A short YouTube talk by John Jonas explaining the real costs of hiring virtual assistants (VAs) in the Philippines. Jonas argues against agency markups, gives typical salary and hourly ranges ($3–$10/hr; $400–$2,000/month), contrasts skill levels tied to pay, and briefly promotes his service, 1vaoa.com, to help find VAs.
Chapters
So I'm out bikepacking with my friends, and we were talking last night about the cost of hiring people in the Philippines. And it's always surprising to people because most people think you got to go through an agency. There's a bunch of markup. It's $15 an hour for a virtual assistant. So you're gonna pay them $1,500 or $2,000 a month, and you're gonna get their time or you're gonna pay for 10 hours of time at $15 an hour. That's not at all how it should work. I almost always pay them a salary. That salary ranges between $400 a month and $2,000 a month. And at like $2,000 a month, I have super talented programmers, designers, Facebook ads people at like $400 a month. I got data entry people or basic assistance or general lead generation following my instructions to do this for me, and then everything in between. So hourly. If you're gonna pay someone hourly, we're talking like $3 an hour or $4 an hour or $5 an hour. It's not that much. You don't have to pay an agency markup. Oh, boy, we just got a hill. And if you find the people yourself, you don't have to pay $500 to find the same person that a recruiting agency would have found for you because they're all using onlinejobs.ph and I know that because we see them all using it. So costs of hiring a VA in the Philippines should range from like $3 an hour to like $10 an hour. And at 10, you're hiring like $100,000 a year person in the US for 10 bucks an hour. So my name is John jonas. I created 1vaoa.com where I will help you find that person, that whatever type of person you want to find. I'll show you how to find them. One VA.
