We're going to talk about money, baby!
In this video we're going to be discussing a virtual assistant's salary or how
much you can really make as a virtual assistant.
I'm going to be breaking it down super simple for you,
so make sure you stay tuned. Hey, if you haven't met me yet,
I'm Abbey Ashley, founder of The Virtual Savvy.
I've trained thousands of students to start their own virtual assistant business
from scratch and I would love to have you come into my circle
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Maybe you are brand new to the virtual assistant world or maybe you've just
stumbled upon virtual assistance and you're starting to think,
how much can I really make doing this?
Well, in this video, that's exactly what I'm going to be talking about.
Yes, you may be starting this to make a couple hundred bucks on the side.
You may be doing this to have flexibility with your family and to be able to
work from home or travel while you work. You may be like Bethany,
who in her first year was making $5,000 a month working from home with her five
yes, five kids. Or you may be like Brandi,
who is now bringing in $10,000 a month doing service based business,
starting out as a virtual assistant. No matter where you're at,
you're probably wondering what's the norm,
what's that virtual assistant salary that most people are making?
That's what we're going to talk about right here.
We're going to look at this at a couple of different levels.
so I want to go ahead and preface by saying the going rate for a general virtual
assistant in the United States can range anywhere from about $20 to $40 an hour.
Now, in my courses and training programs,
I really recommend trying to find that sweet spot when you're first starting out
at about $30 per hour. Here's the thing.
As you raise your rates and as you say, Hey, I am worth this amount.
I promise the clients that are going to value your time are just going to come in faster
and you're going to have better quality clients pursuing your services.
Sure you could start out at $10 an hour,
but it's not what I would recommend doing because you are going to attract
clients who simply don't value your work.
So let's say that you hit that sweet spot and you're able to start your rates at
about $30 an hour for general VA work.
I recommend slowly moving up to about the $35 or even the $40 per hour range.
Now that's going to hit you in a place where you can really,
really serve your clients with general admin skills.
I have not seen very many people go beyond that amount doing just general admin.
Normally at this point you're more experienced and you can start raising your
rates because you have highly specialized skills,
which we will talk about in a little bit. But I want to start at the bare bones.
So if you can only offer general admin services right now,
that's great. Tons of people need that service.
What I would recommend, again, it starting out at that $30 an hour range.
Let's say that you have found that sweet spot and you're working for $35 an hour
Now in a typical 40 hours per week,
you're probably not going to actually be doing client work 40 hours a week.
So let's say you average billable hours of about 35 hours per week.
That would be $1,225 per week.
We can simply times that by 52 and that would be an average of about $63,700.
Now you do need to take into consideration.
You may end up taking a week or two off,
but just to kind of give you a general baseline of what a virtual assistant
salary just starting out could be, this is where we're at
but here's the exciting part. Things don't have to end there.
Like I said,
most virtual assistants end up finding highly specialized skills.
There are tons of skills that you can eventually specialize in.
Maybe you learn Facebook ads or you learn podcast management.
Maybe you're really good at writing so you can start blogging or editing.
These aren't general admin skills anymore.
Now you have gone on and you've advanced to some specialized skills.
The cool thing about specialized skills is that you can charge much more than
$30 to $40 an hour. In fact,
you'll normally do package based pricing for these high end skills,
so you may sell a podcast management package not having to track every single hour
You simply say, Hey, I will manage the production, the editing,
maybe the cover art for your podcast and I will do this all for $400 a month.
What's awesome about starting to add high end services to your business is that
as you get faster and better at your work, you're not penalized,
so you don't have to slow down to stretch out those hours where you used to be
able to do a project in two hours.
Now it takes you one, hourly tracking could kind of penalize you for that, right?
However,
if you have these high end packages that enables you to charge more work less
and really start to amp up your business.
When we talk about a virtual assistant salary,
when we start to consider high end services,
really the sky is the limit. Can you build a $3,000 website?
Could you manage somebody's Pinterest account for $500 a month?
Whenever you add in these high end services,
you can increase that baseline virtual assistant salary tremendously.
I want to hear from you,
comment below and let me know if you have decided on your own high end service
or if you have an idea of maybe a high end service you could offer in the future.
I want to challenge you to think "what if though?"
that virtual assistant salary does not have to be kept by just your general admin skills.
It doesn't even have to be kept by what you can personally do in your high end
offering.
What if we added in subcontracting and white labeling?
Subcontracting is easy.
If you are charging $500 for a website and you can bring somebody in to assist
you with that project and pay them $200 you're gonna make the extra money, right?
Maybe you're offering a $30 an hour service and you can pay a friend,
a neighbor, a college kid, $15 an hour to work home remotely,
their own time,
and you can, again, take off the top.
This is basically what sub contracting is.
Yes, it does involve management and it does involve really checking the work.
You're going to be raising up this person to do what you do,
but it is a way to continue to bring in more clients even when
you are maxed out as far as your time goes.
The same thing goes with white labeling.
We don't talk about white labeling a lot in the virtual assistant realm,
but it's something that I really,
really love and I think that more people should implement.
Let's say that you offer a $3,000 branding package.
You're going to create a new logo for someone you're going to create their brand
board, their color schemes, choose their fonts,
really complete a brand package for them.
Wouldn't a website go great with that brand package?
But you don't offer website development? What should you do?
By partnering with somebody that offers this as a service already,
you can white label their service.
That means that you come up with an agreement with this individual that says,
hey, you go ahead and create websites for me at $2,000 I'll worry about all of the
client acquisition and I will go ahead and sell those websites for $3000 you
basically white labeled it as your own product,
but you've partnered with somebody who was really going to compliment the
services that you offer. Is there anything that you could white label?
Is there something that maybe you don't offer that you could offer alongside of
your services by empowering subcontractors or using white labeling?
Let me know in the comments below.
So what is a virtual assistant salary?
The awesome thing is that's totally up to you.
Some people want to make just a couple bucks working from home.
Some people want to build an entire agency with multiple subcontractors under them.
Some people just want the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere and they
just want a few good clients that bring them full time work.
However you decide to build your business is up to you and that's the beauty of freelancing.
It's the beauty of virtual assistance.
Maybe you've been listening to this video and thinking, man, I really,
really want to get into this. Virtual assistance sounds like the perfect path for me
I would recommend you check out my Virtual Assistant Checklist and Starter Kit.
It's literally a step by step guide that tells you everything you need to do
to start your own virtual assistant business.
You can download that checklist at thevirtualsavvy.com/checklist
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I hope you have a great day. See you later.