A useful first step, before a hiring decision
Illustrative example. These are assumed numbers, not a client result or a promise of time saved.
Suppose you coordinate 20 deliveries a week and spend 10 minutes per delivery chasing files and revisions. That is 3 hours and 20 minutes a week. This task alone would not justify a full-time hire. Start with a clearer handoff, then measure what still needs you.
Your own map includes your workflow, responsibilities, checklist, workload assumptions and the cost at those hours. If the best answer is to improve the process without hiring, that is what we will recommend.
Download the starter checklist · Ask for a map of your workflow
The part that does not scale
Most owners I talk to have already solved the shooting and most of the editing. What they have not solved is the last step: someone has to look at the file before it goes to the agent, decide whether it meets the standard, and push it back with notes when it does not. That someone is usually the owner.
Hiring an editor does not remove that step. It moves it. You stop editing and start reviewing, chasing revisions, and answering the client while the revision is in flight. On a slow week that is fine. On a heavy week it is the thing that decides how late you work.
There are good reasons to run it that way. You may be the only person who knows what a finished file looks like for your brand, and handing that over badly costs more than doing it yourself. Whether it is still worth your evenings is a question only you can answer, and the answer may well be yes.
Why I am the one writing this
I run Flylisted. As it grew, the coordination work grew with it, and I was the bottleneck in the middle of it. Bringing on a VA to own the parts that did not need me made a real difference to how I spent my week. That experience is what Staffify is built on. It is my own business and my own experience, not a case study about someone else.
What a second person actually owns
This is the division that matters, and it is the one most staffing pitches leave vague. You keep the standard. They keep the traffic.
The VA owns
- Intake: files in, named, filed, logged against the job
- First-pass check against your written checklist
- Sending revisions to the editor and tracking them to done
- Delivery links, galleries, and the delivery email
- Client questions about status, timing, and re-sends
- Scheduling and calendar traffic
- Flagging anything outside the checklist and stopping
You keep
- What the standard is, in writing
- Final approval on anything the checklist does not cover
- Taste calls: grade, pacing, what a hero shot is
- The client relationship and anything commercial
- Editor selection and feedback that changes how they work
- Anything a mistake would cost you the account
Specialist editing or true quality control on the craft itself is a different role with a different skill assessment. If that is what you actually need, say so and I will scope that instead, or tell you we are not the right fit.
How the handoff and review work
What it costs, all of it
Two numbers: onboarding once, then an hourly rate. Both are below, in full, so you can work out the total before you speak to anyone.
| Onboarding | $2,499, one time. Job ads and sourcing spend, screening and interviews, the scoping call, platform and workflow training, and the infrastructure setup before day one. The line-by-line breakdown is on how it works. |
| Hourly rate | $11.25 to $14 an hour depending on the level. Most placements land at $12.50. That rate is all in: payroll, benefits, HR support, time tracking, ongoing training, and the replacement guarantee. |
| Nothing up front | You can carry the $2,499 instead of paying it: $1 an hour on top of your rate, or $2 an hour, until it is paid off. No interest, no fees, and the rate drops back to base once it is clear. Repayment tracks hours actually worked, so at roughly 40 hours a week that works out around 14 months at $1 or 7 months at $2. Fewer hours means it takes longer. |
| If you cancel on that path | The remaining onboarding balance is due. You are deferring the $2,499, not avoiding it. If that is not acceptable, do not take the deferred path. Pay it up front instead. |
| If the hire does not work | We run the whole sourcing and onboarding process again with no additional recruiting or replacement charge, under the lifetime replacement guarantee. |
| Contract | No long-term contract on the hourly rate. If you paid onboarding up front, you can stop whenever you want, with hours already worked and any open invoices still payable. |
A 40-hour week at $12.50 is about $2,167 a month. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how many hours a week the coordination is actually taking you, which is the thing the role map is for.
When I would tell you not to hire
I would rather say this on a page than three weeks into a search.
| Situation | What I would say |
|---|---|
| Under about 10 hours a week of coordination | A written checklist and a shared folder structure will get you most of the way. Do that first and see what is left. |
| Work is seasonal and thin between peaks | Part-time or nothing. A full-time seat you cannot feed turns into the thing you manage rather than the thing that helps. |
| Your standard is genuinely undefinable | If the call really is pure taste every time, it stays with you, and there may be nothing here worth delegating. |
| You have someone and it is working | Then it is working. Nothing on this page says otherwise. |
| You need a senior editor, not coordination | Different role, different assessment. Tell me and I will scope that or tell you we are not it. |
Ask for a role map
Tell me what still comes back to you and I will write up what a second person could take over, what stays with you, how the review would work, an honest hours estimate with the assumptions shown, and the cost at those hours. If the answer is that there is not enough there to hand over, that will be in it too.
No call is required to get it. If it is easier to say than to type, there is a fifteen minute slot below. Nothing to prepare, nothing to watch first, and you get the role map either way.
Book fifteen minutes with Paul Or fill this in and he will write back.