VA and Elance

[ardor]

On my quest to get a VA from www.elance.com
I made a elance "buying services" account (Free)
this will allow you to view other project postings
I read 10 Assistant postings, cutting what I liked into notepad
then I created my own posting, and now I am waiting on bids.

[Drewkerr]

Sounds like a good idea. keep us posted on how it works out. I would like to hear about the price you are able to get, and then how they work is handled.

Drew

[Vagabond]

Im so curious about this VA thing. What kind of tasks are you guys delegating?

Is it mostly secretarial stuff? Can you give out real business projects? Market research? Competitive analysis?

[kindwomanxx]

We're in the process of awarding a bid on elance for
design of our corporate logo. We've used the "selected"
option (I think that's the phrase) and using the escrow option
for payment. I'm impressed with the quality of some of the
bidders. They have very good portfolios.

We'll probably use them to outsource other things, if this works.
Competitive analysis is one option, also CSS web design templates

Joann

[ardor]

So far I have gotten one bid.

25 Hours for 50$, 2$/hr

I don't feel very good about this bid, They do have good feedback scores, its just. 2$ an hour. Sounds like they are going to double/triple bill me, I would rather just someone who is honest.

[Marcie]

can you put a cap on it? Like tell them you will pay them no more than $50/month/week/whatever? If you have that documented on the PMB I believe elance would back you up if there was a dispute.

[ardor]

can you put a cap on it? Like tell them you will pay them no more than $50/month/week/whatever? If you have that documented on the PMB I believe elance would back you up if there was a dispute.

Ya, I can cap X hours for a task ect... but what I mean is, sometimes a really good programmer who does projects, and works 3 times a fast will put in a bid for 40$ an hour. instead of 80$ an hour. it takes him 15 hours to do something, and he tells the other person it took 30 hours, Further more if they tried to tell him, only spend 15 hours, he would say, its not doable in only 15 hours.

its just at 2$ an hour, I dont expect good work. so I dont even know if i should waste my time giving them a try, What do you think?

[Marcie]

I understand. Maybe give them a try on a trial basis? Also I remember Tim saying that he put time caps on specific tasks as well.

[ardor]

So, I accept the bid for 2$ an hour. am now waiting for them to accept the project. Ive written up a rough draft if a task I want done with a 3 hour time cap.

My First Task
"Hello and thank you for joining our team, We look forward to your help.

I need some web research done on Herbal Mental Enhancements

Please Include the following infomation
Herbal Name
Daily Dosage
Effect
Description

Example
Herbal Name: Coffee
Daily Dosage: 1 Cup every 3 hours
Effect: alertness
Description: The caffeine released from the Coffee bean bring the drinker alertness this is due to blah blah blah blah blah.

I would like this in an MS OneNotes notebook, or an Excel spreedsheet.


Spend only 3 hours doing this.
Looking forward to see how many items you come up with.
Please Email me the File when Done.

Thanks for your hard work
-Andrew"

one thing I like about my first tasks, Is I can look at the number of Mental Enhancement Returns I get in 3 hours, I hope to get back at least 12, 24 would be great.

Feel free to tell me how i can make my First Task Request more understable.

[ardor]

So I left the office last night, very Excited about my VA. went home and relaxed. The VA had his orders about 5 hours worth of work. Including drawing up a 2 policy for our relationship, I provided outlines, and do some web research, Also getting a Tech Heavy question answerd about me routing calls to them via my asterisk box (my phone server) I get in the office this morning, and NO emails from my VA. feeling pretty down about it.

[ardor]

My VA sent me the 3 files I asked for, one including the web research, 29 Items, Pretty good, I think, I have yet to read it, I asked for it in excel format and it looks really bad, so they are going to reformat it and send it back to me.

The other 2 files were policy files and no work was done on them, I guess I wasn't clear enough about what work needed to be done, However, I wanted to see what kind of initiative they would take.

I've explained that the outlines for the policy i proved are just outlines and that the policy need to be rewritten to sound official and professional.

So we'll see.

[ardor]

So I got an invoice from my 2$ an hour VA and total cost to me has been 8$.
what I have gotten has been worth more then 8$ has been worth about 20$ to me.

However dealing with them,
and there low quality work,
even know its a great deal,
is not something I am looking forward to in the future,
it is possible,
that I will need low quality work done in the future,
so I plan on keeping there contact infomation,
and maybe one day,
I will need some data entry or something.

I reposted my VA listing on Elance, with 4 offers, including a 5$/hr US/FL company, the FL company did not offer phone support, and I decided not to use them.

The most interesting offer I had, was from a 6$/hr company where my point of contact is a educated at oxford in the UK. I am going to see what they can do for me.
* If they provide a better understanding of my vague instructions
* and higher quality of work.

It will be wonderful to have them on board at 6$/hr

[JSimpson]

I'm sorry about your VA, I hope you have a better experience with your next one. I'm hesitant to use one, thinking the amount of time to find a good one might be longer than the time I gain using them.

[mdfloyd@gmail.com]

ardor -- mind sharing who your $6/hour company is?

[ardor]

ardor -- mind sharing who your $6/hour company is?

I'm here to share but have yet to settle on anyone company.
I currently have one in the lead, but I have a special issue,
due to my phone system programming background.

I require that the company is able to receive and make calls through my phone system. This will reduce any international long distance charges when calling to India as well as, reduce any charges from having India call my local Las Vegas to zero.

So far no VA firm has been able to provide this level of support but, the VA i am currently working with is trying very hard to get it working.

I will keep you posted

on a side note, I was unable to use my computer for 5 days, due to medical issues. so this report update has a 5 day void in it.

[ardor]

customersolutionz.biz

They got my phone connection things working
and also got my resume done, they are charging me 5$/hr
the first invoice they sent me was for 13 hours of work

I disagreed made my point valid and
they sent me a new invoice of 6 hours.

Even people in inidina are going to try and overcharge you if you don't haggle.

Today, I submitted some Internet Research work, that would make me look good for the company i work for, I told them to take 3 hours on it, so 15$ for collecting the infomation that I can build a kick ass report and hopefully argue a new pay raise.

[brettod]

ardor -- mind sharing who your $6/hour company is?

I'm pretty sure that I'm using those same two companies right now!

a $6 an hour one = vmgbpo.com
Very cool that they use 37 Signals Basecamp for all the projects. There's little/no phone support, but you really just post a task on your personal project board and they get back the results in the morning! Still getting over the "but why would you do something different than what I asked?" step though.

a $4 an hour one from "Florida" = flexilabs on Elance
Seems pretty cool. Definitely seem to intelligently give quotes and customer service. It looks like this is another example of "one smart guy does the customer support and takes a big cut, then farms it out to a few dozen others to do the work". But then again, for data entry and document scanning/proofreading that's perfect for me!

I'll let everyone know how these trials work out!

[webb]

has anyone used YourManInIndia (now getfriday.com)? I'm curious as to how their service is after all the attention they've received from Tim's book. Has it suffered? Their prices have definitely gone up...

[frank.cabrera@gmail.com]

Ouch...

what country are they in? is a group of VA's working on your request.
or is it one VA?

Thanks,

Frank

[turk]

As I mentioned on my post from yesterday http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=393

It's really hard to explain to people who has never left India about deadlines and the quality of work that we're used to in the US. It's a new concept.

I grew up in a third world country, and find it hard to do business with people back home for the same reason. I am sure there are lots of exception to this, but the general idea is like deliverables that are completely finished on time is foreign. " Hey we started, and it's good enough."

I used workerbees from elance. missed deadlines, had to do everything 2 or more times, and couldn't follow the instructions on reporting in 3 hrs. I tried using elance to communicate with the VA. No help at all from them. they haven't even responded my email asking specific help.

I gave a negative feedback in hope of you guys/gals can learn from my experience.

On my last call to VA she had balls big enough to say. You're only paying $5.5 hr what else can we do? which I replied what you said you will is enough for me.

I haven't tested this idea, but it might be worth hiring $15/hr VA to find a good $5/hr VA, but how does one prevent the conflict of interest right?

If any of you want shoot me an email and I'll send you my posting for VA.

[final_id]

For me the usual cultural divide, when dealing with "new" business countries and cultures, is the following:

do what you said for the price you said or else I'm unhappy

versus

do some, all, or none, sometime or somehow, and maybe up the price and maybe not, in order to "feel out" our ongoing relationship with the person, and apply emotional assuagement techniques AFTER failure in order to deal with some kind of familial relationship in which we are all buddies and cut each other slack all the time

Heh. :)

I think the best way to deal with these things is to prevent them from ever happening. A simple, direct statement, at the top, that is often repeated, which says essentially the first quote, is not inappropriate:

Dear Sir: We now have an agreement that the deadline is Wednesday. That means I cannot accept work which arrives after Wednesday, nor can I pay for it. Should you wish to change that date, you must inform me before it arrives and you must accept a reduction in payment. In addition, we now have an agreement that the work to be performed will be the following specifics ...

I don't mind doing that quite regularly until a relationship is established. Dealing with assistants (real or virtual) is all about being clear with expectations and with the work-to-reward ratio. If the reader of that message is uncomfortable with the "tone" or the "implication" that they're somehow not already capable and would need to be told this stuff, then perhaps that reader isn't the right person to hire in the first place.

Just my suggestions. I have supervised a LOT of "less than capable" people in the real world (often just college kids, or people who had a good heart but a lack of "business culture" experience). You learn early on to lose your own need to "seem nice." People can like you or hate you, but they can never misunderstand you, so says Tim. He says it about products, but it applies equally well to supervision.

[kevkos]

I tried one of the $2/hour ones from elance and they were terrible!
They didn't understand much of anything I told them to do, and they did a couple of projects completely wrong. Their english appeared to be good over email but some things must have been getting lost in translation.

I'm instead using a tech support team (in India) now that charges $15/hr and a VA (in Canada) for my customer service issues that charges $18/hr.

[cephus6]

customersolutionz.biz

They got my phone connection things working
and also got my resume done, they are charging me 5$/hr
the first invoice they sent me was for 13 hours of work

I disagreed made my point valid and
they sent me a new invoice of 6 hours.

Even people in inidina are going to try and overcharge you if you don't haggle.

Today, I submitted some Internet Research work, that would make me look good for the company i work for, I told them to take 3 hours on it, so 15$ for collecting the infomation that I can build a kick ass report and hopefully argue a new pay raise.

I was looking at this company on the internet, could you give us an update on how they are working out for you?

[oizzio]

Here is an example of the format I am using when assigning projects to VA's.

This template has been in use for 6 months and has seen great success over a number of different VA's I have worked with.

Feel free to pick it apart or give it praise. Ha. Thanks.

===================================

Dear ____VA NAME_____,

Thank you.

I would like to start with the following task.

After you read the task, please confirm by email ([YOUR_EMAIL]) that you understand everything.

Task 1

I need to get contact information of Top Business blogger’s.

Please visit this web page: http://fake-url-for-info-you-want.com

On this page, there is a list of 50 business blogs. A title with a URL and a description is provided. Please make a list in the excel file I provided (top-business-bloggers.xls) using the title and description.

After you have the list of 50 blogs in the excel file….then….visit each blog and record the Website name, URL, Contact Name, Email Address, Phone Number, and Description into the excel file.

The most important info we need is the Contact Name, URL, and Email address. If there is no email address provided, log the URL of the ‘contact us’ page.

For each blog, visit http://alexa.com/ and enter the URL of the blog into the search box at the top of the page, then hit the search button. Results will be returned and the blog you searched for will probably be at the top of the list. Record the ‘rank’ number in the excel file under the column ‘Alexa Rank.’

Please spend 1 hour on this task. After you have spent one hour, email the Excel file to [YOUR_EMAIL] and I will check your work.

Wait for my response before you continue.

Can you do this? If not, please advise.

Deadline - Since I am in a rush I would like you to get started as soon as possible and have this completed by the end of day on [DUE DATE]

Thank you very much for your fastest reply.

[YOUR_NAME]

[gsimd]

Hi Oizzio,

Thanks for posting your template. It looks good. I will offer a quick suggestion. I've worked with several overseas contractors and have found the key to success is to make sure the words I'm using are simple and have no double meaning. In other words, I avoid using a lot common business language like "get underway" and "bottom line". As far as your template goes here is an example of how to be as clear as possible.

I would like to start with the following task.

By starting with the word "I", you are directing the communication to yourself instead of the VA. Also, the word "would" may be hard to decipher for an intermediate English speaker. "Can you" is safer. Finally, "following" can mean "after", "behind the leader" or "second". So, your opening line could be read a few different ways. Such as:

"I like to begin with the second task" "
"I would like to start the task later".
"I would like to start the task after the leader".

A clearer statement might be: "Can you do this task?"

It can be frustrating at first, but after a while, I've become accustomed to writing like a 5 year old.

Best,
Michael
http://www.familyhack.com

[MariaG]

@gsimd & @oizzio - Thank you for those tips. I just began working on a project w/ a $4 hour VA firm I found through elance. Like others, I am a bit frustrated at this point. The first go-round was just awful. I'm hoping with more precise language I can get the results I want.

[oizzio]

Thanks - gsimd

You have made some very good points. Thank you.

My project descriptions have been tweaked over time and are just about at perfection (I do not receive questions and the tasks are completed perfectly - and on time).

Guru.com has been my place of choice. I'm about to try elance and odesk is next.

Anyone have experience with odesk?

[markus]

I didn't have a good experience with oDesk but that's partly because I didn't define the scope and timeline well enough. I prefer per project pricing with a clearly defined scope rather than per hour - since it takes a lot of work to make sure the hourly work creep doesn't get out of control.

[outofbandii]

Hi all,

I'm interested in the experiences and templates posted above.

I've 2 VA arrangements - one with GetFriday (YMII) and the other with a New Zealand based (native English speaker) VA. The Indian VA costs ~$11 p/h, the NZ VA ~$28.

So far the NZ has outperformed the Indian by about 10 to 1 on all tasks. The cheaper per hour cost has in no way resulted in lower cost per task, even on what I thought were simpler tasks. Any tasks that require any kind of thinking were even further apart in quality of work than 10-1.

You guys seem to be spending a lot of effort defining tasks and wording emails. I think that in the short term this definitely does not make financial sense.

What I'm wondering is whether you're putting up with the communication difficulties now because you believe there will be long term benefits in lower costs? Or are you just putting up with it cos it's cheap?

[Dave]

I read 10 Assistant postings, cutting what I liked into notepad then I created my own posting.

I wonder if you can provide the template for your project posting?

There's some good examples of how to word emails to the VA, but I'd be interested in seeing the requirements you put forth in finding one in the first place.

[pwebbiz]

how were your results with VMGBPO?

[Livingit]

Its been frustrating for me to find a VA. I need someone that knows technical web related skills and one that would make a good project manager, so the run of the mill graduate won't do.

[DaveCraige.com]

Hey guys.

Happy to be here.

Here is what made up so that I could quickly find a good assistant.

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/6262/picture1hm9.png (http://www.dogreatwork.com)

www.DoGreatWork.com