I’m working on a lot of projects these days. As you can see from the site, I’m busy with enterprise technology articles. Plus, I’m the publisher and editor of MetaStellar, the fastest-growing new online science fiction and fantasy magazine and Hypergrid Business, one of the world’s top virtual reality blogs. Oh, and I’m writing a series of science fiction books set in a future virtual metaverse, Krim World.
I’m juggling a lot of things, and could use someone to help me out with both editorial and administrative tasks — or just one or the other.
Editorial task list
- Background story research
- Fact-checking
- Data-entry
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Graphics editing
- Pitch stories
- Proofreading and copyediting
Fluent English not required, but extremely helpful, especially if you do proofreading and copyediting, of course. You can set your own hours, as long as the work gets done. I expect this to start out as a part-time job and can grow to full time as work continues to expand. However, if you have other clients, this can stay a part-time job as well.
This is a particularly good gig for someone who wants to become a technology journalist and wants to learn how it works. You’ll learn how to structure and write an Associated Press-style story, get bylined articles in both publications I run, and help me out with stories for national technology publications. You’ll learn how to work with sources, how to fact-check information, how to structure technology articles, and develop industry contacts.
Administrative task list
- Manage my personal editorial schedule
- Manage editorial schedules for the two magazines I run
- Prep agendas for editorial meetings
- Answer standard emails based on pre-made templates
- Do data entry
- Basic graphics editing
- Meeting prep, including creating agendas
- Help me manage volunteer and freelance writers and editors
- Manage book production
Moderate English skills are needed. Again, you set your own hours, as long as the work gets done. I’m especially looking for someone who’s extremely well organized, and can work with spreadsheets and databases. I can train someone who’s totally new to all this. If you’re a fast learner, this could be a great starting job, and then you can do similar work for other writers. However, I’m also willing to pay more for experience.
If you’re either in one — or both — of these jobs, please email me at maria@korolov.com with “Virtual assistant” in the subject line of your email. Please include your resume, LinkedIn and other social media links, and, if you’re applying for the virtual assistant job, some recent writing samples. And please tell me what your five-year goal is. Is it to create a flexible work-from-home career while you take care of family obligations? To become a technology journalist? To become a fiction author or work in the publishing industry? To become a freelance marketing expert?
About me
I’ve been a technology journalist for over twenty years, and, before that, was a war correspondent, reporting from Afghanistan, as well as from Chechnya and other former Soviet Republics.
I ran a news bureau in Asia for five years, launched Hypergrid Business in 2009, launched MetaStellar in 2020, and now cover artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and extended reality for top global technology publications, including CIO magazine, Network World, and CSO magazine. You can see a full list of the publications I write for here. I also write science fiction — so that’s a lot of stuff I’m juggling.
Hypergrid Business is already one of the top virtual reality blogs in the world, with hundreds of contributors. With a little help, I want to increase our coverage and launch a YouTube channel.
MetaStellar, even though it only launched a couple of years ago, has become the fastest-growing sci-fi and fantasy publication online. We’ve published hundreds of stories, and recently released our first anthology in both print and ebook form. Our YouTube channel recently passed 100 videos. With help, we can increase our social media presence and publish more books.
Thanks. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
