I keep hearing a lot of talk about how a Virtual Assistant should be charging for his or her services and it always seems to come down to Packages vs. Hourly rates.

I think that a combination of the two is the best scenario.  For instance, if there is a task that has a concrete life span that you’ve done quite a few times, this is something that you should probably consider creating a package for.  You’ve done it enough times to know how long it should take you, and you have a very good idea of what is involved.  With your time and what you are going to include in mind, it is easy to create a package (or multiple packages for different levels) for your pricing model.

It’s similar to something I’ve mentioned in previous posts about programming – if there is something that you’re doing over and over again you should be creating a function that will do it for you.  It just makes sense!

But, there are also times when we may be doing tasks that don’t occur very often, or we haven’t done them very much yet, and in this case your hourly pricing model will kick in.  Pretty much anything that doesn’t fit into any of the packages that you’ve created will fall into your hourly rate.

So why not have the best of both worlds?  It doesn’t have to be Packages VS Hourly rates, take on whatever fits you the best and have Packages AND Hourly rates!