What to charge
There is no one size fits all when it comes to setting your service charge as a virtual assistant. While you might see some advice saying you should charge per hour, it is more profitable for you to charge by the type of jobs you do. Also, as a beginner, you might feel afraid to charge clients your worth, one trick to overcome this fear is to start with a skill that you have confident you can do exceptionally well, then brush up your other skills as you grow. If offering one service is what will make you charge your worth, by all means do it but do not remain static.
How to charge
There are several ways to charge your clients such as:
- Monthly, quarterly or yearly retainership
In this instance, you have entered into a contract with your client to offer them specific services and you will be paid either monthly, quarterly or yearly. When entering into this type of contract, ensure that you clearly agree with your clients on how they will be charged if you have to do any job that is outside of what is listed in the retainership.
- Pay as you go
This is when you charge a client per job. This charge is suitable for one-off clients.
- Usable hours
In usable hours package, your client pays you a specific amount of money that must be used up within a stated number of period for you to perform any job of their choice for them. Be careful in this instance not to enter into a contract which contains jobs you cannot do. So, always let your prospects know what your offers are early at the consultation stage.
Rates to charge
Before preparing your service charge, put into consideration all of your expenses such as monthly data bundle, workspace setup, subscription for software packages e.g. Canva app, accounting package, website development, website hosting, electricity, advertising expenses, etc. You need to consider all of the above monthly expenditures and compare it to how much you would like to take home per month. Let’s do a basic math.
Assume you like to earn net income of N100,000 monthly
If all of the expenses listed above total up to N80,000 monthly, this means that you must earn at least N180,000 per month.
Now, let’s assume that you are able to work 8 hours per day for five days a week. This equals 40 hours per week. Of this 40 hours per week, you set aside 10 hours to work on your own business such as content creation, marketing, behind the scene activities, etc. You are left with 30 hours per week. If you use 10 hours per week for one client, this gives you 3 clients. So, to earn at least N180,000 monthly from your virtual assistant business, you will need to have at least 3 clients who pay you N60,000 monthly.
Please note that there are some expenses not considered in the above calculations. Expenses such as software that are specific to a client’s job and value added tax (VAT) are to be borne directly by the client.
This brings us to the end of Module 6.
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