$15 an hour for quality virtual assistant!?

[DaveCraige.com]

So i'm considering paying $15 an hour with AskSunday for a more professional virtual assistant to help me write press releases, organize advertising, do some other tasks

This seems quite a bit high, but I want somebody that can do really good work. As mentioned in another thread Tim pays $35 an hour for his main assistant.

Does anybody know of a good Filipino firm or something that doesn't require you to buy like $1200 worth of services at a time.

[kamakiri]

You know what they say about a fool and his money...

Seriously dude, you want a foreign low ball PA to write your press releases? Someone who's first and second languages aren't even English to work on your marketing?

Never buy the second most expensive bottle of wine...

[insidethenewrich]

i've been on the fence about this whole virtual assistant thing for quite some time. i can see the pros but does anyone think about the cons? lets face it, the majority of people on this site are basically "start ups". and most of their business is "virtual" anyway meaning a web site. how inundated can people be that a virtual assistant can be feasible? it seems to me that most people are getting virtual assistants for the sake of having one and that is the wrong reason. and kamakiri brings up an excellent point, make sure these individuals credentials as well as english is spot on. if you have to constantly make corrections and give them things to redo, you are doing double work. get it right the first time. i totally agree when you have a high volume of things to get done an assistant is worth its weight in gold. but lets spend our money wisely here folks, there are alot of ways to skin a cat so to speak. get creative. just my 2 cents.

[DaveCraige.com]

good points.

but some things fall through the cracks. i think its easier to pay like $30 and get timely press releases every month or so, rather than try to do it yourself and forget most of the time.

and yea, running a startup is hard, there are literally unlimited things you could be doing with your time. guess you gotta pick the most important ones.

[kamakiri]

You reply as if my post was somehow abstruse. Paying $15 or $30 for a press release is not my point!

You have enough time to make useless posts on this forum every day, yet somehow feel the need to hire a PA?

Do I really need to outline what a press release is for? Or that any amount of money spent on a poor one is a 'donation' to a 3rd world VA company?

We aren't talking about falling through the cracks here buddy. 1,000 crappy press releases will not garner you 1/100 the press of a well written one. your most important priorities can't involve making inane comments on forums.

[insidethenewrich]

You have enough time to make useless posts on this forum every day, yet somehow feel the need to hire a PA?

oh if you could only see me standing here clapping my hands! :D

very well said, and i agree. prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.
and there are 1000 ways to do something. worrying about a press release every month shouldnt be high on the list on a constant basis. yes they are great and can do a world of good. but alot of times they fall on deaf ears, and very few are going to be picked up on a constant basis. diversify your pr.

i could go on and on here but wont. if anyone has any questions or would like to discuss further outside of the forum here please message me.

[insidethenewrich]

sorry one more thing. dave you said $30 for a press release. well lets think about that for a second. i can write a good press release in about 10 minutes. might not be a "home run" but its going to work. that means i can do about 6 an hour or technically make myself $180 an hour. wow can someone say muse! LOL, work 2 hours a day and make about $1800 a week if you can keep yourself busy. sounds like someone should take this and run with it! LOL

pressreleaseinanhour.com

and its available i checked! see what happens when you brainstorm, there are ideas everywhere. go think of some!

seriously, if anyone wants to run with this as their muse go ahead. i have plenty of things going on already.

[nghs22]

sorry one more thing. dave you said $30 for a press release. well lets think about that for a second. i can write a good press release in about 10 minutes. might not be a "home run" but its going to work. that means i can do about 6 an hour or technically make myself $180 an hour. wow can someone say muse! LOL, work 2 hours a day and make about $1800 a week if you can keep yourself busy. sounds like someone should take this and run with it! LOL

pressreleaseinanhour.com

and its available i checked! see what happens when you brainstorm, there are ideas everywhere. go think of some!

seriously, if anyone wants to run with this as their muse go ahead. i have plenty of things going on already.

Already beat you to it mate :)

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/41524-if-you-arent-using-prs-youre-making-huge-mistake-ill-write-submit-yours-now-70-sites.html

[Edanbl]

People resonding to the post need to calm their attitude down a bit. DaveCraig was just asking for advice.

Kamakiri...You're on the message board quite often so try to ease up on the negative comments. Your insight is appreciated but being that most people here are trying to figure out a way to create additional revenue, they need encouragement not discouragement.

DaveCraig, I would not go the PA route. I would post a job on Craigslist instead of an international site like elance. Brickwork has some awesome people but you need a minimum of $500 to get the game rolling. Elance might and can work but you will get some ridiculous bids and you need to filter thru the good and the bad.

I hope that helps.

[jaywenk]

I'm not sure if my va would be up to your standards, but feel welcome to contact Jimmy Huang at Bpovia.com. They are in China, but english has not been a problem for me and the rates are fair. If you google their name you can see some examples of press releases they've done for their own business.

About having a va, for those who don't see the benefit:

I would never go without an assistant. Virtual is the route I've went versus local only because it is easier to have no contract, no pay roll, and the overall technical proficiency of overseas assistants is much better. As hard as it may be for some to believe, some people are either busy or make far more than $30/hr (or both). So having an assistant increases profit per hour, allows more time for things we enjoy, and when given the right direction - creates more revenue.

Obviously this is not always the case, so Dave, just do your homework.

[mikezawitkowski]

Does anybody know of a good Filipino firm or something that doesn't require you to buy like $1200 worth of services at a time.

It sounds like you are basically looking for a VA recommendation. That was the reason I joined this message board. I found some scattered information, and ultimately it helped me choose the VA I work with now, but I wished there was more. That's why I'm writing this lengthy post, to add some more recent and hopefully useful information to this forum.

Two weeks ago I hired my first Virtual Assistant. I had read 4hww 8 months ago, re-read it repeatedly and implemented most of the ideas, but it wasn't until a month ago I started trying to figure out who to hire for a VA. I didn't feel like using elance for some reason. I was willing to spend $15/hour but didn't think I needed to, and it was a personal test so paying $300 upfront as BrickWork requires was overkill. I wanted to do a little research and spend a small amount of wisely to get some VA experience first.

I signed up to this message board hoping to find some recommendations for VAs. There were a couple who had glowing recommendations of their personal VAs but wouldn't share unless you private messaged them. I did and they never responded, unfortunately. However, I did comb through and pull out all the recommendations, took the most highly recommended VA urls and looked through them, and that was very useful.

After spending probably too much time researching (and thinking ironically that I should hire a VA to handle my VA search), I contacted GetFriday and BrickWork who were known entities, and VMG BPO who were mentioned a couple times on this message board.

GetFriday has a convoluted sign up system that doesn't seem to work; the user interface is really weird on the sign up page. I recommend skipping the website and emailing them directly. Once I did that they sent me a payment url, but the phone confirmation for payment didn't work. Since I wasn't thrilled with the setup so far, and they wanted $150 upfront, I gave up with GetFriday.

Brickwork was actually quite impressive, and I'm sure they would have lived up to the expectation that was set for them in the book. However, when the VA project manager called me (which I applaud him for) we had a lot of communication issues. I felt bad that I couldn't understand him (and he couldn't understand me) but to his credit I appreciated the initiative and he was good with email. The problem was it didn't feel like a good fit, and Brickwork wanted $315 upfront (good for 20 hours credit). Once I get some experience with a less-expensive VA I plan on hiring them for some bigger item projects, but not for my first wimpy data entry assignment.

For my third attempt, I chose VMG BPO because of the half dozen VA links I grabbed from this message board they were one of the only ones mentioned twice, and yet still had a website that made me think they were about quality.

Compared to the others, VMG BPO sounded great: a project manager and US-based coordinator managing a team for me that was available 24/7 (including weekends), only $25 to setup an account and $6 hour for tasks. Oh, and the fact that I could use send an email with the task and attachments which was automatically converted into a task posted in my online account was a bonus.

So far I've given my project manager David 4 tasks which were completed thoroughly and very quickly. I gave them a basic data entry task with a spreadsheet to fill out that was done in a matter of hours. I set them up with an account on my domain and in Google documents for the next task and they were good with that.

I did have some problems with one task, but it was a pretty complicated one. I also was purposefully less detailed in my instructions as prior tasks, partly because I wanted to see what they would deliver if I wasn't explicit, and if they applied any of my guidelines from previous tasks. I've used this with interns before and it's very insightful. They did OK, but there were mistakes to be corrected (which by the way they correct for free).

I also was a little sloppy in assigning follow-up tasks, which they did fine with, but for my sanity as well as theirs I'll be more clear about breaking up projects into separate tickets. I can't assume the same person who did the first task of a project will do the next (though I'm sure VMG BPO would allow me to make arrangements for a dedicated worker.)

So in the end:
- BrickWork is worth it if you have a larger business-only project with possibly sensitive information that will require 20 hours of work in a single month and is worth $15 per hour.
- My experience with GetFriday confirms what I've read on this forum elsewhere, but I haven't gotten past the signup. Maybe I'll try again when I have more personal non-business tasks to delegate.
- I've been working with VMG BPO for two weeks and I'm very pleased so far.

Granted VMG BPO may not be so great forever (as I'm sure GetFriday was once much better) but I hope this post gives you the information that I was looking for but couldn't find two weeks ago.

If this post was useful to you and are now considering VMG BPO, I encourage you to click on the link below to check them out. VMG BPO gave me that link when I signed up and I realized that it would be an easy way to see how useful this post was for people, and also to show VMG BPO that I'm not the only one that appreciates the service they've provided me so far.

http://www.vmgbpo.com/affiliates/jrox.php?id=381_1

(Of course there's nothing preventing you from visiting vmgbpo.com or searching for VMG BPO in Google...)

Hope that helps, good luck!
Mike

[mikezawitkowski]

I'm not sure if my va would be up to your standards, but feel welcome to contact Jimmy Huang at Bpovia.com. They are in China, but english has not been a problem for me and the rates are fair. If you google their name you can see some examples of press releases they've done for their own business.

About having a va, for those who don't see the benefit:

I would never go without an assistant. Virtual is the route I've went versus local only because it is easier to have no contract, no pay roll, and the overall technical proficiency of overseas assistants is much better. As hard as it may be for some to believe, some people are either busy or make far more than $30/hr (or both). So having an assistant increases profit per hour, allows more time for things we enjoy, and when given the right direction - creates more revenue.

Obviously this is not always the case, so Dave, just do your homework.

I agree about it not being about the money. I waited until I thought that the cost/hour of VA vs. the price I was charging a client was profitable enough for me to find a VA, but now that I'm doing it I see it's nice to just have someone available at the drop of the hat that demands less time and resources than a family member, friend, or intern and is available to make my life easier. I'm looking forward to continuing to explore the possibilities of what I can outsource (although "worry" is probably too far for me).

mz

[DaveCraige.com]

Mike, Excellent post! Thank you for writing that.

I have had the same problems you have had. Low quality of work, and communication problems.

Jay, thanks so much for the help! I dropped BPovia a line.