I have been making an extra $1,000 to $1,300 a month for the past few months as a virtual assistant. I have two virtual assistant clients right now. One is on retainer and pays me $300 a month. The second one pays me hourly at $30 an hour, and I try to work anywhere from 8 to 10 hours a week with them. It’s important to realize this is a side hustle for me. I can’t pay all of my bills from $1,000 to $1,300 a month. My main job is being a YouTuber. I say all that to say those are my numbers, because from the beginning this was a side hustle for me. But it’s possible to charge way more as a virtual assistant if you want it to be your main source of income.

The Math

Client number one is $300 per month, guaranteed. Client number two is $30 per hour, and I try to do between 8 and 10 hours a week, so let’s just say 9 hours for easy math. That’s $270 a week, which comes out to $1,080 a month. $300 plus $1,080 gives me $1,380 a month. Of course, that depends on me hitting the hourly goal with that client, and a lot of times it depends on what they need. There have been months when I haven’t hit that exactly, but that’s what I’m shooting for, and it’s realistic for me to get there most months. It’s also worth noting that’s all pre-tax money. This formula combines the stability of a retainer client with the flexibility of hourly work, but because I get paid differently by these two clients, I also manage them differently.

How I Manage Clients

My Hourly Client

For my hourly client, I commit to certain times of the day. I’m still figuring out which actual day I want to pick every week, but whatever day I pick, I shut everything else down. I don’t focus on anything else. This is what I’m doing, and I just knock out whatever work needs to get done.

My Retainer Client

My retainer client is a bit different, because with them I do a lot of client communication. I answer emails, I answer phone calls, and I handle their profiles within the software we use to book people for classes. I also handle different technical issues that come up there. Outside of writing their newsletter, most of what I do for them is really more about being on call. It’s more of an ongoing responsibility than something I can block out time for during the week.

Setting Boundaries

Since it’s a different type of work with a different pricing structure, having clear boundaries with these clients matters. With the retainer client, where I handle all of their email communications to clients and customers, we’ve agreed on a 24-hour buffer on business days. If an email comes in Tuesday at 12:02 p.m., I have until Wednesday at 12:02 p.m. to respond. But if a client sends an email at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday, they can expect a response by Monday at or before 8:00 p.m., not over the weekend, because boundaries.

Avoiding Scope Creep

The hourly client is still new. I only started working with them back in November, so we’re still figuring out the cadence between us. But even so, I want focused days and set times for working on it. Having your own system for how you work, and communicating that system to your clients, is what stops the scope of your work from slowly creeping up. At the beginning, you may have agreed on exactly what you’d be doing. But as time goes on, clients can trickle in more responsibilities, and you have to be willing to say, “We talked about doing this. We didn’t agree to that.” This is why it’s important to have those conversations upfront.

How to Know What to Charge as a Virtual Assistant

Why Hourly Rates Don’t Work

I wouldn’t recommend an hourly rate, and here’s why: the better you get at something, the faster you can do it. If you’re being paid hourly, the faster you finish a task, the less money you make. Instead, you should charge based on the value you bring combined with your level of experience and expertise. That’s why a package price or a set price for a project works so much better once you have enough experience to do something quickly and effectively.

An Example From My Newsletters

I’ll use myself as an example. I write weekly newsletters for my clients, and after almost two years of doing it, it can take me as little as 30 minutes. So should I get paid based on the fact that it only took me 30 minutes, or based on the two years of experience that let me do it in 30 minutes when someone else couldn’t?

Running the Numbers

Say there are 1,500 people on a business’s newsletter list, and 23 of them click a link to buy a $50 product or service. Not all 23 will necessarily convert, but if 23 people click that link, that’s potentially $1,150 the business could make off a newsletter I wrote. That’s valuable. It shouldn’t matter whether it took me 30 minutes or 3 hours to write, because I’m directly responsible for putting money in a business’s bank account.

My Ebook

That’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way, which is part of why I put together a comprehensive ebook on how to become a virtual assistant within a 30-day timeline. It covers everything from how to price yourself, to finding your first client, to setting boundaries while still maintaining good relationships. This post may include mentions of my own paid products.

How to Make More Money

Three Ways to Increase Income

If I want to make more than $1,300 a month, there are a few ways to get there: raise my rates, switch from hourly to a retainer price, or take on more clients.

Getting More Clients

I believe I’m at capacity when it comes to clients and currently have two, on top of being a full-time YouTuber. I really should track how many hours a week I work, because full-time content creation alone is more than 40 hours a week, and the virtual assistant work adds another roughly 40 hours a month on top of that. It’s a lot. Right now I’m working every single day, and I don’t want to keep that up forever. I don’t think it’s sustainable.

I’m still figuring out my balance, what days go to what. In the meantime, it’s a lot to manage all three things at once: two clients and full-time content creation. I don’t want to take on another client right now, but I’ll let you know if that changes. For now, just the two is good, which leaves the other two options: raising my rates or switching to retainer pricing.

Switching to a Package Deal

For my hourly client, I do plan on proposing a package deal. I started working with them back in November, and it’s typical to raise your rates somewhere between 6 and 12 months into a working relationship. So around May, I’ll have a conversation with them about moving from hourly to package pricing, because honestly, I probably never should have gone hourly in the first place. Even when I started with them, I had enough experience not to. That was a mistake on my part, and as I’ve kept doing the work, I’ve realized I should have charged differently from the start.

The Advantage of Predictable Pricing

One advantage of moving to retainer or package pricing is that it’s predictable for both of us: a predictable cost for them as the business owner, and predictable income for me. Right now, if the hours fluctuate, it’s hard for them to know how much they’ll owe me each month, just as it’s hard for me to know exactly what I’ll make. Switching to retainer or package pricing means we’d both know exactly where we stand.

This Is Not Passive Income

One more thing worth flagging: this is not passive income. I actively work for this money. But it is the one source of income I have that’s stable, predictable, and consistent.

Why Content Creation Income Is Unstable

Being a full-time content creator sounds glamorous, but it’s unstable. It’s hard to predict how much you’ll make when you’re relying on ad revenue and whatever brand deals come your way. It’s possible to make a lot of money, but there can be months where you do and months where you don’t. What do you do in the meantime, in a month where you’re not making much?

Why I Value the Virtual Assistant Income

That’s why I like having this side hustle: at least there’s one thing I can count on. I know client number one sends the same amount on the first of the month, and I know client number two pays for however many hours I put in. With content creation, it doesn’t matter how many hours go into a video. If it doesn’t perform well, I don’t make money off it.

How the Two Jobs Complement Each Other

It’s also nice having both content creation and virtual assistant work, because they play off each other, and getting better at one makes me better at the other. I started writing newsletters for my clients first, and once I knew how to write them well for other people, it was easy to start writing one for myself. Between the two, I get the flexibility of building my own content and the steadiness of a paycheck I can actually count on.