In this post, we’re going to be talking about a Virtual Assistant’s salary (or how much you can REALLY make as a Virtual Assistant). I’m breaking it down super simple for you, so make sure you continue reading below.

Watch my take on a Virtual Assistant’s salary (or how much a Virtual Assistant can REALLY make) below:

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If we haven’t met 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 in my circle. 🙂

Maybe you are brand new to the Virtual Assistant world or maybe you’ve just stumbled upon Virtual Assistance and you’re wondering, how much can I REALLY make doing this? Well, in this post, the ranging salary of a Virtual Assistant is exactly what I’m going to be talking about.

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 5 (yes, 5!) 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 the norm is. What’s the average Virtual Assistant salary MOST people are making? That’s what we are going to talk about below. Now, we are going to look at this at a couple of different levels.

Hourly Rate

I want to first preface this discussion by saying the going rate for a General Virtual Assistant in the United States can range anywhere from $20 to $40 an
hour.

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 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 are going to have better quality clients pursuing your services.

Sure, you COULD start your rates 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.

Raising Your Rates

Let’s say that you hit your sweet spot and you’re able to start your rates at around $30 an hour for general VA work. I recommend slowly moving up to
about the $35 or even the $40 per hour range.

Your higher rate is going to put 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, when you’re to the point that you’re booked out, you are more experienced and you can start raising your rates because you have highly specialized skills (which we’ll cover in a minute). But I want to start at the bare bones, okay?

If you can only offer general admin services right now, that is great. Tons of people need that service. What I would recommend, again, is 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.

Baseline Virtual Assistant Salary

In a typical 40 hour work week, you’re probably not going to actually be doing client work 40 hours a week. Let’s say you average billable hours of approximately 35 hours per week. 35 x $35 is $1,225 per week. We can simply multiply that by 52, which gives you an average salary of about $63,700.

You do need to take into consideration things like vacation or sick days for you or your family. You may end up taking a week or two off, but just to kind of give you a general baseline of what a starting Virtual Assistant salary could be, this is where we’re at.

BUT, here’s the exciting part. 🙂 Things don’t have to end there.

Check out this post that helps you Set Your VA Rates.

High-End Services

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 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 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.

You may sell a podcast management package (and you don’t have to track every single hour you work for each client). You simply include in your podcast package that you will manage the production, the editing, and maybe the cover art for a podcast 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 for working faster. You don’t have to slow down to stretch out those hours.

For example, if you used to be able to do a project in two hours and now that same project only takes you one hour, hourly tracking could kind of penalize you for that, right?

However, high-end packages enable you to charge more, work less, and really start to amp up your business.

When we talk about a Virtual Assistant salary and we start to consider high-end services, 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.  Your Virtual Assistant salary does not have to be limited by just your general admin skills.

 

Want to learn more about pricing your services?  Check out this post about Hourly vs Package Pricing.

 

Subcontracting and White-Labeling

Your annual salary doesn’t even have to be limited by what YOU can personally do in your high-end offering. What if we added in subcontracting and white-labeling?

Subcontracting

Subcontracting is easy. If you are charging $500 for a website and you bring somebody in to assist you with that project and pay them $200, you’re going to profit from the extra money, right?

Maybe you offer a $30 per hour service and you pay a friend, a neighbor, or a college kid $15 an hour to work from home remotely on their own time, and again, you can take the margin off the top.

This is basically what subcontracting is. Yes, it does involve management and it does involve really checking the work. You’re going to be raising up someone else 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.

White-Labeling

The same thing goes for 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 that I think more people should implement.

Let’s say that you offer a $3,000 branding package. In your package, you create a new logo for someone, a brand board, color schemes, fonts, and really complete a total brand package for them.

Wouldn’t a website go great with that brand package? But what if you don’t offer website development? What should you do? By partnering with somebody that offers web design or development as a service already, you can white-label their service.

This means that you come up with a mutually beneficial agreement with this individual that says, create a website for me for $2,000. I’ll worry about all of the client acquisition for you, and in return, I will sell those websites for $3,000.

In this scenario, you basically white-labeled the website as your own product, but you’ve partnered with somebody who really complements the services that you offer.

Is there a service or package you offer 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?

What do you want?

So, how much is a Virtual Assistant’s salary?

The awesome thing is that it’s totally up to you.

Some people just want to make a couple of extra 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 is the beauty of freelancing and Virtual Assistance.

Maybe you’ve been reading this post and thinking, “Man, I really, really want to get into this Virtual Assistance. This sounds like the perfect path for me.”

 

 

I would recommend you check out my Virtual Assistant Checklists 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 HERE.