- US median pay$47,540 a year[2]All industries, BLS May 2025
- One-time fee$2,500–3,000[1]On the start day, only if you hire
- Free replacementWithin 180 days[1]One per placement, fee paid, role, hours and pay unchanged, no refund
What the week looks like at a Shopify store
A Shopify store owner opens the admin every morning to see orders, flagged risks, failed payments and the overnight tickets. New products mean variants, metafields, collections and images. A theme tweak or a new app can break something quietly. Sales events and email drops bring spikes in tickets. On top of that the owner has to read Shopify payouts, Shop Pay instalments, refunds and app fees to see what actually made money.
What a virtual assistant does for Shopify stores
- Handle supplier and influencer emails from templates
- Update simple product text, prices and images on request
- Track app subscriptions and flag those not being used
- Collect competitor prices and ideas in a simple sheet
A virtual assistant, in job-title terms an administrative assistant working remotely, handles the repeating office work of a team: documents, data updates, scheduling, simple customer emails and research. It is broader and less senior than an executive assistant, and it works best with written procedures.
Tools Shopify stores commonly use
- Shopify
- Gorgias
- Klaviyo
- Zendesk
- Canva
- QuickBooks
- Xero
- Slack
- Google Workspace
Common in this kind of business, not a checklist: name your own stack in the brief.
How to test a candidate for a Shopify store
Ask for a one-page comparison of three of your competitors' shipping and returns promises, then a polite message to a supplier about a late delivery. Look for accuracy, sources and useful judgment in the summary.
What to keep in-house or check first
Keep the store owner role, payout bank details, and app installs with the owner. Create staff accounts with limited permissions, and turn on two-step login. Theme code changes should go through a duplicate theme, not the live one. If you sell to Europe, ask whether GDPR requires anything for staff who see customers from outside the EU.
General caution, not legal advice: check the rules that apply to you with a qualified adviser.
Available now
1 virtual assistant on Stafka, English B1, updated 5 November 2026. The count is for the role, not for Shopify stores: name your business in the brief.
Administrative Assistant0 years of experience · AM-1007
- English B1
- $800–1,000 a month
Anonymous profiles of people who asked to be shown to employers. Most applied through our Telegram bot with a written and a voice English task; Silkstaff checks English on a live call before any client interview. Names, contacts and employers stay hidden until a candidate accepts your intro request.
Choose a country: shared hours
Repeating admin work can run on a written checklist with a daily check-in, so a partial overlap with your day usually works. Anything phone-based needs agreed hours.
Against a 9–17 client day in winter[3][4][5][6]; for New York, on a 9–18 local day or a 13–22 shift. Check your own office.
What it costs
We do not publish a pay band for virtual assistants yet: where a profile lists a monthly rate, that is what the person asks for. The BLS figure of $47,540 a year is for Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive[2] across all industries: we have no separate figure for this niche. Paying through Deel adds $49 a month[7]; Wise and Payoneer also work.
See also: virtual assistant pay in the US, by state · pricing and replacement terms.
How hiring through Stafka works
- Send the brief or post the job free. List the recurring tasks, how often each one happens, and the person who will answer questions in the first month.
- Within 5 business days of a confirmed brief you get 3 matching profiles, or a plain no. Most apply through our Telegram bot with a written and a voice English task; each profile shows the English level (B1–C2); Silkstaff checks English on a live call before any client interview.
- You interview, choose and contract the person directly through Deel, Wise or Payoneer. Candidates never pay.
Questions
Is a virtual assistant enough, or do I need a specialist?
For a small store with mixed tasks, a VA is a sensible first hire. When tickets, orders or marketing each need more than half of someone's week, move to a specialist for that work.
Which Shopify permissions should a new remote hire have?
Only what the job needs: orders and customers for support, products for catalogue work. Keep payouts, domains, app installs and customer export off at first. Everyone gets a separate staff account with two-step login. Check your own data duties too. This is general information, not legal advice.
Where can a Shopify store hire an affordable virtual assistant?
The usual routes are a freelance marketplace, an agency with a monthly margin, or a direct hire in a lower-cost country. On Stafka it is a direct hire: you pay the person the monthly pay you agree with them, plus $2,500–3,000[1] once if you hire, with no monthly margin.
General information for small employers, not legal or tax advice: check contracts, tax and data rules for your country with a qualified adviser. Tool names belong to their owners; we are not affiliated with them. Spotted a mistake? Write to hello@silkstaff.com.