Why do VA's charge so little per hour?

Lyric

Lyric

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I have a legitimate question: how are so many VA's able to charge on average $2.50 per hour for SEO services and provide proxies, VPS etc.? Even if they live in areas with very low cost of living, the overhead is still high if you want high quality residential proxies, fast internet and good dedicated VPS specs. This is not a troll post, I just really don't get how they are able to even break even by asking for so little. I'm beginning to think that there may be magical automated elves that work for free on their off season time from Santa.
 
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You might fight it hard to believe but even in 2018 in some countries $2.50 is a full days of work so for them $2.50 an hour is a lot of money.
 
$2.5 is sometimes 5 times the amount of the average worker
 
A lot of these posts hiring freelancers ask for perfect English skills as well. Most native English speaking countries have a high cost of living. Even just having the ability to respond to ads for VA services requires you to buy a BHW membership and that’s already $100 USD out of pocket.
 
Lyric said:
I have a legitimate question: how are so many VA's able to charge on average $2.50 per hour for SEO services and provide proxies, VPS etc.? Even if they live in areas with very low cost of living, the overhead is still high if you want high quality residential proxies, fast internet and good dedicated VPS specs. This is not a troll post, I just really don't get how they are able to even break even by asking for so little. I'm beginning to think that there may be magical automated elves that work for free on their off season time from Santa.
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In my country, $2,50$/hour is solid. That would be 440$ a month with 8h per day on average ( if you are lucky to find the job).
Hight school teachers are earning about 300$/month. Bartenders in cafees, employers at fast food about 200$/month ( 8h/day ).

I can pretty much understand the reason for asking for such rates. :)
 
Well, I come from a developing country where avg wage of labor is around $5 - $12 per day (with upto 10 hours of back breaking labor) and a skilled office working can earn around $250 - $500 per month on avg. To give you a good idea, here's a post I wrote about expenses of living in Pakistan.
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/what-its-like-living-in-pakistan-answer.950310/

This should help you put things in perspective.
 
They do multiple jobs at once, they automate most of the tasks and they live in "third world countries".
 
I’d assume most of them are doing more than one thing in each hour / handling more than one clients tasks. At least I’d assume that if they were at all skilled.

Reason: the Internet means anyone can work for anyone, from anywhere, so the pay gap is not going to last.
 
ExperimentalSEO said:
Because they aren't worth more than that. If your skill set is worth $25 an hour you can get it no matter where you live.
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Exactly. If you Expect a 2.5$ VA to work on something that needs lots of research/ self-learning. you will have hard time training them.
 
ExperimentalSEO said:
Because they aren't worth more than that. If your skill set is worth $25 an hour you can get it no matter where you live.
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Completely agree. These VA's are best used for boring brain-dead jobs where it would be a waste to hire an American/European/whatever who expects 8-10$+ an hour.
 
ScribScribScrib said:
This.

You'll be paid for what you're worth. If you present yourself a slave, you'll be treated like one.
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And there would still be people going 'Ooh I can make me some 300 bucks this month. Who cares about the next month or the next year'. It's disheartening to see that people care more about hitting the minimum wage rather than getting compensated for their work.
 
Supply and demand. Some might be able to charge more but so many just look at the price (vs. bang for your buck) so if they charge more they get less or no clients. Too many offering it these days and as many said inet & electricity is so cheap still in parts of the world that they still make money even if not part of an agency...
 
Lyric said:
I have a legitimate question: how are so many VA's able to charge on average $2.50 per hour for SEO services and provide proxies, VPS etc.? Even if they live in areas with very low cost of living, the overhead is still high if you want high quality residential proxies, fast internet and good dedicated VPS specs. This is not a troll post, I just really don't get how they are able to even break even by asking for so little. I'm beginning to think that there may be magical automated elves that work for free on their off season time from Santa.
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These types of VAs that you described are probably under someone who's managing them.

For example, in my country, the Philippines - the average salary a month for Filipino workers is around $140( $5~ a day ). Getting skilled workers can bring that up probably to $8-$10 a day.
The best thing is that if you live here, then you can go grab minimum wage workers and train them for skills that the VA agency needs( We call these agencies Business Process Outsourcing agencies here )
Now, these agencies have tools to do their tasks; let's say three servers, a bunch of tools &, etc. that they have to handle all their responsibilities. As for proxies, all they have to do is make sure they don't use it for the same network.
All of these brings down the costs by A LOT.
Most BPOs here also have their own marketing projects( SEO, SMM ) & maybe even have a call center in place( based on what I've come across )
 
Do not forget to mention laziness. Minimum wage salary worker is basically lazy and will take 10x more time than you yourself doing the task. Unless there is someone nannying them and scold them
 
Lyric said:
I have a legitimate question: how are so many VA's able to charge on average $2.50 per hour for SEO services and provide proxies, VPS etc.? Even if they live in areas with very low cost of living, the overhead is still high if you want high quality residential proxies, fast internet and good dedicated VPS specs. This is not a troll post, I just really don't get how they are able to even break even by asking for so little. I'm beginning to think that there may be magical automated elves that work for free on their off season time from Santa.
Click to expand...

Actually it's because they are charging you for server/tool runtime, not their manual hours. I've worked with a lot of linkbuilders and know first hand. They charge you 2.50 an hour, but that is being charged for the hours that the likbuilding and VPS tools are running for. they can run the same tools for dozens of people at a time, multiplying that amount per hour.
 
zigzagzig said:
In my country, $2,50$/hour is solid. That would be 440$ a month with 8h per day on average ( if you are lucky to find the job).
Hight school teachers are earning about 300$/month. Bartenders in cafees, employers at fast food about 200$/month ( 8h/day ).

I can pretty much understand the reason for asking for such rates. :)
Click to expand...

Now I feel spoiled... I guess I’m lucky to be living in a city where the minimum is $11-$12/hr for high school students
 
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