← all posts

How Much to Pay a Virtual Assistant (Real Numbers From My Experience)

When people find out I run a small business with help from a remote team, two questions come up almost every time. The first is loud and easy: how much do you actually pay them? The second is quieter, and more important. People lower their voice a little and ask whether paying someone overseas is just a nice way of underpaying them. Both are fair, and I want to answer them honestly, with real numbers and none of the usual hand-waving. Quick note first: this is not financial advice and it is not a pitch. It is just how one person running a lean business thinks about how much to pay a virtual assistant. The video above covers the same ground if you would rather watch.

This is not about cheap labor

Let me get the most important thing out of the way, because it shapes everything else. The goal here is not cheap labor. That is exactly what someone says to feel better about themselves, so let me be concrete. The goal is a fair wage: money that is genuinely good where the person actually lives, and that still makes sense for a small business like mine. Those two things are not in conflict. A rate that is low where I live can be a strong, sought-after salary somewhere else, because the cost of living is completely different.

I also want to be blunt about the darker side. Underpaying people is wrong. It is also, separately, just bad business. If you squeeze someone to save a few dollars, the good ones figure out quickly that they are underpaid, and they leave. Being fair is not charity. It happens to be the same thing as being smart.

How I structure the pay

Two questions are bundled together here: hourly versus a fixed monthly salary, and full time versus part time.

Paying by the hour is simple and flexible. It is great when the work comes in waves, or when you are starting with someone and want to keep things loose while you find out if it is a good fit. You agree on a rate, they track hours, you pay for what you use.

A fixed monthly salary is a different deal. You agree on a set amount every month for a set schedule, whether the week was slammed or quiet. For a long-term assistant who has become a real part of how I work, I strongly prefer the steady salary, and the reason is mostly about them. A fixed number means they can plan their life, pay rent, and support their family without watching my workload like a hawk, and that stability is a huge part of why good people stay. Full time versus part time follows the same logic: part time suits a contained job, full time is for when you have enough steady work to fill their week.

So here are the real numbers

The part you came for. But first, the disclaimer.

These are illustrative examples from my own experience, at the time I am writing this. They are ballparks, not a formula, and definitely not a promise. Rates move over time, vary a lot by country, and vary by the specific person in front of you.

Please do not screenshot one of these and wave it at someone as the going rate. With that said, here is roughly how it looks for me:

• An entry-level general assistant handling tasks like inbox triage, scheduling, data entry, and simple research tends to land around three to five dollars an hour.
• Someone more experienced or specialized (real writing, design, bookkeeping, anything development-adjacent) is more like six to ten dollars an hour, climbing from there for genuine expertise.
• Turned into a full-time monthly salary, a dedicated assistant often lands somewhere around four hundred to a thousand dollars a month, depending on skill and hours.

I mean roughly. I have paid below these ranges for very light work, and well above them for someone whose skills deserved it. The number is the start of a real conversation, not a price tag you stick on a human being.

What actually moves the number

If the range is that wide, what decides where a person lands inside it? A few things, none of them surprising.

• Skill and proven experience. Someone who has done exactly this work for years, and can show it, is worth more than someone starting fresh, the same as anywhere in the world.
• English and communication, if you work closely in English all day. Clear writing and easy back-and-forth is genuinely valuable, and it is fair to pay for it.
• Responsibility and judgment. Someone I trust to make a decision while I am asleep, talk to a customer, or catch a mistake before it ships is on a different level, and the pay should say so.
• Timezone overlap. If I need hours that line up with mine so we can work in real time, that is worth a premium, because it is a real constraint on their day.
• Full time versus part time. More commitment, and more of their week locked to me, earns more.

Put simply, you are not paying for a country. You are paying for a person, their skills, and what you are asking them to carry.

How I actually pay in practice

The number you agree on is only half of it. How you pay matters just as much.

First, I pay on time, every single time. Someone on the other side of the world, who you have never met, is trusting that the money shows up exactly when you said it would. If they ever have to chase me for their own wages, even once, I have broken something that is hard to build back. Payday is not flexible.

Second, I pay through a normal, boring method: a bank transfer or a money service that lands cleanly in their account, in their own currency, without eating a chunk in fees. And here is a detail people get confused about. If you hire through a job board like OnlineJobs.ph, the platform does not take a cut of the worker's wage. You pay the platform a monthly subscription for access, but the salary itself goes straight from me to them. It is a paid tool, not a free one, but it is how we met, not a middleman skimming their paycheck forever.

Third, I give raises when someone grows. If a person takes on more and starts owning things I used to worry about, their pay should move up before they have to ask. And like a lot of employers, I follow the local custom of a thirteenth-month-style bonus near year end. It is expected in some places, appreciated everywhere, and worth honoring.

Common mistakes I see people make

The most common mistake is underpaying to save money, then paying for it in a worse way. You find someone cheap, feel clever for a month, then they leave for someone who pays what they are worth. Now you are hiring, interviewing, and training all over again. Cheap is usually the most expensive option.

The second mistake is paying late or unpredictably. It destroys trust faster than almost anything else you can do.

The third is subtle, and it is really a mindset: treating a person as a line item instead of a teammate. When you think of someone purely as a cost to minimize, you make a hundred small decisions that grind them down and push them out the door. Think of them as a person and you make better decisions almost automatically, and those are the ones that keep good people around.

So is it even worth it

Honestly, it depends. Here is the real test: it is only worth it if you have real, definable work to hand over. If you can write down what needs doing, what a good result looks like, and roughly how you would do it yourself, then you have something to hand off, and it can work beautifully. But if you cannot describe the task, hiring will not magically fix it. That is the trap people fall into: they are drowning, so they hire help, quietly hoping the helper will figure out what they never took the time to define.

When I add it all up honestly, the money was never the expensive part. My own time and attention always were, by a wide margin. Paying a fair wage to hand off the work that does not need me is one of the best returns I get on any money in the business.

---

So that is the honest version, real numbers and all. Pay a fair, competitive wage, pay it on time every time, treat the person like the teammate they genuinely are, and this becomes one of the best decisions you can make for a small business. If you want to try the job board I use to find people, the button below points you to it.