Although the VA's hourly rate is more than the employee's rate in the first place, you save the cost of benefits and overhead that would have to be applied to the new employee's wage. And, because VA's are usually more experienced, more efficient, and better connected than the employee, you'll need to devote far less time to the project to get the same results, only 480 hours a year versus 2,080 for the new employee.
**Remember, with a VA, you only pay for the time on task by the minute! No more paying for socializing, hour long lunches or frequent trips to the washroom.
An employee's 8 hour day can be crunched into 3-4 hours with a VA.
Simply put, you should contract with a VA because it's more cost-effective and VA's go above and beyond the normal assistant's duties to impact your own productivity. No task is too big or small for a VA to handle. Even if you only have 1 hour of work a month for a VA to do, a VA can (and will) do it.