Working from Home as Virtual P.A

angelfairy

i was going to suggest Outsec too.

LouBlue

beccaoz wrote: »

i was going to suggest Outsec too.

Thanks. I am going to give them a go. I am not working at the moment but have 22 years' secretarial experience and would prefer to work at home, if I can.

welsh_cake

Does anyone know how I find out about working from home in the evenings? I work full time during the day as a medical/legal secretary and am really trying to sort out my finances at the moment and am willing to work more hours in the evenings from home. I have looked on the internet, but they all ask for a one off fee of £25.00 for the information pack. Is this a rip off? Are they just scamming? Any advice that anyone has would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

f1re_cr4cker

pretty much anywhere that asks for a one off fee is scamming- don't touch em with a bargepole

PasturesNew

As you're already doing that sort of work, I'd start to put the word out that you do private work.

Beyond that, check out freelancing sites for transcription work.

1) Private Work
Compile a list of Doctors that are taking on private work and Solicitors that are working alone/in a small practice. Then contact them with your offering. You will need to consider how they currently work and compare that to the service you are able to offer.

e.g. they might be typing it themselves (yes, I've seen Doctors reports where they have CLEARLY typed it themselves as there was no attempt made at the most basic of sentence/paragraph/letter structure). Or they might be using a tape-based audio transcription system.

As a general rule, they won't want to be doing anything significantly different to what they are at the moment, so you might need to start off by bending over backwards to accommodate their different needs, for example, collecting the physical tapes.

Think about:
How they will get the work to you; how you will get it back to them; how you manage to do corrections/alterations; how you charge; how you will get paid.

I am currently doing some medical audio transcription at home. I had a temp job doing it and I wanted to leave ... but they wanted me to keep doing it (oh, the pressures of being brilliant!). They are sending me the tapes by "Signed For" mail and I am turning them round the same day. They are also using a digital system where I collect the recordings as email attachments. I turn these round the same day too. I will be invoicing weekly.

2) Freelancing
There are sites on the internet where you "bid" for a job, you don't have to pay to join these sometimes. Here is a sample of two transcription jobs posted this week:

http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/earner_201681.html - typing up handwritten notes.
http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/earner_201457.html - ongoing transcription work typing up a recorded telephone conference weekly

I know quite a few people who regularly get work from these sites. While such sites will often offer a paid membership, this is just because some of the advertisers don't want 100 applicants per project, but just want <10 or so and choose to advertise the jobs only to those who have the paid subscription as these will be the people who they think are most likely to be more professional and used to working like this.

But there are a LOT of freelance little earners like this

Good luck!

brazilianwax

This woman was on The Wright Stuff this morning - she mentioned there were links to 'PA from home' scemes etc on her website.

She had loads of other ideas too.

http://www.moneymagpie.com/

jayneuk

Please don't ever part with any money on anything like this - they are scams, no doubt about that.

nicky_s_2

If you go onto www.workingmums.co.uk, there is a job ad asking for VA's. I would love to do it myself, but do not have any bookkeeping experience. Other than that, I'm sure I would be able to do the job.

Hope this helps someone.

Nicky.