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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.