Today we’re talking about how to make money as a virtual assistant.
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that being a virtual assistant is serving clients with a particular skill set or providing a particular service. It is in the service industry. It is not like service in like preparing food or waitressing, but we are serving our clients by offering a particular skill set or service.
Examples of VA Services
Email management: you help manage someone’s email inbox.
Calendar management: you help manage their calendar.
Those are more general admin VA skills. I, on the other hand, do more technical services. I offer email marketing, social media marketing, and WordPress websites. Those are more specialized ser
vices. You can charge different price points for different types of services.
How Do You Make Money?
There are three different ways that I offer my packages. One is hourly. My hourly rate is a lot higher if someone is just purchasing hours based on the task. In that case, I just do the task and then bill them for the time that it took.
The second way to do this is having an hourly package or retainer package where every month you build them for the same amount of hours. I highly recommend that.
Even more so, the third way is the way that I recommend, and the way that I’m moving towards as a business owner is a project package. With an hourly package, you have to keep up with your time. It is very tedious to do that, and you work for that time period. I have my clients pay for that time upfront if they’re on an hourly retainer package and it is better than doing it by the hour, but it’s still not the best option from the VA’s perspective.
From the perspective of the VA, the best option is the project package. As you become more and more skilled as a virtual assistant, you get more efficient at your jobs and your skills. If you are charging hourly, and you’re getting more efficient, you’re begin to lose money because you’re fast. Therefore, you’re not getting paid for your knowledge and your expertise; you’re only getting paid for your time. A lot of times people call this trading hours for dollars. That’s what I have done for many years. The faster I’ve gotten, the more efficient I’ve gotten, but I’ve not gotten paid more for that.
Project Packages
Therefore, one of the things that you can do to help offset that is doing a project package. This is a package that is not based on how long it takes you, but based on the skills or the service that you provide.
I do project packages currently for websites. I do them for social media scheduling packages. These packages are a set flat rate, and I’m getting paid for the fact that I know how to do that. I’m not just getting paid for the time that it takes me to do that. That is how you make money as a virtual assistant by providing specific services. Furthermore, those are some of the ways that you can charge for those services.
If you have a question about the world of virtual assistants and you want me to answer it, you can always leave it down in the comments below, and I will try to make a future blog on it. Thank you.
