When you first get started as a Virtual Assistant, you earn money by charging clients for your services. This is usually the only stream of revenue that you have for your business in the beginning. Some people never have any others, but there are many other ways you can earn revenue in your business, above trading your time for money with clients.
There are a few ways this is referred to, that you may have heard of: your marketing funnel, your revenue ladder, your money mountain, to name a few.
Basically the idea of this is to have money coming in from several places, each requiring varied amounts of your time and energy. The hands-off items go near the bottom and the items that get someone more access to you goes near the top.
I like to think of it more as a staircase than as a funnel or ladder, but you get the idea.
Passive Revenue
Passive revenue is revenue that you generate from a product that you create once. That means once you create it, people can buy it whenever they like, and you get paid, but it doesn’t require any of your time. Passive revenue is at the bottom of the staircase, ladder, funnel or mountain. Examples of passive revenue would be ebooks, audios, videos, and that sort of thing. For instance, if your specialty is social media, then perhaps you would have some products that are associated to social media that your potential clients could purchase to get themselves started before they start working with you (templates, how tos, and that sort of thing). Once you start to develop content on your blog or newsletter, you will find all kinds of things that you can build passive revenue from.
Leveraged Income
Leverage Income is revenue that you generate from several people at the same time. Leverage income are the middle stairs of your money staircase – require more of your time, but they also cost more. One type of leveraged income is to work with subcontractors so that you can work with more clients to increase income. You can either use a subcontractor who provides the same services as you, so you can work with more clients, or you can use a subcontractor who provides a service you don’t provide so you can provide more services to your existing clients. Either way, you are making more money. Another idea you may also have is to offer a skills workshop for your clients to help them all understand their part of a particular service you offer. While most VAs take care of a lot of technical things for their clients, it’s also really important that they understand their role in each piece of the puzzle. Because you have more than one person ‘paying for your time’ for a workshop, you can price them very reasonably and still make good revenue.
Active Income
Active income is the income you earn by working directly with clients. These are your higher priced items that give more of your time, and they are placed at the higher end of your staircase. But you don’t always have to trade your hours for dollars at this level. You can develop higher priced packages for clients who want more access to you, or who want to be placed at the top of your priority pile on a regular basis. You can have mid range packages for clients who have longer deadlines but still give you a certain amount of work each month. And you can have lower range packages for the client who doesn’t require as much work but still has built up the trust factor with you. You will want to be sure for each level that you are able to leverage your time where necessary using subcontractors or partners.
However you plan to bring in income, be sure to make your ‘sales’ conversation about the benefits that the client will receive by purchasing the product or service. If you simply list the features and hope that they figure out how it will help them, you will be disappointed with your income from them. Build your products and services around your ideal client’s needs and speak directly to them, in language that they use themselves, and you will reap the rewards!