After identifying the potential project, you want to check how your direct competitors present their services to the market. Determining them may help how to better position you among the rest.  Next step would be is to determine your virtual assistant hourly rate.

Let’s proceed to the next steps!

Using again your identified skills, go to Upwork, then place again the skill. From there you will see the list of freelancers who have the same skills as yours.

Go over each of the top-rated Upwork Freelancer, consolidate and observe how they presented their profile in a spreadsheet by identifying their title/brand, skills, overview and the hourly rate. Using this data, it will give you an idea on how to better enhance your profile and the skills you want to add to your skill set.

HOW TO SET YOUR  VIRTUAL ASSISTANT HOURLY RATE

One of the commonly asked questions is how much to charge for your VA service. As a newbie, should I charge low or high? Pricing the services will depend on your goal and on your skills. In my end, I begin it by setting a goal on how much I want to earn, and then from there, I set a target hourly rate and minimum rate.

  1. Set an annual target income

If I want to earn Php30, 000/month, that would be Php360, 000.00 for the whole year.

  1. Consider  the Expenses and Overhead

Expenses and Overhead are equivalent to the sum of Cost of Doing Business and Cost of Living.

Cost of Doing Business is the expenses incurred to generate revenue for the business. This may include but not limited to internet, laptop, electric bill, tax, domain registration, web hosting and seminar and workshops. Set the estimated amount you may incur for a year.

Cost of Living, on the other hand, is the cost needed to sustain a certain level of living. This may include but not limited to health care, SSS, PAGIBIG, and Philhealth.

Once expenses and overhead are determined, add this one to the target annual income and label it as Adjusted Annual Income. 

In setting up the rate, we also need to identify the following factors :

Working Hours Per Year – How many hours you want to spend on your VA career. Is it 10, 15 or 20 hours per week? For example, I only want to spend 20 hours per week and that is a total of 1040 hours annually.

Off Hours Per Year –  I am fully aware that I do not get any benefits like Sick leave or vacation leave but that doesn’t stop me from setting my own benefit:).  So I set my vacation leave, sick leave and even holidays!

Non-Billable Hours Per Year – For that total working hour per year, set aside a percentage of hours allotted for your job application.

Target Hourly Rate – is the aspired rate so you can get your target financial goal in an x amount of hours.

Set your desired hours allocation.

We got the relevant factors, now it’s time to compute the target hourly rate!

In this sample computation, if I want to earn at least Php30,000 for 20 hours per week, then I need to charge for at least $13/hour. I use this target rate as my reference of rate negotiation,  like, I set a minimum rate of $10/hour.

Ok, so are you ready? Go, set your hourly rate now! If done, check it on the next blog post below.

https://www.janemaghanoy.com/virtual-assistant/[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]