In our recent JasSuccess episode, one of our VA Bootcamp students shared her inspiring freelance story of becoming an E-commerce VA.

Despite personal and financial challenges, Maris Luna isn't one who gives up easily.

While juggling between family duties, a full-time job, and learning VA skills, she squeezed in some more time to work as a part-time freelance writer.

When she met a client who needed help with writing product descriptions for his Shopify store, that’s when Maris got introduced to the entire world of e-commerce.

“Binigyan niya ako ng full access sa store niya, tapos pag wala pang mga bagong products, naghahanap uli ako ng work sa Upwork focusing on Shopify,” she said in the interview.

After successfully targeting Shopify clients and studying profiles of e-commerce VAs, she was able to resign from her full-time job and grow her freelancing business.

Now, Maris delegates an overflow of her projects and clients to family members. What a sweet way to scale a business!

Aside from her incredible perseverance, I would like to highlight a lesson from her chosen niche:

As freelancers, are you currently targeting e-commerce businesses?

If you aren't, you are getting left behind.

If you're not too sure what e-commerce businesses are, they're simply any business that allows its customers to make purchases online.

If you've visited Lazada, Amazon, eBay, or even our very own VABootcamp.ph, you have visited an e-commerce site. And if you've purchased from any of those sites, you’ve taken part of the massive e-commerce operations.

Rapid e-commerce growth

As more consumers prefer the convenience of online shopping, more and more people choose to shop online. Also, more businesses start putting their products online (including restaurants and grocery stores), which also greatly increases the number of e-commerce transactions.

E-commerce is also a cost-effective way to start new businesses. Owners don’t need to rent physical spaces and pay for additional utilities. In some cases (e.g. drop shipping), they don’t even need to manufacture or store stocks physically, making it even easier to start a business.

A big break for freelancers

Online customers. Online businesses. Get the hint?

Since the online world is every freelancer's playground, this e-commerce boom presents significant opportunities for us.

If you haven't dipped your freelancing toes in this industry yet, here are TOP 3 reasons why you should take advantage of this now:

1. E-commerce is only going to get bigger.

In 2017 alone, consumers spent over USD 2,000,000,000,000.00 (Two Trillion Dollars) on e-commerce purchases. According to Statista.com, that number is estimated to grow to over 3 Trillion next year and over 4 Trillion by the year 2021.

This means that the number of e-commerce businesses will continue to grow year by year. In fact, the largest growth in online business is expected to involve e-commerce businesses.

If you start serving e-commerce clients now, you'll be an authority in this enormous field.

2. E-commerce covers a wide range of skill set.

No matter what your current specialization is, e-commerce is a valuable topic to learn about. It directly affects all aspects of an online business - VA and admin work, SEO, online marketing, web design, graphic design, email marketing, customer service, and many more.

Not only that, but freelancers with e-commerce skills earn up to 2x as more.

We browsed through job posts on different freelance platforms, and while regular VAs were earning around $3-5/hr, e-commerce VAs were earning $8-10/hr. That's more than double the general hourly earnings!

3. Your e-commerce experience will prepare you for starting your own store.

Nothing beats learning from experience. And when you work with e-commerce clients, you'll get to see the ins-and-outs of running an online store.

You'll learn different systems, processes, strategies, and mistakes WHILE getting paid to work with them. Awesome deal, right?

What can you do to keep up?

Effective freelancers keep up with the latest technologies and trends– and e-commerce is a very significant trend.

If you want to increase your earning potential and remain competitive, you should start learning, at least, the basics of e-commerce.

You don’t necessarily need to learn e-commerce inside and out, but learning about the process of e-commerce and how it affects your specific industry/niche will be a good place to start.

Ready to start learning?

This coming July 21, 2018 – I’m partnering with PayPal to host a FREE workshop about Taking Advantage of the E-commerce Boom. It will be held in the Oakridge Business Park, Cebu City from 2:00pm-5:00 pm.

I'd really be glad to see you there! If you're coming, please send us an RSVP here: https://bit.ly/8thPayPalFreelancerWorkshop

What’s in it for you:

• Learn the basics of e-commerce and how it all works together
• How to find the best opportunities for e-commerce businesses
• How to find the best products to sell in the market
• How to set up an e-commerce store
• How to market an e-commerce store
• and much more...

PLUS, you’ll get to meet me and ask ANYTHING you want about freelancing and success stories from freelancers  I’ve personally mentored.

Feel free to bring friends who are also interested in learning e-commerce and online freelancing.

See you there! 🙂

P.S.

My favorite e-commerce stores are those that accept Paypal payments - I just love the convenience and security when shopping online.

If you're not using PayPal yet, you should check them out here. 😉