VA: Oxford-PhD Indian equivalent for $15 an hour? Where?

[urlwolf]

Hi,

Tim mentions that the upper range of VAs are Oxford-PhD Indian equivalents for $15 an hour? Where do you find those? How do you search for them? Anyone has any experience with them?

To tell you the truth, my experiences outsourcing basic programming at rentacoder have been awful. It's not a matter of defining the requeriments. Some coders there have zero work ethics and will drop the project when they feel like.

For a VA, doing all kind of personal tasks, I expect better. I'm a PhD myself, and would love to have a peer work with me on task that he would enjoy, but are a bit of a burden for me right now.

Any pointers?

Thanks

[FrozenCanuck]

Hi - no ideas on PhD VAs but I have used elance so far and not great success, although at $5/hr when I told my guy that I thought the results were very disorganized and not what I wanted, he told me not to pay him and expressed an interest in learning more what I wanted. So I'll use him again simply because he was very ethical and said "if you are not happy I will not accept your money" ... pretty good, equivalent of a money back guarantee on our muses. I'll try to train him now and maybe I will have a good $5/hr assistant.

[final_id]

Three ways to maximize your use of an assistant:

1. Develop a relationship. They'll get to know you, value your timely payments, and start to think of you as a core customer.

2. Be specific with your tasks and instructions. Rather over-articulate the details and get something highly detailed than leave it general.

3. Related point: general mental competence and "common sense" almost always goes farther than certifications in a certain field or technical skill. I hire "bright college kids" either from my neighborhood school -- I judge their brights by meeting them and chatting, and calling it an "interview," and just using my own subjective impressions -- or from a small liberal arts college like the one I attended. If someone comes to me with lots of certifications from a technical school, their resume goes in the trash.

Admittedly, these aren't "virtual" assistants. I generally pay $10 an hour AND GIVE A REALLY GREAT LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION. I say, "I've been a professor before, I'll put a letter in your file," etc. They seem to like that, college kids do. :)

[gobytrain]

Brickwork (I think it's called) charges $15/hr, which seems excessive to me! I'm not sure why I would outsource, which is time consuming in and of itself, for more money than it would cost me here. Even YMII charges $15/hr that goes down to only $7 if you hire someone full time....

[Mike Rhodes]

Handy Tip:

When using RentACoder, Elance, Guru etc
Create a short Camtasia (www.techsmith.com) video showing the assistant what you want.
It's much easier to outsource a task that you have already performed - you know more about it, can explain it better & know where the problems may occur.
Turning this knowledge into a short video can greatly sped up the process & save lost time through misunderstandings etc

A cheaper alternative is: http://www.screen-capture-video.com/

Cheers,
Mike

[Talon]

Thank you for the interest shown towards VServe Solution.

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