How Much Should You Pay for a Virtual Assistant?

The more experience a VA has, the more it will rise to the challenge and the higher the fee it will charge. When you're looking to hire a virtual assistant, you're probably wondering how much you'll have to pay. In this resource, we'll discuss everything you need to know about the cost of hiring a VA. We'll look at some key statistics, look at the life of a VA from their perspective, and try to figure out how you can include an item in your budget, such as the “cost of a virtual assistant”, without feeling like you're overpaying.

When you enter the “cost of the virtual assistant” into Google in an effort to figure out a typical or even average cost, you'll be surprised. The simple truth is that VA costs can vary greatly. If you were to outsource virtual assistants in countries with very low labor costs, you wouldn't be surprised to find rates below most of the minimum wage in the United States. On the higher end, a virtual assistant with a lot of knowledge and experience can reach three figures per hour.

Take the case of a virtual assistant who needs to earn a living full time by offering their work by the hour to clients. What does that calculation look like? But is that really how it works? When you factor in these additional costs, you might be surprised at how expensive an employee in your office can be. The good news about hiring an assistant virtually? Calculating the cost of a virtual assistant can be much more intuitive. Virtual assistants will charge you a fixed hourly rate in many cases.

And they'll be responsible for their own benefits, their own supplies, their own Internet access, and more. They are happy to manage these costs as part of their dedication to working remotely. The challenge of calculating the cost of a virtual assistant starts with understanding the types of skills you must pay for and how much VAs typically charge in their particular field. Extrapolate that figure to a full-time income and you'll see a salary similar to that of an executive assistant, especially if you add the expenses listed in the previous section.

Keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to pay a virtual assistant a full-time income to complete your entire to-do list; you can save 50% right away by simply hiring them for twenty hours a week instead of forty hours a week. And you might find that even those twenty hours a week are enough. When thinking about the potential costs of your virtual assistant, try not to compare your unique needs with the “average” or “average” salary of a VA. Instead, compare the virtual assistant to what you would otherwise pay a full-time employee with similar skills.

When you look at it in that context, you can see that it makes sense to hire a virtual assistant instead of a full-time employee. It makes even more sense when you replace what would have been a full-time employee with a virtual assistant who can perform similar tasks. Let's consider the above statistic, according to which hiring a VA instead of a full-time employee can reduce operating costs by nearly 80%. What if you have a specific need in the office, such as someone who can answer your company's incoming phone calls? Since receiving phone calls doesn't require the physical presence of your assistant, you can forward those calls to a VA's mobile phone.

They can then delete any message, keeping you free from distractions. Meanwhile, to the outside world, there is no indication that any of this is virtual. Everything seems the same from the perspective of someone making the call. Another task could be data entry.

Making data entry part of your life can be worth almost any cost per hour, but you might be surprised to find that experienced data entry specialists can not only handle the task, but can also improve it. They can recommend software and tools that will make data entry much smoother and more efficient, reducing your overall data entry requirements and giving you a higher ROI. Throughout all of this, it's important to set realistic expectations about what a VA will do. While they'll be very efficient, have unique skills, and can easily outsource tasks such as answering phone calls, you shouldn't wait for a miracle worker.

After all, you pay them for specific tasks, they are not employees of your company, they have no capital, and so on. Instead, seek to participate with your VA. Engage them by providing feedback and creating a step-by-step onboarding process so that they can easily take on their tasks. This will reduce the money you spend on updating a VA.

Virtual assistance isn't just for business owners anymore. It's for C-level executives, freelancers, and even people exploring this area for the first time. All that is required is a willingness to understand the costs, the advantages of hiring someone remotely, and how the cost of a VA can compare favorably with that of a full-time or even part-time employee in some cases. But let's say you still want a more direct way to estimate the prices you can expect to pay.

One way to do this is to work with a virtual assistant company that specializes in partnering you with the ideal assistant for your tasks. This is a simple and straightforward system for hiring virtual assistants that requires minimal calculation. Plus, with customer care representatives working with you to find the right person for the job, you won't have to worry about getting VAs with specialized skills.

Reynaldo Branan
Reynaldo Branan

Music lover. Subtly charming social media guru. Hipster-friendly zombie ninja. Typical social media fanatic. Extreme zombie geek.