How much does it cost you to rent a virtual assistant in 2024?

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Need to hire a virtual assistant but undecided if you have got the budget?

A significant concern for many business owners seeking to outsource their activities is:

How much is a virtual assistant going to cost me?

Whether you’re a small business owner seeking to improve your workflow, or a bigger company on the lookout for administrative assistance, it’s vital to calculate the fee of a VA. 

While virtual assistant costs vary, it’s easy to search out a virtual assistant that matches your budget for a big enterprise or a small business.

To assist you to out, this text will break down the important thing aspects that affect virtual assistant costs. We’ll also cover a few of the most trusted payment methods you should utilize to pay them for his or her work.   

Table of Contents

Let’s start.

Learn how to calculate the fee of a virtual assistant

Before we dive into ‘how much is a virtual assistant,’ let’s take a look at exactly what they do.   

A virtual assistant job entails providing online services to corporations and entrepreneurs. Depending in your preferences and wishes, you should utilize a virtual assistant service for administration, accounting, scheduling, etc.  

Yow will discover many forms of virtual assistants (e.g., administrative assistants) at different rates. Most virtual assistants are independent contractors or freelancers, but some agencies provide virtual assistants. 

When you’re seeking to hire a freelancer, you should utilize a contract site like Upwork or Fiverr.

There’s no standard rate for part-time or full-time virtual assistant services. A contract virtual assistant can charge anywhere between $1 to over $100 per hour! When you hire them as employees, you possibly can expect to pay them a median salary of around $75000 per yr.      

Nonetheless, virtual assistant costs largely rely on aspects like:

• The kind of work they do.
• The urgency of the tasks.
• The experience/skill they’ve.
• Where they’re based.

Here’s a better take a look at these aspects:

Factor #1 – the kind of work they do

The cash you pay your virtual assistants will depend on the services you’re getting from them. For instance, when you’re on the lookout for an administrative assistant to assist with a couple of mundane tasks, like handling phone calls or providing customer support, you’d be paying around $8-12 per hour. 

But when you’re on the lookout for a VA with a specialized skill resembling social media management, like an executive assistant or real estate virtual assistant, you’ll have to pay more. 

When browsing VA marketplaces, rigorously take a look at virtual assistant job titles to know the kind of VA work they supply. The services they supply will determine the rates they’ll charge you.

To assist you to start, listed below are 4 common forms of virtual assistant services and their average hourly rates.

Note – The virtual assistant rates mentioned below are estimated average hourly rates within the US.

Type Of VA Service	Services Involved:	Average Hourly Rate (within the US)
Administrative Services	General administrative tasksCalendar managementManaging email correspondenceMaintaining contact listsHandling phone calls Customer support	$10-20+
Executive Services	Project managementProject schedule managementPreparing business proposalsPlanning company events	$30-40+
Accounting and Bookkeeping Services	Financial planningPreparing ledgers and balance sheetsInvoicingSales tax reportingManaging bill payments	$12-25+
Miscellaneous Services (Marketing, website positioning, Research, etc.)	Ecommerce product data entrySocial media managementGraphic designProperty researchSEO (SEO)Writing a blog post or related articlesEmail marketingWordPress website managementDigital MarketingCopywriting	$10-20+

Sources: PayScale.com, Indeed.com, Wishup.com

To learn more, take a look at this list of 100  tasks a virtual assistant can do.  

Apart from the kind of work, the scope and duration of your project will even determine the fee of hiring a virtual assistant. 

The longer the duration, the upper the fee. So comprehensive tasks shall be lots costlier, especially in the event that they require an experienced VA to finish them. 

Likewise, mundane tasks and repetitive tasks, like calendar management, will probably be charged at a lower rate.

Factor #2 – The urgency of the tasks

The associated fee may rely on the duty’s urgency – short-notice tasks may include higher costs than those with more relaxed time constraints. 

Some virtual assistants do produce other commitments, clients, home jobs, or perhaps pursuing a university degree. In order that they may charge extra to drop what they’re doing and commit to your project’s deadline.

Moreover, urgent tasks may require a more experienced VA, adding to the fee. 

Providing flexible deadlines may help reduce the prices related to a particular task, especially when you’ve hired a contract virtual assistant, as they could must prioritize based on other clients’ deadlines. 

But when you need a virtual personal assistant solely focused on the tasks you assign them (like a full time worker), you’ll likely must offer a better rate.   

Factor #3 – the experience level

One other vital factor affecting a virtual assistant’s pay rate is their experience or skillset.

Often, an experienced virtual assistant (like an executive assistant) will charge more. They may work more efficiently and have a way more advanced knowledge of the industry they’re working in. When you want the most effective virtual assistant, you need to pay them appropriately.     

Nonetheless, you can even hire inexperienced virtual assistants who charge less for his or her services. While this may seem economical, it could come at the fee of experience. Chances are you’ll even need to spend money to coach them for the job!

So the secret’s determining how experienced your virtual assistant ought to be for the kind of work.

For instance, when you’re outsourcing a particular task like social media marketing, it’s higher to rent a VA with three to 4 years of experience. While they’ll charge more for his or her services, they’ll have the specialized skill to quickly understand the social media landscape and offer you higher results.

Nonetheless, when you only want someone to perform repetitive tasks like uploading social media posts, you don’t must hire an experienced virtual assistant. Someone with zero to at least one yr of experience ought to be perfect — you would possibly even be their first client, and it should still be high-quality!

Factor #4 – the placement they work from

Ever wonder why so many corporations hire virtual assistants from India and the Philippines?

Virtual assistants from these countries charge far lower than their counterparts from the USA (US) and Europe. That’s because the fee of living is usually higher within the US and Europe, leading to higher salaries.

For instance, the typical hourly rate for knowledgeable virtual assistants from India is around 1 / 4 of the speed of a US-based VA, which is around $10-30.

But don’t worry. Most often, those lower salaries don’t come at the fee of a lower skill level. VAs from India and the Philippines are as qualified, if not greater than the American or European VAs. That’s why hiring an offshore independent contractor is a terrific bargain for a small business owner on the lookout for high skills at reasonably priced rates.

If you need to know more about hiring virtual assistants from these countries, you possibly can take a look at our articles on hiring virtual assistants from India and the Philippines.

Learn how to pay your virtual assistant

If you’re acquiring a VA service through a virtual assistant company, you’ll likely pay an agency that may then pay the virtual assistant. Here, the payment structure is pretty standard because the virtual assistant business may have its own regulated format for payments.

Nonetheless, when you’re hiring an independent contractor on your individual, the payment policies can vary on a case-by-case basis.

Most VAs prefer to be billed on an hourly basis and receive online payments for his or her virtual assistant service. Nonetheless, some virtual assistants prefer working on a retainer and even accept checks and bank card payments. 

So how do you pay your virtual assistant?

Listed below are 3 ways to assist you to resolve:

1. Select the proper payment structure

A VA payment structure determines how a virtual assistant plans to charge a possible client for his or her service. As each VA or virtual assistant agency can have a special payment structure, you want to agree on something you’re comfortable with. Chances are you’ll pay for full-time work, part-time work, or a one-time project.

Here’s a fast take a look at a few of the standard pricing structures utilized by virtual assistants:

Here, you pay the virtual assistant for every billable hour. For instance, you pay a virtual assistant $6 per hour worked. That is more fitted to VAs performing recurring tasks like handling phone calls, customer support, or social media management. 

Here, the speed is project or task-dependent, which could also be best when you own a small business. For instance, it’s possible you’ll pay a virtual content author 5 cents per word or $50 per article/blog post submitted. For graphic design, you possibly can pay for individual designs (banners, posts, cover pages, website pages, etc.) 

You pay a VA or virtual assistant business a set amount for a certain variety of hours worked on a weekly or monthly basis. For instance, a virtual assistant salary could possibly be a flat rate of $150 for working 10 hours per week or month. 

A virtual assistant agency may offer monthly or annual subscription payment plans and sometimes even pay-per-hour options. There’ll normally be several plans to select from, depending on the services and variety of working hours you require. The virtual assistant company will then pay the VA directly. 

2. Use popular payment platforms

The main good thing about hiring virtual assistants is that they’re location-independent. You don’t need to hire a VA living in your city or country, which supplies you a bigger talent pool to select from.

Nonetheless, as your virtual assistants may be from anywhere, you want to use a payment platform that’s accepted worldwide.

Here’s a better take a look at a few of the popular payment platforms used to pay virtual assistants:

A. PayPal

PayPal is a number one payment platform utilized by corporations and startups to pay their virtual assistants.

Their platform supports over 20 currencies, and you possibly can arrange recurring payments to save lots of time. Using PayPal does incur some high transaction fees, and transfers may take three to 5 business days to reflect in a checking account. 

B. Payoneer

Payoneer is a well-liked payment platform that simplifies the strategy of paying your virtual assistants across countries.

It supports currencies from several countries and may be integrated with a lot of freelancing web sites. There may be an annual fee of $29.95, and the currency conversion rate can reach as much as 3.5% per transaction. 

C. Sensible

Sensible (formerly TransferWise) is a world money transfer platform that charges low and transparent fees on all transactions.

While Sensible supports over 50 currencies, it is restricted since it is barely available in 50 countries. Account registration is free, with currency conversion fees starting at 0.41%. 

For more details on online payment platforms, take a look at: How To Pay Anyone In Any Country.

3. Use a performance monitoring software

As most virtual assistants charge you at an hourly rate, you want to keep track of their work hours accurately.

Why?

Without tracking their work hours, there’s no way for business owners to:

• Confirm how long a project actually took.
• Know in the event that they’re passing off idle hours as hours worked.
• Confirm in the event that they’re only working on your tasks once you’re being billed.
• Monitor their web and app usage during work hours.
• Prevent them from getting distracted while working.

What’s Time Doctor?

You need to use it to accurately track the time your virtual assistants spend in your tasks and assist you to pay them for his or her hours worked.

1. Automatic Payroll Management To Help Pay Your VAs Accurately

The tool’s Payroll feature helps you accurately pay each distant employee for his or her billable hours. It robotically calculates each VA’s pay and enables you to pay them using a payment approach to your selection.

The Payroll feature can be fully customizable. It enables you to select:   

• The payroll period: Select from a listing of default values or set a custom payroll period.
• The speed type: Specify a set payment rate for a part-time or full time worker or go for an hourly rate as per your virtual assistant’s payment policy.
• The speed per hour: Pay your VA based on the billable rates chosen and time tracked by the app. 
• The currency: Select from a listing of world currencies.

2. Powerful Project Reports To Help Track Your VA’s Work

It shows which virtual assistant worked on each project or task and for a way long. For instance, you’ll know the time your digital marketing assistant spent working on a particular Facebook ad campaign or writing Instagram post captions.

As these reports are accurate to the second, you should utilize them to confirm the time VAs spend working to be sure that you’re paying them appropriately.

3. Inactivity Tracker Prevents Logging Idle Hours As Hours Worked

This ensures your virtual assistants only log energetic hours as hours worked.

Closing thoughts    

Figuring out the prices of a VA could appear difficult, however it’s actually quite straightforward.

Discover the most effective virtual assistant to your needs. Chances are you’ll want an administrative assistant, an executive assistant, or a virtual personal assistant.  Also, consider the kind of work you’ll have them do, the urgency of your deadlines, and their experience and placement. 

Why not join for the 14-day free trial to check how well it really works for you and your VA?