1. Start your own blog
It helps to have your own blog where prospective clients can view progress you made over the months or years you are busy, reviewing your style and commitment towards your work. Starting your own blog also showcases your talent to the general public, where someone may see it and direct a client towards it.
Your blog does not even have to cost money, as there are many free services which will allow you to host it. You also do not need technical skills to start your blog as many blogs support WordPress. Granted that the advance features of WordPress does require skill, it will allow you to grow into these features as you see fit.
2. Take a course
There are a number of virtual assistant courses that you can take that will really assist in expanding your abilities and teach you what to be on the lookout for.
One such course I can highly recommend is a course called “30 Days Or Less To Virtual Assistant Success”. The course is written by Gina Hornkey, a successful virtual assistant with a lot of experience in the field.
3. Talk about your expertise
Without experience in the field, just like in the regular job market, not many clients will hire you. This is unfortunately how life works.
There is a way to get in though, but it will require hard work and dedication. It may not even be worth your time in the beginning but stick it out to get your name out there.
You can compare it to being an unpaid intern. Yes, there is many controversy regarding unpaid work, but even if you don’t work for free, you can still join the race to the bottom and offer your services for cheap to gain the experience necessary.
This will allow you to build up your work portfolio. Keep note of everything you have done and ask clients if they would be willing to have you share their contact details in order for them to vouch for your services.
On your portfolio, make sure you state your experience in industry related terms, as prospective clients will definitely steer clear of someone that does not even know the lingo.
So instead of saying that you aided a website to get higher publicity by writing an article for their website, say something different instead.
Saying that your article, with natural embedding of keywords, aided on-site SEO and allowed higher SERPs. IF you are unsure what I just said, feel free to research it, it may open a whole new world to you. But beware, once you go down that rabbit hole, nothing on the internet will ever be the same to you again.
Again, I cannot highlight this more, state any and all of your achievements.
4. Advertise
The first platform that you can advertise on is your own blog. Unfortunately, when just starting out, not many people will see this. There are however many boards and forums that will allow you to advertise on. Similarly there are also a lot of websites that allows you to advertise your services.
Advertising at these sites do come at a price though. Fortunately, these websites also offer a wide selection of jobs ( or gigs as it is called in the freelancing industry ). Highlighting the best site between them all but I can give you a few examples of these sites.
Odesk, Elance and Freelancer.com are but a few of these sites. The advantage of these sites is that they allow you to build up a history, with prospective clients able to view other jobs you have done for clients whom have also hired you through the site in question.
If you are not quite ready to commit yourself to clients, Clickworker and Mturk offers tasks that can be completed in seconds between your other daily errands. There are also websites dedicated to only to virtual assistant jobs. One that specifically comes to mind here is Zirtual.com
The most professional way of getting your services out to the public however, still is to run your own blog. It sends a message that you are committed, and makes it easy for somebody to stumble onto your services.
5. Network
Befriending other bloggers is also a great way to gain clients. Somebody may contact them for a service they know you offer, and they can easily refer you. Various ways can be used to achieve this, with the best being social media. In the social media world, it is not uncommon for people to contact each other, even when they do not know each other.
It allows an easy platform to strike up conversations about events posted, or other niche relevant topics. Direct contact by email can also be used, although it could be viewed as spam by some. Email conversations tend to be regarded as personal contact these days.
Another great way is through your own LinkedIn profile, which makes finding like minded individuals easy. Linking to similar members is also not something uncommon, which allows you to expand your network without coming over as abusive. It is also easy to list your achievements on your profile, where they can be easily found by prospective clients.
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