How Do I Decide What Services to Offer as an Online Business Owner

This is a question I get asked ALL THE TIME from my virtual assistant mentees. 

They are ready to start their business and excited about creating a business on their own terms but have no idea what services they should be offering.

Here are a few tips on how to decide what services to offer as an online business owner.

Look at previous job skills

My first recommendation is always to look at your past work experiences as this is the best way to fast track your business and hit the ground running.

What jobs and/or careers have you had? From those jobs, assess the skill set that you used in those jobs and see how those skills could be translated to the world of online business.

I worked in corporate advertising before I became a virtual assistant so I decided to offer general administration, social media marketing and Facebook advertising assistance to start. I quickly realized that Facebook advertising was not my thang so I focused on general administration and social media marketing. 

I, still to this day, offer social media marketing support and we do offer some of our larger clients general administration support. I share this with you because you don’t have to keep the same services the whole time you are in business.  You can start out with a service suite and then assess your strengths and enjoyment of those services and pivot if you need to. Most online business owners do this often.

Avoid offering services that you are inexperienced in

I know that offering the latest and greatest services (i.e. TikTok or Pinterest) can sound fun but not as easy to jump right into working if you don’t know how to use the platforms yourself.

This isn’t to say that you can’t offer these services in the future but the quickest way to get your business off the ground and make money is to start with the skills you already have experience with! You can always learn a new skill set as you are acquiring clients and when you feel comfortable you can offer those new services. 

Assess and Reassess

I also recommend that every three months you take a look at your service suite and ask yourself:

• Am I  giving my clients the best service I can?
  • What would make my services better?
  • What could I include to make these services a no-brainer for potential clients?
• Do I still enjoy providing these services?
• Am I getting paid enough for these services? 

Lastly, ask your clients to fill out an evaluation 3 months into working with you.

I use a simple google form. This way you can evaluate how they are liking your services and even better, improve them if there are areas they are not fully satisfied with.

Some are the same questions but this is to gauge how your clients experience is with your services:

• How satisfied are you with my services?
• What could I provide to make these services better for you?
• Are there any other areas of business you need assistance with? 

This is a great way to see where you can improve in your business and if you are happy with the services you are offering. Taking time to make an evaluation with documents like this can also be used as leverage to see what else you could potentially help them with!

Are you looking for guidance in creating your service suite? I would love to help you make a no-brainer YES service suite for you.  We can create this in a VA Strategy Session. Book yours today!