Neither. We’re a jobs board and a membership. We don’t employ anyone, we don’t place anyone, and there’s no CV to submit to us.

You join, you see the Lead Reports, and you submit proposals directly to the businesses and individuals hiring. They decide who to shortlist. From there you negotiate your own terms and agree whether to use your contract or theirs. We never take a commission or a percentage of what you earn.

Occasionally a business asks us to manage applications for them. In that case your proposal comes to us, we put a shortlist together, and the business chooses from it. Everything after that is still between you and them.

No, and we’d be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can promise you a client, because the business or individual hiring chooses who they engage, and that’s their decision to make.

What we do promise is that every lead is qualified before we publish it. You’re pitching to real people with a real budget who are ready to hire. The rest is your proposal, your rates, and your fit for the work.

Membership is only open to people who spend the majority of their time residing within Australia. Our clients come to us specifically to hire Australian VAs and OBMs, so that’s the one requirement we hold firm on.

You may not use our website or the information we supply to promote the use or engagement of employees, contractors, or subcontractors who do not spend the majority of their time residing within Australia. You may not use our Lead Reports to contact businesses and then sell the services of offshore employees or contractors, or to sell your own services where the work is subcontracted offshore.

You don’t need anything to join, though you must be based in Australia. What you need in order to work is a different question.

ABN: In Australia you need an ABN before you can conduct business as a contractor, including marketing and selling your services. Most VA Seekers who list with us are looking for a contractor, so in practice you’ll want one. We do occasionally list remote employment opportunities, and you won’t need an ABN for those.

Insurance: We don’t need to see it, though some businesses ask for professional indemnity cover before they’ll engage you. The Ask Val post Does my Australian VA business need insurance? covers whether you can apply without it, and the post What Insurance for Virtual Assistants in Australia is the Best? covers what to look for.

Qualifications, a website, a business already up and running: None of it is required. The Ask Val post There are No Rules answers whether you need a website before you start applying, and the post Testing the Waters answers a question from a member who joined before setting up their VA business at all.

Right here is fine. You don’t need an existing business, clients, or experience as a VA to join, and plenty of our members joined before they had any of it.

If you’re still working out whether this is for you, start with our free startup checklist. It covers what you need to set up, how to work out your rates, and how to find your first clients. You don’t need to be a member to get it.

The Ask Val post Price, Price Baby walks through how to work out your rates in detail.

Request the free checklist

Some come to us directly, through a search, a referral, or word of mouth. Others find us because we’re out there looking for them – networking, promoting the industry, and working with marketing and sales experts to bring more work to the network. They’re business owners and individuals seeking Aussie VAs and OBMs to help them get organised and boost their businesses.

Our sister business Thought Penny has closed its books – we’re not growing the team or taking on new clients. So when a business comes to Thought Penny looking for help, we work with them to build a Lead Report instead, which they approve before we publish it to the network.

It’s not a reflection on the work or the client. These are opportunities we’d have been glad to take on ourselves.

Only the ones you choose. You submit proposals and applications for the Lead Reports that suit your services, so nothing is assigned to you.

Across the network, members are engaged for general admin, NDIS and medical admin, virtual reception, bookkeeping, HR, events, marketing and social media, websites, research, documents and reports, travel, podcasts, design and copywriting, project management, workflows and automations, tech support, executive, C-suite and board assistance, and more!

For a sense of the VA jobs in Australia that actually get posted, browse our current and recently closed listings on the jobs board, or scroll back through years of previews on Instagram and Facebook.

The Australian VA & OBM Rates Report carries a full index of the services Australian VAs and OBMs offer, based on our annual industry survey, along with what they charge.

This varies greatly! Here are just some of the requests we’ve received already:

• Ad hoc tasks completed as a one-time service.
• Weekly hours – from as little as one hour per week up to 35 hours per week.
• Full-time during business hours.
• Flexible hours to meet increasing and decreasing workloads each week/month.
• Work whatever hours/days you want as long as you can meet deadlines.
• One-off projects and ongoing work that require you to quote and charge based on outcomes instead of hours.

You can see a preview of all open Lead Reports (contractor and remote employee job listings), as well as those that only closed recently, on our jobs board.

To receive an email as soon as we publish a new Lead Report, you can join our free mailing list, VA Lead Network News. These emails will also include a summary of available roles.

To access our detailed Lead Reports that share everything you need to know to decide if a lead is a good fit for you and put together a proposal, you will need to become a member.

Of course!

Quite a few of our members subcontract or recruit additional VAs and OBMs for their clients, and we encourage you to use the Virtual Assistant Lead Network to do this.

It’s free to list your role or project with us (even if you’re not a member) – just complete our Virtual Role or Project Brief to reach experienced virtual assistants and online business managers who could work with you.

1. Sign into your account
   • Visit www.valeadnetwork.com.au
   • In the top menu, click ‘SIGN IN’
   • Follow the instructions to sign in (a sign-in link will be emailed to you).
   • Once you are signed in, you will be navigated back to www.valeadnetwork.com.au
2. In the top menu, click ‘ACCOUNT’ under ‘MEMBERS ONLY’.
3. From the menu on the left, click ‘Subscriptions‘
4. Click your active subscription on the right-hand side
5. Next to ‘Enable auto-renew’ you will see a green switch/toggle – click this to disable auto-renew
6. When auto-renew is disabled, the toggle will be grey, and you will see a sentence underneath the subscription name that says, ‘Will not renew on [your renewal date]’
7. Once the above is complete, your subscription will be automatically cancelled on your renewal date and you will continue to have access to your membership inclusions until that date.

Yes. You can switch between any of the plans shown on this page, and you’ll keep the pricing for the year you joined us, as long as your membership stays active. The plans on this page are the only ones we offer: Leads Member is available monthly or annually, and Career Member is annual only (though we do offer a week’s sneak peek via the Career Trial plan).

When you open Subscriptions in your account, you’ll see the financial year your plan was purchased in, shown as FY25, FY26, FY27 and so on. Which year that is determines how you change plans.

If your plan was purchased in the current financial year:

1. Sign into your account
   • Visit www.valeadnetwork.com.au
   • In the top menu, click ‘SIGN IN’
   • Follow the instructions to sign in (a sign-in link will be emailed to you).
   • Once you are signed in, you will be navigated back to www.valeadnetwork.com.au
2. In the top menu, click ‘ACCOUNT’ under ‘MEMBERS ONLY’.
3. From the menu on the left, click ‘Subscriptions‘.
4. Click your active subscription on the right-hand side.
5. Click ‘Change plan’.
6. You’ll be shown the pro-rata cost before you decide whether to go ahead.

If your plan was purchased in a financial year that has now ended:

1. Make sure a payment card is attached to your account – from the menu on the top right, click ‘Add Card’.
2. Email [email protected] and we’ll confirm the pro-rata cost of the change. If you’re happy with it, we process the change manually for you.

We disable plans from earlier years so they can only be renewed, not newly purchased. That’s how we hold your price for as long as your membership stays active.

No. Career Member is an annual plan only, and the price shown as a monthly figure is there to make it easier to compare against Leads Member. The full year is charged in one payment.

If you’d like to look inside Career Member before committing to a year, the Career Trial gives you a 7 day pass for a single one-off payment.

If paying annually doesn’t suit right now, Leads Member is available monthly. You can move up to Career Member later and we’ll credit the unused portion of your Leads Member subscription against the change.

The Career Trial is a one-off 7 day pass that gives you a week inside Career Member, so you can look around before committing to a year.

It’s a single payment, it does not renew automatically, and it ends after 7 days. It includes everything a Career Member gets except Tech Time.

If you decide to continue, you can convert to a Career Member plan with a pro-rata discount on the unused portion of your trial. The discount shrinks as the week goes on, so the price you see depends on when you upgrade. Upgrade on the same day you buy the trial and the full trial price comes off your Career Member plan.

If you’re here for the work, Leads Member covers it. You get every Lead Report, member deals, and our tools of the trade reviews. Monthly if you want to keep it flexible, annually if you’d rather lock in the lower rate.

Career Member adds everything else we do. Live webinars with topic experts, guides and resources, monthly Tech Time, and the full back catalogue. It’s there whether you’re setting up, upskilling into new services, or just keeping on top of the tech and current best practice without having to go hunting for it yourself.

You can preview what’s included before you decide – browse the resources and templates and our training opportunities.

If you’re still not sure, the Career Trial gives you a week inside Career Member (access to everything except Tech Time) for a one-off payment, and you can convert to the full year with a pro-rata discount.

You can also access a selection (not all) of the training recordings and resources that are included in the Career Member plan via Val’s Digital Store, though Career Member remains the best value for money if you want access to more than one or two of those products.

Ask it here – we would love to help 🙂