[dkramer]

I've been a VA for 6 years and I'm just getting to a point where I realize that I don't have to sell myself short to get clients. It's really a liberating feeling!!

What I am currently doing to drum up a little extra business is giving two (2) hours of free virtual assistance so that a potential client can "try me out" and see the kind of service I can give to them. I figured that this was enough time to give them a good idea of how I can help them without over extending myself and giving away too much time.

So far I've had one person take advantage of it and while they ended up not becoming a client they did give me a glowing recommendation that I can use on my website so I feel that the two hours paid for itself.

As for how much to charge for your writing....I think, if it was me, I would figure up the least amount I would be willing to take on a per word amount and charge that way. This way if you have to do longer writings your pay will reflect that.

I know that it seems that everything I'm reading these days is talking about going away from per hour billing and going to package billing/monthly billing but I just can't see myself doing that. I've been stung too many times doing it that way and I worked for a VA firm that switched from hourly billing to package billing and they lost almost all of their clients, which scared me. The VA firm I worked for shut down and gave me permission to work with the clients we had and almost all of them came back to me when they found I that I charge hourly instead of package rates.

Wow, I just realized I wrote a book and probably didn't help you a bit....sorry about that....LOL

Dawn