SVA Newsletter February 2013
Hello
I seem to have spent most of January and early February being ill with various nursery bugs… Am planning on dunking bambino through sheepdip as he comes through the front door!!!
But despite illness, I’ve finished off compiling the last of the SVA UK VA Survey… And we have some interesting results – for example: our Mummy Myth remains totally shattered – only 3-4% of VAs with young children don’t have childcare in place. And I FINALLY got the answer on whether working part-time affects your income as a VA!
Enjoy!
Caroline
Help SVA – Webinar specialists…
One of the more delightful facets of running SVA is my neverending quest for favours… And yes, I’m looking for another! Do you run webinars or online conferences? We’re looking for a techie person to help us with The Big Meet in September. We’re looking for software recommendations and also someone to help me when I press the wrong button (which I do frequently, as Lyndsey batters me over the head with her mouse!). If brave enough, we promise chocolate, cake and all costs covered! Email [email protected] to volunteer
2012 UK VA Survey
It’s here! Find out everything you need to know about the VA industry in the UK!!!
If you took part, you’ll have the free summary report by now (if not please let me know!), but if you didn’t take part or you want the full results, you can download for the bargain price of £25:
https://www.societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk/va-products/
10 Years in Business? Tell everyone!
Next year I’ll have been in business 10 years, but I’m aware there are some industry veterans out there who’ve already hit that milestone… We’d like to acknowledge that with our new badge! You can use it on your website, in a newsletter and we’ll upgrade your forum avatar to include it too… All you need to do is tell us when you started trading, your SVA username and your email address: Fill in your details here.
Events
If you have an event you’d like listed on https://www.societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk/events-the-virtual-assistant-diary just let me know! It’s free and we’re happy to list anything which will help VAs in their businesses.
This month: Central London VAs are inviting you along to their 1st Tuesday meetings, The VA Success Group is running a teleseminar on 28th Feb on marketing and SVA invites you along to a free online networking on Sat 23rd Feb @ 10am….
I read through the VA Survey last night and at first my stomach dropped and I started wondering if I’d done the right thing. I set up my business in the hope of turning over in excess of £10k pa and indeed that is the impression given by those that promote the sector, yet the majority are earning less than this. Then I started thinking about the figures – if 48.5% are working more than 30 hours per week and the average hourly rate is £21.15 then surely the majority should be turning over more than the £5-£10k suggested or are the majority of the 48.5% working more than 30 hours week undervaluing themselves and the sector,charging way below the average rate?
The key thing here is that “those that promote the sector” are inevitably flogging training, so they do tend to hype what people are earning. Which is why this is such a useful exercise each year…Real VAs telling you what they really earn!
The full report has more detail on how the hours and earnings breakdown – in fact this is the first year we’ve been able to cross check the hours worked vs turnover, and it’s thrown up some interesting results which surprised even me. Not all hours worked will be billable (marketing, your own business admin, maintaining your systems etc), and of course if someone is billing a lot of hours with one client, it may well be at a discounted rate due to a volume discount. Hope that helps!!!