Poll: Virtual Assistants - have one yet?

[ardor]

Please post the following and include links

where you found your VA (ie elance.com)
If you posted a job posting Please include a link to that posting
What is your hourly Rate
Scale from 1 to 10 How good they are
Is it a firm

Any other information you want to provide

THANKS!! =)

[UltraT]

Does anyone have a list of what daily tasks they are assigning to the VA? I sent an inquiry to Brickwork yesterday about market research. They must be busy or my project not to exciting.

[Feumet]

Please post the following and include links

where you found your VA (ie elance.com)
If you posted a job posting Please include a link to that posting
What is your hourly Rate
Scale from 1 to 10 How good they are
Is it a firm

Any other information you want to provide

THANKS!! =)

11+ Awesome -

Way under $5 for full time
Yes, it is a firm...my own.

I went out and got committments for several thousand hours.
It is one of the best things that I have ever done.

[darrin365]

Hey, Feumet,

What are the minimum time blocks you require for others to use your VAs? You can PM me or e-mail if you would rather.

Thanks!

Darrin

[Talon]

I have yet to find a person to do the work at the price suggested. For 8 dollars an hour I can hire a temp at Kelley Services

[Feumet]

Hey, Feumet,

What are the minimum time blocks you require for others to use your VAs? You can PM me or e-mail if you would rather.

Thanks!

Darrin


Email me and will give you further details but here are the basics.

Try $594 per month for a VA. This is 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, up to 22 days a month (depends on how long the month is) or up to 176 hours. That works out to only $3.37 per hour.!

Or for $194 per month, you can get 2 hours a day 5 days a week. This is just a bit more at $4.40 per hour. So for less than $49 per week you can have a part-time assistant. Still shaking things out but, so far so good. :)

Also have some Dreamweaver and Html guys available at reasonable rates too. Still giving them trial projects but if you want to be a Guinea Pig.....LOL

[ardor]

I have yet to find a person to do the work at the price suggested. For 8 dollars an hour I can hire a temp at Kelley Services

I got one bid on my elance posting for a assistant
25 hours for 50$/ 2$ an hour

Of course who knows what kind of output I'll get for 2$ an hour...

your temp from kelley services maybe able to answer phone calls in the office, go get you coffee, ect... but I've never seen anyone paid 8$ an hour in the US that was "good", People at in and out (US fastfood place) make 9.50 an hour.

When your no longer showing up at your office, or working US hours, your assistant wont be-able to get you coffee then.

Single point of failure, All the chicks i know who do temp work has never had a job more then six months, due to firing, laid off, or being bored.


8$ an hour for "good" work isn't bad. Tim Says 15$-20$ gets you a overseas PhD.


But I know what you mean 5$ an hour or less starting out, For me is the Goal.
So, Where are you looking?

[MuseMojo]

I'm still in the elimination phase. I'm making a list of everything that I do for my present business and how much time I devote to it. I'm also including some personal 'support' tasks that I might be able to hand over to a VA.

The list is going to be used in my first muse, an information product. It will be an "I did it and so can you" type of product, so documenting everything is crucial for me.

But I'm DEFINITELY going to be getting a VA.

[darrin365]

Done, Feumet. Thanks.

[Talon]

Alright the offer here is provide me with something useful and I will send you a company that offers the following
Virtual Assistant team has trained, highly skilled professionals providing professional administrative, creative, technical support services. Our team combines skill, knowledge and resources with computer applications, software and Internet technology to create an efficient and state-of-the-art environment. VA is dedicated to researching new and innovative ways to work together virtually.
Our goal is to be a trusted partner in each and every clients’ business by bringing value on our clients’ terms, servicing as an extension of our clients’ business and delivering service excellence coupled with innovative, integrated technology.
Our rate varies from $3 to $5 depending on the complexity of the work.
This toke me 7 hours of searching if you want the brochure great I want something in return..
:cool:

[davinic]

Our goal is to be a trusted partner in each and every clients’ business by bringing value on our clients’ terms, servicing as an extension of our clients’ business and delivering service excellence coupled with innovative, integrated technology.

Talon, if you want to sell information, I would recommend not copying and pasting specific text directly from someone's website (or Elance page :)), as a simple Google search leads you to the exact page.

I guess I got the answer and just gave you useful information in return :)

[Talon]

Talon, if you want to sell information, I would recommend not copying and pasting specific text directly from someone's website (or Elance page :)), as a simple Google search leads you to the exact page.

I guess I got the answer and just gave you useful information in return :)

humor then you got everything except the name of the person to contact and i guess from my view Elance is not the company this information comes from.. humor who says google has everything?

[darrin365]

Talon,

Let me know how they work for you, will you? I'm curious how they work out compared to other companies people have listed on here.

[Lloyd]

Talon, have you started using the Virtual Assistant Team at VServe yet?

http://www.vservesolution.com/virtual_assistant.htm

[darrin365]

Ha! I didn't spill the beans, but Lloyd did! :p

[Talon]

They are not responsive
The brouchure seems to indicate turn around time in a timely fashion which has not been the case thus far
thus when they fullfill their agreement I will see if it worth spending money to test them..

[Wooderson316]

I thought I posted here, but I just wanted to say that I did one better than a VA. I got an intern from the business school at a local college. I set it up through the school's internship program so that the intern gets school credit and I am paying on a per assignment basis rather than hourly. I don't care how long he work, I just care that he gets things done. I also have contracted to give him a bonus to hire and train a replacement from his fraternity (he is in the business frat) when he is finished with the internship (May 2008).

[JSimpson]

That Idea sounds really good. I majored in Architecture and we all were required to do an internship for at least a semester. Of course we did mostly CAD and random other design work. I imagine business schools have something similar... I'll have to check that out as there is a University down the street with 50,000 Students heh.

[ardor]

I thought I posted here, but I just wanted to say that I did one better than a VA. I got an intern from the business school at a local college. I set it up through the school's internship program so that the intern gets school credit and I am paying on a per assignment basis rather than hourly. I don't care how long he work, I just care that he gets things done. I also have contracted to give him a bonus to hire and train a replacement from his fraternity (he is in the business frat) when he is finished with the internship (May 2008).

This is a great idea, What all is required? example (Office space/ LLC ect..)
Can you point us to any infomation you used to get this done?

[Talon]

Thank you for the interest shown towards VServe Solution.

The VServe Virtual Assistant team has trained, highly skilled professionals providing professional administrative, creative, technical support services. Our team combines skill, knowledge and resources with computer applications, software and Internet technology to create an efficient and state-of-the-art environment. VServe is dedicated to researching new and innovative ways to work together virtually.
Our goal is to be a trusted partner in each and every clients’ business by bringing value on our clients’ terms, servicing as an extension of our clients’ business and delivering service excellence coupled with innovative, integrated technology.
Our rate varies from $3 to $5 depending on the complexity of the work.
Please find attached our Virtual Assistant brochure. In case of any clarifications please feel free to contact us. We would be glad to work a sample for you if required. We are looking forward for a long term business relationship with your company.
Thank You.
With Regards,

Shoba Roy
Manager - Operations
VServe Solution
15, Headquarters Road ,
Uppilipalayam,
Coimbatore,
India – 641018
Phone – 91 99655 55175
Website – www.vservesolution.com

VServe Solution is a Knowledge Process outsourcing Company

[drjudy]

I have tried getting through to vservesolutions and their
website isn't up and their emails bounce back. Is this
company still in biz?

Thanks,
Judy

[phil]

I'm paying someone in the US about $15/hr, but he knows my business inside and out.

[thetube]

Talon, why would you post "I want something in return"? The spirit of a forum is sharing not saying "I have info you want and I'm gonna hold it ransom until you give me something that I want".

Your credibility on this forum will forever be tarnished.:mad:

[diglyd]

has anyone here actually used b2kcorp for anything? or anything more then an assistant?

Also has anyone actually used YMII for longer then a month for personal or business related reasons?

were you successful?

[Bippy]

I have real life assistants now. I need to get another one. The business is still too much in my head for me to virtualize it, sadly.

[DaveCraige.com]

I love this new VA stuff. I setup a test at www.DoGreatWork.com to try to weed out the untalented people that don't have an attention to detail.

I have posted on craigslist and on a couple VA sites. I have found too many VA's.

Its fun organizing everybody. I use google docs and Basecamp to keep everybody going.


question. when tim talks about his "little army of 25 " which company is he talking about? does anybody know?

[Live Free]

Have a VA from brickworks, she started off great, doing research for my e-book, however, on the more recent I have found most of the work (all if it?) is taken from a single website, and plagiarised, and I am having to spend just as much time fixing it.

Sent my VA a very firm email explaining why this was not good enough and I had one back saying she was very sorry, and would endeavour to meet my expectations and abide by the criteria I set down.

Her work on a competitive analysis, as well as a task compiling particular organisations for me to join, was simply put, terrible.

Will I continue to use Brickworks? Never. I am paying about $14 USD per hour. I rate the work about 4 / 10.

I currently have 2 job postings on oDesk and have a handful of very good applicants for both (one is web design, one is copywriting).

I believe in outsourcing, I guess you just have to be careful and make sure you are absolutely clear in your expectations, and you don't take poor performance.

[Cameron B]

Whilst fighting with my new power company and also a large municipal water company, I was starting to consider a personal assistant. Thought it would be fun to have them call and argue on my behalf. Be fun to have some guy in India tell the local power company what laws they're violating. :D

[David-Andrew]

The problem is most of my work and communication is in Dutch. So I would need a VA that can handle EN and NL languages...

Searching, searching,

[Jimmydee]

I've tried most virtual assistant from outsourcing companies. I've paid the $3-$4 an hour and the $30 an hour.

Here's what I learned...

1. You get what you pay for.

When I paid $3-$5 an hour for a virtual assistant, I was pretty excited cause it was cheap. It also came with
a lot of baggage. The communication was just a big ugly nightmare. The VA's needed a lot of hand holding.
It took them 5 days to do something that would normally take just a couple of hours. So you'll really have
to micromanage them in order to be successful.

Here's my theory, If it's a cheap price, then that means the company probably just hires the "fresh out of
college" type of staff.

I needed someone who was already a top performer and has a lot of experience, so this definitely did
not work for me.

2. Make sure you get highly qualified professionals

When I first started outsourcing, I always chose the lowest bid on elance, the first person that
applied for the position, or just the company that showed up in google when you searched "virtual
assistant".

After a lot of outsourcing disasters and money down the drain, I discovered a new approach to
looking for people.

It's a method called Top Grading.

In a nutshel, 95% of businesses fail because they hire the wrong person. And most companies only
have a 20% success rate in hiring talent. That's a low percentage. So Brad Smart came up with a
hiring system that guaranteed 90%-95% hiring success.

Meaning you get the best talent to work for you. This can be expensive if you hire in the US. These
professionals usually charge double the price. Luckily I was able to find Staff in Seconds, a offshore
company that uses this top grading method and provides quality people.

So if you want quality work, then I'd definitely recommend you check them out.

What's really cool about them is that they provide you with all the training you need to be successful
in outsourcing. Which was a real biggie for me, cause when I started out, I didn't know what to
do.

Here's a list of what my VA's do for me. By the way, I've got 3 working full time right now.

- Customer service
- Online research
- Scheduling appointments
- Secretarial work
- Booking flights for me
- Data entry
- Online calendar management
- Forum posting

Just send me a message if you have any questions about them.

[jackson]

I am looking for a few reliable and experienced VAs that accept paypal. Does anyone have someone they can recommend? If so please send me a message