Are Your Virtual Assistant Rates Crazy?

August 26, 2008

In my previous post, I was discussing pricing strategies and pricing your services to attract the customers you want to have in your business. As a follow-up to that, I also want to talk about the flip side of that and discuss pricing your services too high.

As a virtual assistant coach, I spend a lot of time talking to new virtual assistants as well as virtual assistants who have been in the industry for a long time. One thing that naturally comes up a lot is the subject of pricing. For new virtual assistants, it’s a struggle to determine where is a good place to start and for industry veterans, it’s an issue around pricing their services too high.

My rule of thumb is this. Do your research and ask some questions. Take a look at other virtual assistant websites and see what they are charging for their services. If a VA that has a similar skill set to you is charging $25/hour (let’s say that’s primarily administratively based) and you’re charging $75/hour, you may want to rethink your rate. Here’s why…

If you price your services super high, you will instantly need to deliver to that level. All of your potential clients (or at least most) will be doing their research and due diligence before coming to you for your services. If you’re priced high, they will have very high expectations. If you don’t deliver to those expectations, you may experience high turnover rate where your clients are concerned.

So, go with a happy medium. Determine what feels good for you and what the industry standard / average seems to be for your skill set and then price your own services accordingly. Again, do your research and see what other people are charging. If they are super busy in their practice, it probably means they’ve found a sweet spot in terms of pricing.

What are your thoughts around pricing? Any advice for VAs out there when first starting out?

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