To those who don’t know this term yet, a virtual assistant is someone who can do all or most of the admin works for you virtually. Much like secretaries, executive or personal assistants, virtual assistants can take care of those jobs that you hate doing - like keeping your contact list up-to-date, responding to emails on your behalf, set-up appointments, manage your calendar, coordinate or set-up events and even deal with personal errands – only, they work online (usually home-based) and your communication would pretty much likely be thru skype and email. The question is, would you hire someone you don’t personally see? What do you think are the advantages of hiring virtual assistant than hiring someone you could see physically?
Yes, i did. For those job that need to spend a lot of time, VA is one of the good option to save my time, and i can use my time to earn more by doing other task/job. The main concern is only how to get a good VA
Yes for sure i'll actually be looking for one in the next 1-2 months. I just have many boring tasks that take a lot of my time and wanna have that time to work on taking my business forward instead of working in the business. The advantage is clear its much cheaper. Online I can get a good VA for a small amount of money. If I had to hire somebody that lives in my country i'll have to pay 4-5 times more.
If one has too many things to manage, then they should hire a virtual assistant. I am a virtual assistant for a client and maintain CRM for him and work on other small tasks too.
With Skype or other web conferencing tools, you can see and talk to the VA as often as needed. It can work very well if you pick the right person and build trust, small project by small project, until you are both comfortable expanding activities/responsibilities.
Yes that’s true. VA can take care of the time consuming tasks for us so we can focus on things that really matters in growing our business. I have a VA that I trusted and she’s been working for me for a year now although the work is not daily. I trusted her to do all my content stuff for my various websites. She’s also offering different services like data entry, forum posting, website/product/service description, social media management and many other jobs. Whenever I need something to get done, she’s the one I usually contact.
Virtual Assistant helps you to do your task according to your direction. If you have too many works on hand then a virtual assistant may be helpful.
Yup that's right. Doing the same thing everyday would make it boring and waste of time, and that's not good for business. So better hire a virtual assistant. It does matter if you meet them physically but I think what matters is there experience and background. As long as they are good in these fields then it wont matter if I cant meet them physically.
My opinion on this topic is that a lot of it seems like slavery to me. Many VAs are people in third-world countries being paid $2 an hour to do repetitive tasks online. I know $2 is good for somebody in a third-world country, but in my opinion, you should pay what they're worth and not just the minimum that you can get away with. I've seen so many people posting in various places wanting VA but paying them peanuts. Somebody tell me if I'm wrong.
I don't see anyone saying they love VA's because they pay them peanuts.. so not sure why you compare it with slavery. I'd say each VA is paid based on the level of work he does. If all he does is copy+paste/data entry stuff then you surely can't be paid as a VA who's managing a business and doing much more important tasks. I noticed you keep mentioning in several threads that third-world country people are not being paid what they are worth for. But have you ever thought that the computer or cellphone you are using right now was built and assembled in a third-world country because the labor is cheaper there and ONLY this way you can afford buying it at a price you can afford it? (an US made iPhone for example would cost 3-4 times more, than one made in China). Don't see you having a problem with that
I would much rather pay a higher price knowing that people were getting fair wages, rather than encouraging this slavery culture which goes on in other countries. I will pay more for chocolate, bananas, coffee, water, clothing, whatever it is, if I know that those manufacturing them aren't being paid 2 cents an hour.
You imagine people living in the first world countries as you prefer to refer to, would probably start starving should this happen right? Also nobody claimed people are paid 2 cents. People living in US earning $5K/month, at the end of the month don't end up with $4K left in their pockets. They end up with just $1K. How would they handle a triple price increase?
It's all relative. I just don't agree with people being paid the bare minimum, and the reason people are allowed to get away with it is because the poor people in these countries have no other option. I've seen how it affects people in Africa. It's a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and just being taken advantage of. It's a cycle which will continue until it gets broken.
I do know when and who to hire when needed because I am a virtual assistant myself. If I have to to which I might not be able to do it myself, i hire someone who knows her trade. its good to hire someone than mess with your schedule.
there are Virtual Assistants working for $200 per month, and they can make a lot of work for you, so leaving you time for other things, like planning, managing, installing new software, testing and so on. I am very tempted to get one, but I have to decide which kind of work to assign to VA before hiring one.
Hiring a VA is a huge help if you are overloading with task. You can find some good and reliable virtual assistant at: https://www.fiverr.com https://www.upwork.com http://www.myvirtualworkforce.com.au http://www.freelance.com/en/ Just hire someone whose skilled and can deliver the reports on time. You can filter out the applicants by asking for their portfolio and conducting an interview. It's very essential to ask questions and to get to know the person you will be hiring. This gives you an overview of how they produce their work. Good luck
I think if your task in online base, you can hire anyone. It is not important that you have to see him physically. Now we can us team viewer and other time tracker software to monitor our tea member.
I would rather do it myself then I know its dont right. hired a VA once and they messed everything up for me real good