of the people that end up taking those positions are people who live in different countries where maybe their currency, their currency exchange is like. The value of their currency, couldn’t think of my words, is different than ours and so maybe that is a really good budget for them, but it’s not, you know, in the U. S. or whatever. So I don’t recommend going there just because the budget’s usually not big enough. Once in a while it is, but I just don’t even think it’s worth like trying to look there because it’s so sporadic and you have to pay to apply. So you’re paying Upwork or Fiverr a certain amount to apply to each position. And then if you don’t get it, you just kind of wasted that money. So I don’t recommend those, but Facebook groups, people, you know, local businesses and Instagram, those are probably my, Not probably, definitely my top four places for you to try looking for new virtual assistant clients. You, I recommend just picking one of these, maybe two, and really hitting them hard before you add in another so it doesn’t get too overwhelming.

I’ve always just hit Facebook groups really hard because that’s what’s, It’s worked well for me, but whatever you think would be fun for you and like, if you’re more outgoing, you might be more open to going and talking to local businesses, but if you’re not super outgoing, you can kind of hide behind your computer through Facebook groups and Instagram. But yeah, it’s, these are the ways that have worked for me to find clients. So many of my students have found clients these different ways. And so I really recommend them to you. And if you need more help and you want like maybe a couple Facebook groups that you want to be able to check out I actually give you a couple of those a couple good ones to check out in my free workshop I’m not going to share them here. You got to go check out the workshop, but In that workshop, I walk you through the five P’s to become a successful virtual assistant, and I just break it down for you. So it’s really easy to understand. And again, in there, I will share with you some top Facebook groups I recommend in different ways that you can attract new clients. So go register for that at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop. You can also find that link in the show notes. If you have any questions about this, you can always drop it in our free Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/virtualassistantmama. And yeah, I’m just so excited to answer your questions and to help you in any way that I can. All right, y’all. I love you so much and we will see you next time.