A recent survey of 350 virtual assistants determined the following:

• Most virtual assistants are women (98.2 percent of participants)
• 81 percent are located in the U.S., predominantly in California, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and most international VAs are in Canada and Australia.
• The largest number of VA participants began their businesses in 2003.
• Most operate as sole proprietorships as home-based businesses.
• 86.7 percent have an active Website.
• Annual gross revenue was $26,519 in 2003, ranging from $760 to $280,000. With the top and bottom 10 percent removed, top income dropped to $52,000 and the average income was $19,800.
• Partitioning part-time and full-time VAs yielded widely differing results in income, with part-time VAs averaging $13,813 and full-time VAs averaging $38,759.
• VAs expect to gross 28.5 percent more in 2004 than they did in 2003, with part-time VAs expecting to earn and average $17,678, and full-time VAs expecting to earn$41,834.
• VAs participants support between one and 116 clients each month, with an average of 6.6 clients per VA. Removing the outliers - top and bottom ten percent - drops that number to 4.7 clients per month.
• VAs work an average of 5.4 days a week, with an median of 40 hours per week worked. However, it was found that part time VAs work about 20 hours per week, while full-time VAs average about 47 hours per week.

The full survey is available for purchase here.
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