VA specifics?

[lionpaul]

Hey all,

I've been looking to hire a VA but haven't found any good sources. GetFriday has been slow to respond to my inquiry and has gotten some negative reviews. They're probably innundated with exessive interest.

I'd rather use a company than hire an individual. Any recommendations?

[searstower]

I haven't actually hired anyone yet, but there were a lot of companies listed on elance.com. Might want to check them out.

Rebecca

[read]

It did take a while for GetFriday to have me set up, but I do think they're reliable. They did tell me that they've been inundated, but they followed through with what they promised and got me set up by today with a VA. Also, they're not billing me for the first week, which is nice of them. I think it's just the wait for the VA that's a little long.

[Feumet]

Hopefully this is not a Dead Thread....LOL I have started in earnest looking for a VA today and GetFriday apparently is not going to be a good source for me from the inquiries that I have made. Tim's books has blown them out of the water business wise. They have been inundated and their pricing is way up there now. $15 per hour plus. Looking for some other sources.


Thanks!

[cornflower]

Hi Feumet,

What kind of VA work are you looking to outsource? I have some folks doing some data entry for me and they are pretty reliable. Not sure how they would go with more complex tasks.. they are $3.50 an hour.

[Feumet]

and then there is that... :)

[Lloyd]

I've been using Get Friday for about a month and I'm mostly satisfied. They got back to me quickly, and my VA has been good. Couple of tweaks that need to be made but mostly related to start-up types of issues.

As for their pricing, $15 is the rate for Pay As You Go. The price goes down depending upon how much time you plan on using. I'm not sure if this is true for all plans, but with the 40 hour plan they will also roll over 8 or 9 hours of unused time to the next month if applicable. For 40 hours a month, the cost is $9/hour. Certainly more expensive then you could probably find elsewhere (and most likely with an individual provider), but given their team approach I think it's a reasonable cost for the quality received (my VA has a Master's degree and speaks/writes excellent English).

[Vagabond]

hey lloyd,

what kind of work have you designated to them?

is it busy work you dont feel like doing, simple data inputting or more heardcore business stuff... research etc?

[read]

I'm using GetFriday as well, with the 40 plus plan. So far, I've given my VA budget management (using excel), unskilled accounting work, expense reports, research (he's an amazing researcher), business gift buying, voicemail transcription, data entry, website maintenance (a trouble spot I don't know how to fix myself), and a lot of other tasks. Amazing.

For me, it's worth a little extra to be able to assign some tricky tasks -- and even things I don't know how to handle myself-- So far, I haven't been let down at all.