78: "Should I Charge Hourly or Package Your Services as a Virtual Assistant?"

One of the most common questions I get from virtual assistants (aspiring or experienced ones!) is "Should I charge hourly, do packages, or something else entirely?!"

In this episode, I’m breaking down the 3 main pricing models AND when (and when not) to use each one.

If you’ve ever second-guessed your rates or felt awkward quoting your prices, this one’s for you.

| LINKS |

✹ Get the Black Friday "5 Days of Deals" Deets here!

✹ Attorney-Drafted Contract Template for VA's

✹ Want to start your business as a VA? Join our 5-Day Monetize Your Skills Challenge!

Transcript

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One of the most common questions I get when it comes to starting your business as a virtual assistant is how you should price yourself. So I want to spend today's episode telling you about the different ways you can price yourself and then what I would recommend. But before we dive in, I wanted to tell you about our Black Friday sale that we have coming up. We are doing five days of deals, which is happening in just a couple of weeks. Starting November 24th until November 27th, which is Black Friday, we will have a deal a day on our most popular programs, including Beginner to Booked VA, as well as some of our digital products, our Your Behind the Scenes BFF membership, and even our VA readiness audits for those of you who are business owners looking to hire a VA in 2026. Plus, if you jump on the wait list, you'll not only get all the details sent to you via email so you can plan ahead, but you'll get early access to the deals and the spots because some of them are limited the week before. So you don't have to worry about it between hosting and last-minute Costco runs the week of Thanksgiving. So head to yourBTSBFF.com slash deals and we will send you all the details. Now let's dive into this week's episode. Welcome to the Virtual Assistant School Podcast. I'm your host, Kate, a teacher-turned entrepreneur, mom of two, and I teach women how to use the skills they already have to make money from home as a virtual assistant. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you'll get step-by-step strategies, behind the scenes insights, and hear honest, unfiltered conversations about making money and growing an online business so you can stop feeling stuck and start taking action toward your goals. Whether you're looking for a flexible side hustle or want to take your business full time, this podcast is for you. Building a business or starting something new can be super overwhelming at times, but here you don't have to do it alone. So grab your coffee or make another cup and let's dive into this week's episode. Okay, so there are a bunch of different ways that you can price yourself as a virtual assistant. I'm gonna talk about three of the main or most common ways during this episode, and then give you kind of my reasoning on why I would or wouldn't do that in your business. So first we have hourly, and for the sake of this episode, that is defined by you are doing the work, you are tracking your time, and then you're invoicing your clients after the fact, whether it's like every week or every two weeks or every month even. Then you also have monthly retainers, which I categorize or define monthly retainers as your client pays you X amount on the first of the month, and that reserves X amount of hours for that month. So let's say your rate is$30 an hour, your client needs 10 hours a month, they're gonna pay you$300 for those 10 hours on the first of the month to use those 10 hours. Okay. And then the third way is package-based pricing. Package-based pricing is where you're not doing hourly anymore. It's not like directly time that you're working for an hourly rate, um, but it's more focused on deliverables. Okay. And we're gonna get into that a little bit more, but it's basically like for X amount of money, you're going to get X, Y, and Z. Okay. So 99% of the time, I am not going to recommend that you do hourly. And here is why. With hourly, where you are tracking your time and then you were invoicing the client after you've done the work, you're working and then you're getting paid. And I have seen some really horrible situations where VAs have done all this work ahead of time for their clients and then they go to invoice them and the clients go to them. And obviously, you can have things in place like contracts. If you do not have a contract in place, you need to have a contract in place. We actually have one if you're a VA that doesn't have a contract. I'm gonna put the link for that in the description because we have an attorney drafted contract from my business attorney that you can use. It's a contract template. You can use it for all your clients. But this is so crucial to have in your business. And even still, some people will try to get away with not paying you. And so, in order to avoid that, I just really don't recommend tracking your time and doing the work first and then invoicing, um unless there's like a really specific reason for that. Okay. There's a time and a place for hourly. I will say that. That's why I said 99% of the time, I won't recommend it. But it's just, it's just unsustainable. And I don't think it's the best way that you can structure your business. It's also really unpredictable. Okay. So it's unpredictable for both you and the client because you don't really know how many hours you're gonna be working that week for that client. Your client doesn't really know how long things are gonna take you. So, you know, they're kind of wondering, well, how much am I gonna have to pay her this week? Because how much time is she gonna take? And yada, yada, yada. I just find that hourly is a sticking point for a lot of people, even if they don't realize it at first. And so I just would not recommend it unless, like, the most ideal time for hourly is when you have a monthly retainer and maybe they want to add more hours or they're gonna go over an hour, then you could track that hourly and then invoice them for the extra. And you just would have that in your contract as well. Um, but I have just seen so many things go south when it comes to charging hourly, and I just don't want that for you. Okay. Okay, monthly retainers. This is actually where I recommend starting. With a monthly retainer, like I said, your client is going to reserve X amount of hours per month to work with you every month. Okay. They're gonna pay you on the first of the month, and then you have, you know, those hours reserved for them. The reason that I love doing this is because it is predictable. It allows for you to see, okay, this is how much time I have, this is how much capacity I have. Can I bring on a new client or not? And you know, like those 10 hours are reserved for that client, okay. And you're getting paid for them, whether they use them or not. All right. And that that's a whole rabbit hole that we could go down. It's something that I talk about in depth with Behinder to Booked VA, but the hours are given to the business owner. And the business owner, it's their responsibility to make sure that they're using them. Okay. Make sure that their business is also prepared ahead of time so that they can delegate in a way that allows for you to do your best work and take over those hours. All right. Um, it's predictable for both you and the business owner, not just with time, but also finances. So if you're doing a monthly retainer, I would recommend starting with like a three-month contract. Um, and then the business owner is also knowing, like, okay, I'm paying her, you know,$500 a month for the next three months, or if you're going to continue the contract, I know still$500 a month versus like, you know, with hourly, you don't really know. Like it could be anything because it just depends on how long it takes you. It's not as predictable. And then for you as the VA, you know, okay, I'm getting$500 from this client, and then I'm getting, you know,$350 from this client, and then I'm getting$750 from this client. So you're able to project your income for the next three months at least. And you could also have agreements that are six months. You could also have rolling agreements that, you know, are just indefinite with a cancellation policy, whatever that looks like for you. Um, and so it just makes it a lot easier for you to have predictable income because people's biggest hesitation sometimes with starting a business is not having predictable income. And that's one of the things that I love about being a virtual assistant and teaching you how to be a virtual assistant is because you can actually structure it in a way where it's very predictable. And you can have, you know, that income every single month coming in and be able to see what that's gonna look like and project that. So that's why I really recommend the monthly retainers. It obviously is also still directly trading time for money, right? You're still tracking hourly in a way, but it allows for you to figure out how much time something's gonna take you and also like what things you like doing for people. It's a great starting point for someone. I don't want you to be in hourly retainers forever because I don't want you to constantly be trading time for money. I don't want you to also get faster at things and then you know make less money because you're more efficient. I don't think that's fair. Um, so that's why we want to eventually move into package-based pricing. Like this is the ultimate goal. It's not necessarily something you can do right out the gates as a VA and you're in a more generalist kind of role because it is deliverables versus time. So, for example, like I said, it's you know X amount of money per month or for whatever the package is. And for that, the client is going to get X, Y, and Z. It's deliverable based versus hourly based. Now, when you are creating these packages, you obviously want to take time into consideration, but that's not all of what you're taking into consideration when you're building a package. Now, this is really the way that I want you to start pricing your services after like a few months working with a client, you can move to packages. Um, or also once you've niche down and you have a specific service or an industry that you love and you want to like stay within. But this isn't what I would recommend starting out with. This is something that we're going to work up towards. Even after you know, three months of working with someone, you'll be able to create a package for them if that's the direction that you want to go. But packages are much more scalable, they're much more um, you know, effective when it comes to growing your income without working more. And it's still predictable and fair to the client because they are paying X amount and they are getting certain deliverables from that. And honestly, as someone who has had VAs, I currently have a VA. You know, I started out as someone who had a VA before I actually ever became a VA. And I much prefer the monthly retainers or the package-based pricing because of that predictability. And so if you're someone who's like, oh, like I'm worried that my clients won't like, you know, moving from, you know, monthly retainer to package-based pricing, I would actually challenge that thought because more often than not, business owners would rather pay you a package versus being worried about time all of the time. Like, oh, have I used my hours? Have you used the hours? Like, do I need to give you more stuff? Instead of just going to like, hey, you know, for X amount every single month, I'm gonna take care of these things. Most business owners would prefer that. Okay. I'm just telling you that right now. Okay, so hopefully that helped you kind of wrap your head around pricing and how you can structure your VA services. It's a question I get asked a lot. And so I'm hoping that this episode gave you a little bit more clarity around what that looks like. We dive into a lot more around rates and pricing and services and packages and all the things. But hopefully this answered a lot of your burning questions that you might have had. Now, don't forget to jump onto our wait list for five days of deals. You're not gonna want to miss it, especially if you're someone who is wanting to start your business as a virtual assistant or you're a virtual assistant who wants to grow your business. Okay, you're gonna want to be on the list. All right. I will chat with you in the next episode, and as always, I am rooting for you.