Being a Virtual Assistant (VA) can be a rewarding and fun business to be in, especially if you already have basic administrative skills. But only knowing the very basic skills limits what services you offer to clients and also restricts your income growth. This is where acquiring new and more advanced skills will come in handy. The more skills you know, the more services you can offer clients, and that definitely means more money in your bank account. But what new skills are worthy of learning in order to grow your income and your business? In this article, we discuss what skills a Virtual Assistant should have beyond having basic administrative skills, and what skills will give a VA greater earning potential.

Boost your VA Skills

More and more people are looking for ways to create extra income and in turn, some of those people will start an online business. More and more brick-and-mortar businesses are taking their offline business presence and creating an online presence to help them generate even more income and growth. You see, as these new online businesses appear in the marketplace, these businesses will look to hire Virtual Assistants to help them grow their business as well as to help the remain on the cutting edge, and the outcome will be different services that need to be outsourced. Some outsourced services might include:

- Video tutorial creation

- Audio production such as providing professional sounding audio commercials

- Video distribution services

These types of services are already being performed by VA's right now and will soon become the typical services that virtual assistants provide as the online marketplace becomes more competitive. Do you have to know how to produce a video commercial or tutorial? No, not necessarily; but if you want to explode your income online and grow your business you should learn this new skill. Don't be surprised one day if your best client asks you if you know how to create video tutorials or if you distribute videos online to places like YouTube.com.

Must Know Virtual Assistant Skills

Now that we have covered what Virtual Assistant-boosting skills you should have, it's time to go over the skills that all Virtual Assistants must and should learn besides the obvious basic administrative skills. These must-know skills are:

- Setting up an autoresponder message series for clients. This might include using programs like Aweber

- Setting up pay-per-click ads and banner ads online to places like Google Adwords

- Compiling reports into PDF format

- Distributing articles to article directories and doing it efficiently

- Adding Google Analytics tracking code to shopping carts

- Issuing customer refunds in primary programs like PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, and Google Checkout

- Working in customer support systems like the Kayako helpdesk and PerlDesk

Knowing the types of skills listed above is crucial to your online success. If you don't know any of the skills mentioned, don't worry, because you can learn them. It will take some time to learn, but before you know it, you'll be a pro. Learning these new skills will most likely require you to purchase some software. For instance, if you want to learn how to create video tutorials, you should invest in screen capture video software. You would then read the manual and practice this new skill. Of course, you don't have to go through the hassle of buying every program out there to learn new skills. Many programs like PayPal and Kayako come with a user manual or knowledge base to help you work through the programs. This means that you don't actually have to buy the Kayako help desk program in order to use it. By reading manuals, working in programs, and using software hands-on you'll be teaching yourself a new skill. Remember, it will take effort and some time to learn new skills, but in the end, you and your business will benefit.