Specialist Niche: The Writer’s Virtual Assistant

As part of our specialist niche virtual assistants series, Sarah Cruikshank offered to share her expertise in helping writers and journalists.  It’s a great match for a VA, as their workload often fluctuates or is on a freelance basis.  Over to Sarah…

I’m Sarah Cruickshank, I’m almost 43 and I’m Sarah Cruickshank Virtual PA (I wanted to use my name, as I’m known in my niche market, so it seemed daft to go for anything else). I started my business in April 2011 after 7 ½ years working as a freelance journalist and copywriter.

My niche is working with journalists and writers. I got into it because I realised that there are lots of bits of the job that most writers hate (audio transcription and chasing payments being major ones). Because I’ve worked as a journalist I know how important accuracy, deadlines and working odd hours to get jobs filed are, so I figured I could take a lot of the hassles off writer’s plates, leaving them free to actually write.

My niche is a growth area, because there’s always going to be call for words whether they’re printed, on-line or in audio format. Also, writers tend to be so focussed on research and writing that there are always admin tasks that they’ll be happy to pass on.

Luckily for me, most writers and journalists are used to working remotely, so they ‘get’ the VA concept. I think in the next 5 – 10 years a lot more businesses are going to be looking to outsource as much as they can so that they can keep their overheads as low as possible, so I’m really positive about the future of our industry.

When I’m not working, I can mostly be found Scouting, I’m Group Scout Leader of my local Group (so responsible for all the adult volunteers and making sure we provide an exciting programme for the young people). I’m also the Media Development Manager for the Scout District, so I still have lots of dealings with press and PR work.

I live in Lancaster with my husband and our son and pet cat.

If anyone wants to find out more, please contact me at sarah@sarahcruickshank.co.uk