Since becoming a Virtual Assistant (VA) one of the things I have found most challenging is setting rates for the services I provide, so for this blog post I thought I would write about the different ways services can be priced and the pros and cons of each.
Charging by the hour
In the UK the average hourly rate charged for VA work is £25 – £30 per hour. Charging by the hour does exactly as it says on the tin. When a VA charges by the hour, they get paid for the time they work and submit a timesheet along with their invoice.
Clients may find being charged by the hour a scary prospect, as they do not know how much they will be billed until a task is complete. There are drawbacks for a VA too — charging by the hour means they can never earn more than there are hours in the day, on top of which they have their own administration and correspondence to sort out, systems to put in place, invoices to send, insurance and legal obligations, all of which are unbillable.
The other downside to charging by the hour is that over time, people tend to get faster at tasks the more they do them, meaning a VA can end up being paid less money the quicker and more efficient they become.
Project rates
Project rates enable an entire project to be delivered at a set rate. A client is safe in the knowledge of what they will be paying upfront and what they will receive at the end of the project, while a VA knows exactly what they will be paid for their time.
However, tasks have a tendency to take as long as they take (particularly when it involves liaising with other people or organisations), so it can be difficult to estimate how long it will take to do a task. Invariably tasks take more time to complete than people think they do (social media work for example eats time — researching, writing, editing and keeping to character counts, sourcing images, organising and scheduling publication of posts) and often with creative work, people don’t know what they want in terms of content and imagery until presented with something they don’t like, so a VA needs to take this all into account when quoting for work too.
If a VA is willing to quote a project rate, be prepared to provide a written brief, so your VA can submit a quote based on this. In this way an agreement is formed between VA and client, which details the project, timescale and payment. If the brief changes midway through the project, clients should expect the cost of the work to change too.
Retainers
As with project rates, a retainer rate provides a way that a client can feel safe about what they are paying upfront and a VA knows how much money they will be receiving, making it easier for them to budget, plan their finances and to manage multiple clients.
Retainers are always charged in advance for the month ahead, not the month just gone but the key thing with a retainer rate, is that it is time, not money, which is important here. With a retainer rate a client pays to retain time, giving them the security of guaranteed availability, so they know they always have someone on hand to carry out tasks for an agreed amount of time each week or each month.
Clients are billed for retainer rate hours regardless of whether they use them all or not because if a VA was to allow a client to roll over hours they would never know how many hours they would be working each month and would be unable to plan their time and workload with other clients. Think of a retainer like a gym membership or a television subscription — if you do not go the gym or do not watch any television, your subscription does not roll over to the next month.
Package pricing
Package pricing is a way of bundling up one particular task and getting it off a clients desk for a set price each month. It is useful say if there is a particular task that a client does not enjoy or does not have time for, say posting to social media.
A social media package could be say:
- writing and publishing a set number of posts per month on Facebook or LinkedIn
- tweeting a set number of times per month, following relevant accounts and responding to comments and messages on your account
- posting a set number of images per month to an Instagram page, searching for relevant hashtags and using these in posts
Package prices are good for clients as they know upfront exactly what they are going to get and what it is going to cost them. Package pricing is good for a VA too as it enables them to have a stable income each month.
That’s a bit steep
Virtual Assistants are professional business owners, in the same way as plumbers, electricians and painters. Think that the rates charged by VA’s are a bit steep? One thing that is often overlooked is that when employed by a company, an employee receives many benefits in addition to their salary. These include:
- holiday pay
- sick pay
- contributory pension
- tax and national insurance being dealt with by the employer
- training
- guaranteed hours
- job security
- a regular income.
Self employed business owners, freelancers and contractors receive none of the above, so it is important to take this into consideration when being quoted a rate. Your VA as well as not getting any of the benefits listed above will also be using their own heating, broadband, telephone, buying their own stationery and using their own computer. And if your VA increases their rates, this will be because inflation and rises in the cost of living mean they have to raise their rates accordingly.
When it comes to setting rates, a VA may only quote one or two rates on their website but the likelihood is that other rates are available upon discussion, so don’t be afraid to ask.
Humblebee Secretarial and Administration Support. All Rights Reserved.
Humblebee 