What we need to emphasize is the lack of overhead costs they have when using us. We use our own equipment — they don’t need to have an extra work station setting largely unused, just to have a place for a temp when they need one. They don’t pay for the time I spend checking email or running to the bathroom. They don’t pay for my insurance or vacation. And they don’t pay me for hours spent occupying a desk when they have no work for me.

I consistently hear from overseas VAs asking me to outsource my work to them — they will do my work for $5-8 per hour — but at what cost? If the quality of the work is lacking, I’ve gained nothing. As a paralegal I often review medical records in legal cases. I am still amazed at the incredibly bad medical transcription I see in these files — obviously the work was done where language was an issue. And just as obviously, the doctors never checked the work product afterwards (or filled in the blanks). I find this extremely worrisome from a nursing viewpoint as well as from the VA perspective.

Nearly a year ago I wrote “If You Pay Peanuts, You Get Monkeys.” Since I am still receiving emails on this article, you might find it helpful.

(http://cardinalpointva.typepad.com/inside_out/2007/04/if_you_pay_pean.html)

I think we need to be very careful not to underprice ourselves. If we have experience and if we provide a truly excellent work product, we can feel secure in setting our rates at a level sufficient to support ourselves. And finally, consider this: If something is priced too cheaply, it seldom receives respect. If we want to be respected for the work we do and the product we provide, we need to price it appropriately. Charging incredibly low rates often sends a message that our work is not up to par — instead of selling them on the valuable services we provide.

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I think part of the problem is that so many people seem to think anyone who works virtually is a virtual assistant.

I have a few people who help me with tasks virtually. As in, they work from home, and I pay them to do work for me. But the don’t own virtual assistant businesses. They’re basically independent contractors. When I first started looking around for people, I couldn’t afford $45/hr — still can’t. Not that I don’t think some assistants would be worth that price; they’re just out of my budget. But I would never dream of asking someone to work for $3/hr. That seems insane to me. I hope anyone working for that little of an amount lives in a country where that rate converts into something decent for them, because I can’t even imagine… Wow.

I feel your pain though. I get people who find me online and contact me to hire me as a ghostwriter for $3/post. While there may be people happy to work at that rate — and more power to them — I’m just not one of those people. And I’m very grateful that I have plenty of people willing to pay me a professional rate for the work I do. Otherwise, I would go work at Starbucks or something.

Amy Derbys last blog post..How to Get Comments on Your Law Blog (and How NOT To)

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Thanks for the comment Matt, even if we disagree on this subject!

Thank you for the link to my Mamtha and Me blog post.

To be fair, I said I found to help someone me “for a rate I could live with.” If I’d said “reasonable,” it would have been implying that VA rates were unreasonable. The range of rates I got for VAs was $35-75, so at least for my investigation, $45 was at the low end. As I just started my firm six months ago, I am still watching my budget pretty closely, and this is out of my price range. I don’t want to give the impression that I think professional business owner VAs should take $10 an hour, and please do forgive me if I it sounded like that.

I do sympathize with the difficulty in establishing yourself as a “professional” as a VA, because I have had some trouble with the term “contract lawyer.” I’m a professional, running a solo practice, yet I get confused with the contract lawyers that work for staffing agencies and do doc review. That’s a perfectly legitimate business, of course, but its not what I do, and not at the same rates.

That’s all I got! Thanks for the opportunity to clear up any misunderstanding.

Kimberly