Whether you are already tired of being an overworked office employee or one who simply wants to work within the comforts of your home, being a virtual assistant can be the right job for you. Virtual assistants are like secretaries except that the person do and deliver all his work with the help of the internet, fax machine, or the telephone. These virtual secretaries are hired to take care of some extra work which normal employees cannot do during stressful working days. This is the kind of online job where it continuously grows because of the advantages it brings.

The first advantage about this job is that it gives the employers more freedom to focus on other important tasks because some of the administrative jobs which they do not have time to do are being taken cared of by online assistants. Thus, an entrepreneur can have more time planning and looking for new opportunities which can help improve his businesses. The next advantage of having a virtual assistant is that businessmen pay less when they use online assistants because actual secretaries have regular salaries, have insurance and need to have salary raise from time to time.

However, being a virtual office assistant is not an easy work. They are expected to work on untraditional hours like holidays and weekends. Sometimes they also need to have good mastery with secretarial jobs and on other administrative tasks. Basically, the primary responsibility of online assistant is to manage all the customers' spreadsheets, contacts, and letters of the company. They are also responsible in taking care of the company's calendar and meeting schedule of the bosses.

Some other duties of a virtual assistant is taking care of the correspondences of the office, making transcriptions, arranging travel plans, and taking care of the accounting and billing. Online assistants also edit letters and newsletters of the company and are also in-charge with their distributions. Other various responsibilities are handling and monitoring clients, preparing PowerPoint presentations, and other types of materials for presentations, and collating proposals of the company.

Virtual assistants can expect to get paid $20 to $45 per hour depending on the kind of service they provide. It is already up to the business companies if they want to pay virtual assistants on monthly basis or if they can simply pay hourly blocks of service. Hourly payment is considered more convenient on the part of the virtual assistant because he or she can have more opportunities to work for more than one employer. Online assistants can also have some specializations to help them demand higher payments from their employers. Some examples of specializations are medical transcribing, translation of bilingual materials, and developing and maintaining web sites. If this is the case, a virtual assistant can get paid as much as $100 per hour for his service.

There is the growing needs now of online assistants who have specializations with other field or skills especially if the person has the skills about computer programming and software handling. Aside from doing administrative jobs, they can help the company's website well managed and improve. These kind of online assistants are the ones who are having bigger payments.