Need a good reason to hire a virtual assistant? Today we’ll talk about virtual assistants and how they can take your business to the next level.
Contrary to what you might think, the vast majority of successful website owners outsource a wide range of tasks to virtual assistants.
So lets start with the basics.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
The term Virtual Assistant is a broad term used to describe anyone who completes a wide range of tasks for someone via the internet.
Virtual assistants often market their services through websites and social media, there are freelance-marketplaces where you can hire them as well.
To make it simpler, think of a virtual assistant as a personal assistant, but an online personal assistant.
What is a Good Reason to Hire a Virtual Assistant?
When websites start to grow and bring in revenue, managing them can be quite a hassle. Not to mention all the social media profiles!
To lighten the workload, hiring someone to manage these small tasks can be a huge lifesaver.
Even replying to emails can be outsourced.
In short, if you are working on a project that requires a lot of work, hiring someone to complete some of the tasks is a good reason to hire a virtual assistant.
When used correctly, virtual assistants can drastically improve an online business in terms of: productivity and profits.
You will simply be able to get more done!
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Where to Find Virtual Assistants:
The 4-Hour-Work-Week by Tim Ferris is one of the leading entrepreneur books that recommend the use of virtual assistants.
Tim Ferris recommends outsourcing all small tasks to people in India or Philippines as people from these countries tend to charge less for their services.
Chances are you have some tasks that you despise, and outsourcing them to someone would be a lifesaver, but where do you find virtual assistants?
There are a lot of websites dedicated to virtual services, such as Fiverr.com, as well as the usual freelance-marketplaces, Up-Work, Freelancer.com, etc.
Another Sources to Find a VA: Social Media
Here is a trick:
Head on over to Twitter and search for the term “virtual assistant” in the search bar. Organize the results by “People” and you’ll see a list of virtual assistants right there.
Send a Direct Message or visit their websites to view more information about their services.
Compare prices, send messages, and hire someone you think is a good fit.
No need to sign up to anything or pay any fees!
Though virtual assistants in first-world countries will likely charge much more, it will, inevitably, be easier to communicate with them as their mother-tongue is English.
What are some tasks you can outsource?
Tasks to Assign to Your Virtual Assistant:
Here is a list of 10 tasks you can outsource:
- Content Creation
- Comment Management
- Team Management
- Social Media Management
- Graphics Creation
- Data-entry
- Transcribe Text
- Translations
- Keyword Research
- Link-Building
What Qualities to Look for in a Virtual Assistant?
Ideally, we want a virtual assistant who is a quick learner and open to working on custom tasks.
For example, if you’re following the standard website building strategy (find keywords, write articles, etc) you could teach a virtual assistant to find keywords that meet your criteria.
Then, filter the list, and assign writers to the keywords.
Like this, we can drastically boost content on our sites, and the content will be on our site making money forever.
As you can see, there are plenty of good reasons to hire a virtual assistant.
How to Hire a Virtual Assistant:
Hiring a virtual assistant is easy but there are a few things that you should keep in mind.
For starters, trust your gut:
If, after sending an email, the response from the virtual assistant has you feeling a little fishy or uncomfortable; don’t continue.
Likewise, if they take a long time to reply to your message, chances are they won’t be reliable.
You want someone who is reliable.
Secondly, compare rates:
Send an email to a few different VA’s and ask for a quote. Compare quotes and pick a VA that seems like a good fit.
Most online service providers will either charge an hourly rate or a task-based rate.
Personally, I prefer to pay on a task-by-task basis.
Third, communication:
If you’re going to hire someone, its important that they understand what you need and can communicate clearly.
Use the first email exchanges to judge their communication.
- Do they reply quickly?
- Are their emails full of typos?
- Do they understand what you need?
It might take a few tries, but eventually you will find a perfect match.
There are also a lot of Facebook groups dedicate to virtual assistants and their work.
Managing Tasks with Your VA Online:
So lets say that you hire a virtual assistant but you’re not keen on sending multiple emails back and forwards everyday.
How can you assign tasks without typing emails over and over?
One way would be to use a cloud-based team-management tool. We reviewed two tools recently: Wrike and Smart Sheets.
Click Here to Read our Wrike Review.
Or Click Here to Read our Smart Sheets Review.
These tools are perfect for assigning tasks to a virtual assistant. There is a small learning curve, but once you have a system in place, its a walk in the park.
(Most virtual assistants will be open to using these platforms, some even recommend them as it makes it easier for them to manage work for clients)
Conclusion on Hiring a Virtual Assistant:
To conclude, its important to mention that hiring a virtual assistant is best for people who have a budget and can afford to spend some cash to grow their business.
If you’re tight on cash, it might be best to wait until your online business is bringing in revenue before you hire outside workers.
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Also, make sure to limit access to the most important aspects of your business.
You don’t want a VA to make a mistake and ruin your whole business!
But if you’re not at the point where you can hire outside workers, start by taking a look at our online training course:
Thanks for taking the time to read this article! Remember, there is good reason to hire a virtual assistant, the best is that it can push your business to the next level of online success.
It makes sense that a virtual assistance would be really helpful for a business. Being able to have things get organized would be helpful! It’s a great way to ensure that you can focus on more important things.
Nicely stated Branden, online business can be so much more efficient when you’ve got the right VA’s.
Thanks for your feedback on the post.
Cheers,
Todd
I have been super bogged down at work and have been thinking about hiring a virtual assistant. I want to make sure that I get the best virtual assistance company I can. Thank you for showing how to hire a VA, I wouldn’t think about comparing rates and getting quotes before reading this.
Thanks for sharing your insight about working with virtual assistants.
It was a great article. Thank you so much for the information. I am planning to hire a virtual personal assistant and the information you provided is very useful.
Happy to help out Nicholas.
Some great reasons to hire a virtual assistant you’ve outlined in this post. I think it is simply awesome!!! I’ve found there are the great benefits to hire a virtual assistant if you are too busy.
Thanks for the post
Thank you for sharing this article. I didn’t know that there are this many good reasons to hire a virtual personal assistant. Looking forward to more informative articles like this one.
Thank you for the information.I am planning to hire my virtual personal assistant from India(GetFriday).What’s your opinion on this?
Tony,
Please don’t spam my website. You work for Get Friday, if you need to learn how to bring in organic traffic to your virtual assistant job site, try our Free Targeted Traffic eBook. It’s much better than wasting your time spamming sites.
Best,
Todd
Informative article. I think it is always advantageous to hire a virtual personal assistant for business because we can always outsource your boring and hectic works to them. Any info on this?
Agreed Joseph, check out this post on Virtual Assistants for more info.
Cheers
The main reason to use a virtual assistant is to streamline the success of your own business.
Do you have any resources for building niche sites or original content writers?
Cheers,
Simon
Check out Human Proof Designs, they do both. Their sites are original, professional themes, original/keyword targeted posts to give your site a ‘jump start’ so to speak.
Best,
Todd
The article is very informative and I’m more keen on the idea of a virtual assistant.
Thanks for opening my eyes to this topic.
You bet Philip, cheers..
Hi Todd,
Some may consider hiring a virtual assistant a bit of a luxury. But if your site is earning money and you’re trying to do everything yourself, you may need some help.
It will free up your time to be creative and think of new ways of growing your business.
When looked at like that, there are certainly good reasons to hire a virtual assistant. What could put me off is the process of hiring. Although you can screen them you never really know what your getting until you see their work.
I liked the Twitter trick to find a VA, hadn’t thought of that!
Thanks for the great ideas,
Peter
Thanks for your feedback Peter and you’re right, it’s that trial period that makes it a challenge.
One thing that might help that I learned of this last week from a very successful internet marketer was to use video to train your writers.
By having your potential Virtual Assistants go through a training series of how you want them to research topics and write content, you can save yourself the time of explaining this to each new applicant.
I thought this would be worth investing in for many topics. It’s often about innovation when working online.
Hi Tim, I believe all wealthy affiliate members would be interested in hiring a virtual assistant. I was always wondering how that works if those people might have no idea about the topic. I would say people must have an interest to create a quality article. What is your opinion?
Hey Marta,
Quality content is king, no doubt about it. I also agree that WA could have a section on this because it’s pretty important to have help in certain aspects of online business.
Once you’ve been in WA for several years, you realize that the successful marketers always hire out certain aspects of their business. This allows them to grow just as any offline business does.
Just try using a Virtual Assistant and see how it goes, you can always try someone else until you have a good fit for you.
That’s all it is, hope this helps.
Todd
Thank you very much for putting this together, Tim.
My website is still very small, getting approximately 25 visitors per day, but I’m struggling a lot to keep up with the writing, blog and social media posting, and a whole bunch of other things that are simple (but time-consuming) to do. The only thing that is stopping me from hiring a VA right now is my budget. I’m not yet making hundreds or thousands of dollars from my website, so I guess I would have to do most of those tasks until I make enough money to hire a VA.
Another issue is the appropriate fee to pay a VA. I wouldn’t want to overpay for a job that I can get done for a few bucks, but I wouldn’t want to cheat a VA either. Do you advise using websites such as Fiverr and Upwork?
Both of the sites work great. As a matter of fact, my first article I paid for was from a Fiverr writer that I paid $10’s for a 1,000 word post that ranks page one in Google and gets around 700 new visitors to that post alone per month. Pretty awesome results.
You are right, you should be making money from your site first before you start to delegate virtual assistant responsibilities.
The way I did it was to first start generating affiliate commissions and then I just reinvested that money in my site. That’s how you should look at this aspect of online business.
You have to have the skills to write and optimize a post (SEO) before you can start thinking of hiring work done.
At the same time, if you’re not the best writer and you want to proceed with your online business, I’d go with Human Proof Designs. They have some awesome content packages and can do the keyword research for you if you don’t know how to do that as well.
I think it’s always best to learn how to do these things, but you can certainly go around it if you need to.
Best,
Todd
Hi Tim, before reading your article, I did not even know that hiring virtual assistant is possible!
After reading this article, I feel that virtual assistant are very useful especially if you need better management of your business but not having enough time for that.
However, I’ve got a question. Isn’t hiring virtual assistant dangerous especially since you have no idea who they are or is there a place to look for certified people? Thanks!
Hey Fernglow, there’s a bunch of platforms that you can go to to find a virtual assistant and we’ve listed sever in this post (Fiverr, Up-Work, Freelancer).
When you hire a virtual assistant, you need to research them or you can ask them for some samples of their work.
I think you’ll find that most virtual assistants want to make money online doing tasks and so their reputation and long term relationships are critical to their success. So I don’t think you need to worry as much as you think.
But, good point regardless, check out your VA’s and if you get a bad one, move on to the next until you’ve found a one or several that help grow your online business.
Thanks
I think you did a wonderful job on this post. It gave a lot of great information about how to go about finding a virtual assistant.
I like the way you point out when it’s good to consider hiring a virtual assistant and when it’s not. I think you’re right that you need to be making enough money before you get to that point.
But I can see in the future how beneficial it will be to have one or many virtual assistants.
Thanks for the great post!
Awesome Marjorie, thanks for the great feedback.
Tim,
Thanks buddy for all the great information. I have hired writers before, some good some not so good.
As my own site has grown, I found the need to have some content written and use it as an outline for the post I was writing.
But I am really interested in the social media help. I have never had those sites (google+, Facebook, etc) but now I see that if you have an online business, its a necessity. But I don’t understand the sites and to learn how each one works. I just don’t have the time.
Do you know of anyone that is good with social media stuff and I can contact for help?
I’ll check back to see if you can help.
Thanks for the info, Really like your site and all the information you have.
Doug
Hi Doug, here’s Tim’s response…
Hey Doug, thanks for leaving a comment. I’m not sure where to look for social media managers. One method you could use is hire a graphics designer, have him or her make posts for social media, and then schedule those posts with an auto-post tool (such as HootSuite). Like this you can have fresh content hitting your social media profiles but you won’t need to invest so much of your time into it. Worth a shot. Cheers.
Virtual Assistants sounds like a great way to go. How much per task do they usually charge? Also sounds like you might have to increase security measures so would that be a monetary problem?
After breaking it all down do you really think it is worth it to hire one, and do you personally have one assisting you?
Hi Larry,
Virtual Assistant cost varies on the project and skill level of the VA you’re working with. For things on my site that are painfully mind numbing, like changing alt tags on all my photos for example, would be a task for a virtual assistant.
Most of VA’s I use these days are for content generation. I’ve paid as little as $10 dollars for a Fiver writer to write a 1.000 word post to as high as $75 for a 1,000 word post.
Other than that, you should try to do most stuff on your website unless it’s just not cost effective. I can learn how to create cool graphics, but I don’t have time so it’s best to outsource a project like that for me.
Start off doing everything, as your site starts making money, reinvest that money back into your site as you see fit.
Thanks
Wow. It’s interesting how much we can actually automate in term of running online businesses. I’m currently trying to work on this myself and it is indeed difficult. I definitely was not aware of this virtual assistant you’re describing but it’s certainly something I’ll look into. Thanks for the info!
You bet Melissa, happy to help and thanks for the feedback.
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