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Thinking of hiring an online course assistant for your next big project? Read this first.
E-Learning is an industry that has been on the rise ever since it began. Projected to hit $370 billion dollars in 2026, the industry continues to enjoy massive patronage with increasing internet penetration globally and the rise of new internet-based sectors in the economy.
As an online tutor that has enjoyed success in this industry, you may find that you need to keep up with the growing demand and the evolution of knowledge. In whatever field you have been teaching, you find that you must upgrade your courses, market better, and/or focus more on the community you are building.
Making online courses is no doubt a lot of work.
The process of creating the content courses includes steps that could be too much for one person to do alone. One may not have all the various skills employed in packaging and marketing the courses, managing the community, and post-marketing activities or the whole process can become overwhelming and long.
Keeping up with the growing list of tasks and the updates needed will get impossible at one point and you will need some assistance.
Hiring a virtual assistant (eLearning assistant, in this case) or two that complement your skills could provide infinitely more opportunities for growth as your course creation process is managed better and employs ideas from different perspectives.
Sometimes solopreneurs underestimate the workload and think they know best what their potential customers want, so they take the whole burden of the process on themselves.
We saw that issue with our client John. John was great at writing and transferring the knowledge on data-driven marketing but his video creation and editing skills needed a lot of improvement to bring him to the next level.
Additionally, responding to customers in a prompt and efficient way was making him anxious. He realized that his course had a high refund request rate due to his slow responsiveness to customer requests. Once he brought on-board a video editing VA and a customer service assistant, he was able to focus on his superpower: planning and creating content. Now John is considering hiring a project manager VA who could also join the team and serve as the manager of the process. There is no doubt that this team is ripe for success.
Who is a Virtual Assistant/Online course assistant?
A virtual assistant, or online course assistant, is an extra hand that can take on the other tasks involved in creating and marketing course content. You may be tempted to partner with someone for the duration of the project. Not only will that person share the workload but he or she will also make you more accountable for your part of the work.
Why Should You Hire a Virtual Assistant/Online course assistant?
A virtual assistant does exactly what an assistant would do for you and even more. Tasks you would typically handle yourself can be ticked off. When you have a competent virtual assistant, it gives you more time to focus on the quality of the course content.
Simply put, hiring a virtual assistant to support you while creating an online course makes the process less cumbersome.
As your assistant does not have to be physically present, your choices aren’t limited to people around you. You can search farther and wider when hiring someone. You can be assured that the overhead cost is minimal—you don’t need to pay for an office or get office supplies when you hire one.
Hiring a virtual assistant to create an online course can shift many responsibilities away from you.
13 Tasks a virtual assistant / online course assistant can do for you
- Handle market research prior to launching and promoting your courses.
- Video editing and formatting.
- Help with public relations and brand building when you are just starting. They can also maintain your public image while they are at it.
- Organize your task list and keep you, the course creator, accountable for your schedule. While you have the course content, packaging it in a presentation format might be a chore. A virtual assistant can create templates and style guides for your online courses.
- Post on social media and coordinate your social media promotions.
- Talk to customers and compiling a list of questions asked and gathering feedback from them.
- Create a sales funnel or build an email list as well as creating lead magnets.
- Set up standard operating procedures and structures that could help your content creation move faster. With this, you can easily find a system that works for you and replicate it for each new course.
- Manage your emails so you can focus on research and the creation of course materials.
- Moderate your webinars and transcribe your live classes so they could be reproduced as course materials and make extra course materials such as workbooks and appendices. They could also summarize your course into bite-sized pieces for prospects or create a blog post replete with graphics or illustrations.
- Upload your courses to numerous websites and e-learning platforms as well as marketing your courses on social media.
- Manage your website and repurpose your content for use on other forms of media.
- Keep track of orders and financial transactions (bookkeeping) as well as management of after-sales relations.
One of the things you should consider when you want to hire a virtual assistant is the list of things you want them to do for you. If the tasks they would be assisting with range across various aspects, you should be looking for a “generalist”. A “specialist” in that area would better serve needs that tune to a particular part of your work.
A “generalist” would be competent across various fields and can take on a variety of tasks on your list. Small actions that litter your project timeline from creating presentations to managing inventory to managing emails—the power of a “generalist” only ends at exactly how many hats they can wear.
If you are looking for speed and a partner that will work with you every step of the way, the “generalist” could be precisely what you need.
However, finding a good “generalist” is not easy because the person would need to have a wide variety of virtues and skills that are sometimes conflicting. For example, often if a person is analytical and technical, his or her creative side is not that developed.
The “specialist”, on the other hand, is usually an expert in one field. Specialist virtual assistants are extremely helpful when you lack skills in a particular area.
You could hire a specialist assistant to handle a particular aspect of the project. As they are experts, they are more likely to work much faster than you could and deliver higher quality results.
One of the benefits of a specialist virtual assistant is that the quality of your work will improve, and you could learn a lot from the specialist as they provide significant insights into the processes involved in that aspect.
What Skills Should You Be Looking for in a Virtual Assistant?
Your online course assistant would be assisting in duties related to the creation, publishing, and marketing of online content.
Whether they are a “generalist” or “specialist”, they would have to possess a particular set of skills to be able to serve you effectively.
Six technical skills that your virtual assistant needs to have
- Ability to use video editing software: Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Animotica.
- Understand how websites work and are conversant with SEO optimization.
- Know how to navigate and work with e-learning platforms.
- Good typing and/or writing skills.
- Good research skills.
- Graphic design skills to assist in the creation of presentations and graphic promotional material.
- Basic project management skills to ensure the smooth running of your e-learning course creation.
Also, you shouldn’t forget about the soft skills that an online course assistant should have. Those are the ones that will make you not only hire the person but also help you keep a successful working relationship.
Keep an eye on these six soft skills your virtual assistant needs to possess
- Excellent communication skills.
- Superior Organizational Skills because nobody wants a disorganized assistant.
- Resourcefulness.
- Analytical.
- Creative.
- Time management skills.
- He or she should be a self-motivator. This will help them stay on top of their toes and handle tasks with little or no supervision.
- They must be detail-oriented. A good virtual assistant must have the ability to pay attention to the fine print.
With a 900% growth since the early 2000s, the e-learning industry is projected to grow to over $240 billion by 2022. Considering that e-learning has been proven to lower training costs for employees and is often touted to reduce greenhouse gases by 86%, the outlook for the industry is as green as profit could ever be.
The earnings of course creators vary widely, but data from Teachable puts the median earning between $25,000 – $50,000 a year, and this can scale immensely when the process is quicker.
Every step of your business, even the research required for your course creation, can be performed by a virtual assistant so you can be free to generate high-quality courses for your audience.
One strong advantage of hiring a good virtual assistant is the ease of managing them. Sometimes, it is the assistant that manages you.
Balkan Hire team is here to help!
At Balkan Hire, we have provided quite a number of virtual assistants to our clients. We have seen small businesses match their scaling potential, and average businesses become leaders in their niche when they employ the services of virtual assistants.
Hiring an online course assistant with Balkan Hire is effortless. Our recruitment process is sure to get you skilled assistants well-suited to your specific needs.
