1. Can a Virtual Administrative Assistant Get the Job Done?

One of the biggest fears surrounding hiring any virtual assistant involves the ability of in-office staff to communicate effectively with those out of the office. With today’s technology, however, this fear is entirely out-dated. Video Instant Messaging, Cell Phones, Conference calls and VOIP technologies like Skype make it easier than ever to communicate with off-site workers.

What really causes the most difficulty is a lack of process many companies encounter when hiring a virtual administrative assistant who works entirely remotely. When hiring a virtual administrative assistant, it’s important to create the same kind of structure you would otherwise have at a physical office. Have your virtual administrative assistant prepare and deliver your morning agenda in the same way every time, schedule a midday brief with her every day, and remember to follow up just like you would in your normal office environment. Remember: since most small successful business owners and top executives conduct the majority of business outside the office, face-to-face interaction between administrative assistants and their bosses is already minimal. It no longer matters where your administrative assistant works, and having a virtual administrative assistant is more viable than ever.

2. How Will I Know My Virtual Administrative Assistant is Actually Working?

If I’m not there to ensure my virtual administrative assistant is working, how will I know she actually is? This concern arises out of a misconception about what being a boss is actually about. Effective bosses don’t devote time to the kind of employee babysitting that monitors whether their assistants are actually working. Instead, they build feedback right into the work process. In a physical office setting, such feedback might take the shape of creating a set of concrete deliverables with deadlines. If you know you asked your assistant to get something done by a certain time, it’s pretty obvious whether she’s working when the due date rolls around.

Working with virtual administrative assistants isn’t much different. It’s important to create the same kinds of deliverables and deadlines that you would with an on-site administrative assistant, but with a virtual administrative assistant, you take the process one step further. Instead of merely agreeing on the time and manner in which a deliverable is due, agree with your virtual administrative assistant about how long something should take. If you both agree that a given task should take 3 hours, then you’ll know your virtual administrative assistant is working and that you’re being billed properly when you receive an invoice for your work.

3. Don’t Virtual Assistants Speak Poor English?

Virtual assistants, like any assistants, come in many shapes and sizes. Some virtual administrative assistants do speak less-than-stellar English, but it’s easy to find just as many who are native English speakers, or who learned English at a very young age and who speak quite clearly and use better vocabularies than most of their American or British counterparts. If this is a specific concern for you or your company, be sure to specify in the job listing that you create that fluency is especially important to you; follow through by conducting a phone or Skype interview and asking for a few examples of written work.

4. Isn’t Outsourcing Bad for the Economy?

One of the most prevalent fears surrounding virtual administrative assistants involves outsourcing. Many small business owners fear that, while outsourcing may be good for them individually, it’s bad for the economy and ultimately for the country in general. It’s important to remember, however, that outsourcing doesn’t inherently involve sending jobs overseas. Administrative Assistant jobs can be outsourced to workers living within the country just as easily as they can to foreign workers. Perhaps more importantly, if your business can continue to grow by hiring virtual administrative assistants, then outsourcing may allow you to increase revenue to the point where you can afford to hire more workers than before.

5. Can I Afford a Virtual Administrative Assistant?

Some virtual administrative assistants, especially those working from within the country, may charge more per hour than their in-office administrative assistant counterparts. It’s important, however, to look at overall value to determine the true costs of hiring any worker. Because using a virtual administrative assistant involves outsourcing to another business owner, companies can avoid about half the costs of normal employment. Benefits, employment taxes, office supplies, and a host of other costs make virtual administrative assistants much less costly, even when their hourly rate is higher. Almost all companies can afford virtual administrative assistants.

In my first post on virtual website assistants, I mentioned that doing a quick search for search engine optimization on elance yielded at least 2,500 results. Most individual virtual website assistants and virtual website assistant companies offer core SEO functions like keyword research, on-site optimization, and backlink building, and the average virtual website assistant charges between $8.00 and $18.00 per hour for these services.

These rates are certainly more expensive than the rates for generalized virtual assistants; the average virtual assistant on elance charges between $5.00 and $15.00 per hour. Is paying for a virtual website assistant really efficient?

To understand the real cost savings involved in hiring a virtual website assistant, it’s important to look at the rates that so-called “SEO experts” charge for their services. An article at SEOmoz on SEO Pricing and Costs reveals that mid-tear SEO companies charge up to $200 per hour for their services. That’s over a 1000% difference. In other words, it costs roughly five times less to hire a mid-tier virtual website assistant than it does to hire a mid-tier SEO expert!

Considering that both virtual website assistants and SEO gurus work from their own offices and communicate with clients via email and phone, the level of customer interaction they provide is entirely comparable. Likewise, a quick credential check on most of the virtual website assistant services in elance reveals high numbers of satisfied customers. People actually enjoy working with virtual website assistants, and they, like most virtual assistants, accomplish their tasks quickly and effectively. Virtual website assistant services clearly provide an incredible value to those companies that use them. It’s hard to beat getting the exact same services for one fifth of the price.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an incredibly time-consuming task no matter how much of an expert you are. But it doesn’t have to be your time that’s consumed. In fact, an increasing number of virtual assistants have added the title virtual website assistant to their CVs.

What’s a Virtual Website Assistant?

We’ve mentioned the time and productivity savings virtual assistants create once or twice before. Like their generalized counterparts, virtual website assistants work on tasks so you don’t have to, saving you time and money in the process. Virtual website assistants perform the gamut of traffic building and SEO tasks. From backlink building and content creation to meta tag optimization and adwords campaign management, a virtual website assistant will save a webmaster considerable time and funds.

Finding a Virtual Website Assistant

Finding a virtual website assistant is easy. A quick search on elance for search engine optimization produces about 2500 results as of this writing, many of whom charge comparable rates to generalized virtual assistants. While a Google search isn’t quite as fruitful, many VAs offer virtual website assistant services, and most of the major virtual assistant directories and services now list SEO and website promotion as core functions.

If you’re already trained at SEO and prefer to manage your site yourself, you may find it helpful to train your existing VA or start her on some SEO coursework, like the articles and videos at Sitepoint.com (great for virtual website assistants and SEO-experts alike), to support your efforts. Given the savings, increasing the SEO efforts of your company with a virtual website assistant is an incredibly cost-effective marketing strategy. No matter how you find or use one, a virtual website assistant may be just the edge you need to one-up the competition and make your site a success.

10. Keyword Reasearch

Keyword research is possibly the most important function for any SEO worker. Knowing what keywords have become common and what keywords are up-and-coming can help you determine what areas within your niche are information-saturated and what topics are ripe for discussion. This knowledge will in turn help you and your team know what your audience is looking for and what kind of content to create; knowing your customers this well gives you an incredible means to create content that’s effective. If you have a virtual website assistant or are considering using one, make sure both you and your virtual assistant are well-versed in the art and science of keyword research.

9. On-Site SEO Optimization

Optimizing your site for search engines by getting down and dirty with the html, css, and backend code is definitely not a fun job, but, as they say, somebody’s gotta do it. If you’re new to SEO and you want to know what to expect from your virtual website assistant in terms of on-site optimization, be sure to check out SEOmoz’s 24 On-site SEO Checkups For Clueless Developers / Marketers.

8. Backlink Building

Backlink building is by far the most tedious task for any SEO worker. It is, however, an incredibly effective way to drive traffic to your site and, if done correctly, it leads to the increased sales or marketing conversions that prompted your company to start a website in the first place. Start by reading Courtney Tuttle’s 102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar; make this require reading for your virtual assistant as well. Pay careful attention to #81, but subsititue virtual website assistant for “starving student”!

7. Link Exchange Candidate Research

Finding candidates with whom to exchange links is a good way to build relationships within your niche. Have your virtual website assistant research players in your field who would be likely candidates for link exchange.

Businesses and individuals with a similar, though slightly higher level of traffic, Google Page Rank, or industry stardom (or whatever other rubric seems appropriate) are the best candidates.  A mutually beneficial relationship is most possible with these individuals. Avoid direct competitors and look for businesses or individuals who could drive traffic to your site without losing out on sales themselves. For example, if you’re a small custom computer manufacturer, have your virtual website assistant try to find small computer store websites that might want to feature and sell your products. Avoid spending time soliciting from very large players–the Best Buys in this example–unless you really have something to offer them, since they’re unlikely to gain significantly from working with you. Since finding these smaller players will take some time, dedicating some of your virtual website assistant’s time to this task can be very beneficial.

6. Market Niche Briefs

It’s important to know what’s going on in your market niche both offline and online. Have your virtual website assistant prepare weekly briefs of internet developments within your niche. What stories are discussed most in popular industry blogs and forums? What are your competitors doing with their websites? Have they offered new features or started a new online marketing campaign? What are the members of your supply chain doing online? Having this kind of a 360 degree view of your online marketplace is incredibly important, and a good virtual website assistant can gather and analyze this information for you, enabling you to make efficient and effective decisions. Have your virtual assistant read niche blogs regularly, and sign her up for a google news feed with important keywords for your industry.

5. Adwords Campaign Management

Google offers a directory of individuals who will design adwords campaigns for your company for a not-so-small fee. Instead, have your virtual website assistant not only design the ads, but implement, monitor, and maintain the entire adwords campaign.

4. Webmaster Networking

Networking with other webmasters in your niche can be as important and effective as networking with their offline marketing and operational counterparts. Have your virtual assistant identify important individuals in your niche who have a significant online presence and schedule phone or IM conversations with them. This can be a valuable way to learn information that you might have missed out on, as well as receive valuable feedback about your company, your website, and whatever online initiatives you’ve started.

3. Content Creation

If you have a virtual website assistant (or general virtual assistant) who speaks and writes English well, content creation can be a valuable task to assign. Although many smaller website owners may be uncomfortable with having others write their content, it’s important to overcome this fear to become more effective. If you’re balancing many other responsibilities, it’s impossible to write as much content for your website as you’d like by yourself. If US presidential candidates,  Hollywood celebrities, and the Queen of England hire speech writers and press agents to compose messages on their behalf, why can’t you hire a virtual website assistant to write content for your website?

2. Comments and Questions Response

When users try to interact with you, it’s important to make sure you actually respond. Not doing so often causes loyal customers to consider other brands and turns off newcomers to your company and it’s mission. Having a virtual website assistant to help you manage the emails and blog comments you’ll inevitably get when you’re website gains popularity can be a real boon to your productivity. As long as you’re honest about using a virtual website assistant to respond to customers, the vast majority of users understand. After all, I don’t expect to talk to Steve Jobs every time I call Apple.

1. Google Analytics Analysis

If you haven’t tried Google Analytics yet, do it now! It’s an incredibly powerful tool for webmasters and SEO workers that helps them understand the traffic their site is getting and improve the ways they interact with and market to customers. Have your virtual website assistant learn the ropes if she hasn’t already, and put her in charge of analyzing the data and creating new ideas for increasing traffic and improving the conversion rate of existing users.

• Say what they gave you. Depending on what it is you’re recognizing, you don’t want anything to be misread or confusing.
• Show how much it meant to you by telling them something meaningful about their gift.
• Close by reaffirming how much you value your relationship.
• When you sign your name, you can be more formal with “sincerely”, warmer with “cordially” or “best”, and warmest with “fondly”.

Here’s a sample note:

6/30/08

Dear Brian,

Thank you so much for offering the Yankees tickets to my family last weekend. The kids and I had a fantastic time, and we even caught a foul ball! It was such a fun treat in the middle of this crazy month.

I look forward to seeing you at the next tri-regional, and please call if you’re ever in the area!

Best,

Jen

1. Stay Passionate. It’s easy to get distracted by the bills coming in, the employees who don’t quite get it, and of course, the small failures that can look huge. Remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Make a list of 10 good things about your business, and put a star next to all of the ones you played a part in. Thumbs up to you; keep that passion going!
2. Make a list. When there’s a lot on your plate, it can be too much to manage. Yes, you have your assistants, your calendars, your emails, your post-its, your notes on your bathroom mirror…sometimes it’s too much! Simplify and make an a list of tasks that are important for the week. Then, make a separate list of what you can conquer TODAY and DO IT. Then, (the best part) check each task off when it’s done! Cliche, but it works.
3. Exercise. I know, I know, you don’t have time. You don’t want to get sweaty. You’re not in shape and now’s not the time to start. Big deal. Even 10 minutes of stretching can clear your mind and get those endorphins working. You can check out this link of basic exercises, and try out a new passion. I like jumping rope, using an exercise ball, and doing my guilty pleasure Tae Bo dvds.
4. Sleep. It’s easy to be stressed when you’re running on no rest, and the only type of energy you can have is the delirious kind where you can’t think straight. You should shoot for 8 hours a night. This will also help prevent some chronic illness, decrease your need for stimulants, improve your mood, and make you less vulnerable to accidents. Sounds good to me. Read a book or count sheep if you have trouble…they both actually work.
5. Cut the caffeine. It’s a drug. Some is ok, but when you become addicted and dependent, that’s a problem. You can crash, blow situations out of proportion, and frankly make others around you tense, which certainly raises stress levels. Training yourself to rely on your own energy tunes you in to your own limits and saves your pocketbook some extra cash.
6. Step back and Evaluate. What’s the source of your stress? On the surface, it’s clearly that the big deal didn’t come through. But given some additional thought, maybe it’s that your records were being kept poorly or you were late for a meeting. How can you or your company correct these flaws? Stepping back and making deliberate small changes can not only affect the course of your business and increase morale, but it will decrease your stress and give you back the energy that you wasted sweating the small stuff.
7. Clean and Organize. This is the biggest one that I’m awful at. Don’t just put papers where ever it’s convenient or save something only on the computer. Take the extra few minutes, buy a filing system at your local Staples, match your electronic and print records, vacuum and dust, and leave only the essentials on your desk. PHEW. You’ll be able to find everything much easier, and if you take the afternoon off for a round of golf or memorial day picnic, you can be sure that anyone in the office can find what they’re looking for without you.

I hope you’re fired up! Ready, set, go to it!

Starting a company is no easy task; 99.9% of startups fail within their first year, and those that don’t often struggle to remain viable in the long-term. Yet all of today’s promising companies and Fortune 500 giants were once startup companies, striving to create a niche in their industry and turning some heads in the process. It’s this corporate casino—where most lose, but the winners win big—that makes following a startup so interesting. It’s also one of the reasons I’ve created the first-ever feature at the Upwardly Mobile, Startup Smartup, to give you an inside look at the trials, challenges, and tribulations of working on a startup from day one. Over the next few months, you’ll get a chance to learn from my mistakes and (hopefully) successes, and get an inside look at an exciting new Web 2.0 company. I’ll be discussing the practice of all those things I learned in my entrepreneurial leadership classes, and we’ll challenge the efficacy of some commonly-held beliefs about entrepreneurship.

There’s only one catch: I can’t tell you the idea yet. As much as I’d love to give you every last detail–and believe me, I’m excited enough to go on for hours–I’m sworn to secrecy for the next few weeks, at the very least. I can tell you that I’ll be posting early and often about this, however, and that you readers will be the first to know whenever I have any news. So join us for the ride and check back for an update soon!

The spending comparison feature produces graphs that illustrate your spending habits and those of average users in the area you specify. You can sort by both location and spending-category, yielding some pretty interesting results. Hopefully, you’ll be spending significantly less than your local counterparts on expenses, and investing significantly more, but either way, Mint’s new (and anonymous) SpendSpace feature should allow you to find out how you’re doing. Considering the average American actually spends more than he earns, it really shouldn’t be a problem to save more than those around you! The feature can provide some positive reinforcement for your investing habits as well.

Mint’s blog isn’t quite as impressive as the actual application, but it’s certainly got a lot of great info! The posts on Cheap Alternatives to the “Must Haves” in Your Life and A Young Professional’s Car Buying Guide are particularly good.

Getting Things Done

Memo To Me is great for those reminders that you don’t want cluttering up your calendar, and it’s incredibly simple. The application consists of two key features:

• Create reminders at any interval (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and irregularly) just like GCal.
• Get reminders delivered to your inbox precisely when you want them.

While Google Calendar is perfect for event and schedule reminders, MemoToMe allows me to keep my calendar clean while still remembering to follow up with those people on my waiting for list, like my virtual assistants. Although you’d normally have to pay for a Platinum account to get MemoToMe reminders via text message, you can easily configure your gmail account to forward MemoToMe reminds to your phone. This method also works great for Outlook and Apple Mail users, as well as users of most other email clients with forwarding services.

@The Readers: How do you remember things?

If you’ve landed that new job or found that new apartment, chances are, you’re looking for a roommate. It can be tough to find a good roommate, especially one whose tastes, lifestyle, and budget are all similar to yours. Since I just went through that process myself, I thought I’d share a bit about what I learned.

Without a doubt, the two most popular services for finding a roommate online are Craigslist and Roommates.com. Both sites are popular, but which one is actually the best at connecting potential roommates?

Roommates.com

Pros: Roommates.com is a site designed specifically to help you find a roommate in your location. The website’s algorithm allows you to search for a roommate over a number of different parameters besides the obvious age, sex, and location attributes. Particularly helpful attributes include price range, cleanliness levels, smoker/non-smoker status, and even a little emoticon indicator of general personality. When I joined the site and filled out my profile, I instantly had over 20 matches. Over the next 30 days, the site found me about 30 more.

Cons: The free membership really isn’t that useful. Like most dating websites, Roommates allows you to see your matches for free. However, to actually contact anyone, you’ll have to pay. 30-day memberships go for $19.99.

Craigslist

Pros: I know people who swear by Craigslist; the free community site is incredibly good at connecting people. I’ve used it in the past to buy and sell things, and its roommate-search functionality is the same. Post a free advertisement and get free responses.

Cons: Posting on Craigslist can be incredibly cumbersome, and there are significantly more 45-year-old women (no offense if any of you are reading this!) than young professionals. Posts quickly move off the first page and into the abyss, where they await a lonely death. In order to be effective, you’ll need to post early and often.

The Verdict: Roommates.com Wins

It’s really hard to pass up free sometimes, but the pain you’ll save by using Roommates.com makes it well worth the $20 you’ll spend. I managed to find a great roommate who’s actually working in the same building I am after about 2 weeks (I’m picky), and the site did most of the work for me. I spent hours on Craigslist posting and responding to posts, but I didn’t get nearly the same response. Of course, had I put my virtual assistant on this task, I probably could have gotten him to find me a roommate on Craigslist instead for about the same price as Roommates.

1. Act Like You’re Already Rich - In Steve Pavlina’s article, 5 Wealth Lessons from 20 Percent of a Millionaire, Steve discusses the significant shift in identity that it takes to become a millionaire. He argues that it’s impossible to become rich without first becoming comfortable with the lifestyle that accompanies wealth. This doesn’t mean acting like a snob, but it does mean learning to live as if you already had a million bucks. If you think about your wealthy friends and acquaintances, you’ll realize that most of them do most or all of the following:

• Carry larger sums of money in their wallets - Wealthy people are just comfortable with handling larger sums of money. In his post, Steve Pavlina explains how he became comfortable carrying $300 - $500 in his wallet on a regular basis.
• Spend time with wealthy friends and acquaintances - Most wealthy people already know and interact with other wealthy individuals on a regular basis. These individuals are well connected, pro-active, and entrepreneurial. They can provide critical feedback and connections for your next business idea.
• Persist in realizing goals - Perhaps the most important habit that separates the successful, whether wealthy or not, from everyone else is persistence. If you’re going to amass wealth, you’ll have to create value, and that takes effort and persistence. If you set a goal for your personal or professional life, you need to keep at it when the going gets tough. As Calvin Coolidge said, “Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

2. Communicate Effectively and Persuasively - In his best-selling book, The “It” Factor, Mark Wiskup argues that nobody cares about your ideas. And he’s absolutely right! You can spend your time believing that you’re a unique and beautiful snowflake and that the world should simply listen when you speak, or you can learn to become a magnetic communicator who draws people in, rallies them to your cause, and primes them to help you reach your goals. Since realizing a goal as significant as becoming wealthy isn’t something you can do alone, effective communication is a critical part of building wealth.

3. Spend Money that Makes Money - The old adage that you have to spend money to make money is absolutely true. Every exercise in entrepreneurship requires an investment. Just how much investment? Well, if you really want to maximize your earning power, try the 80-20 Rule, which states that for many events, 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. If you’ve decided you want to be rich, you’ll need to start focusing your earnings on investments that work for you, rather than against you. While I can’t give you specific investment tips, I can tell you how to figure it out for yourself.

• Start Tracking Your Spending - Thanks to Mint, tracking your spending habits has become incredibly easy. Sign up for a free account and begin following your own spending automatically.
• Invest More Each Month - While most of will have trouble investing 80% of our earnings, we can all invest a bit more and begin transitioning to investing a full 80% or more. The irony is that it’s easier to spend 80% of your money on making money when you’re already rich. In order to get there, however, you’ll have to start taking steps gradually.
• Invest Better Each Month - Once you begin tracking your spending, it should be easy to tell which investments were most effective. Whether you place your money in a high-yield money market account or invest it in a new business idea, you need to be willing to make adjustments and move your money out of ineffective investments and into effective ones. As Andrew Carnegie said, “Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.”

4. Take Calculated Risks - The most successful entrepreneurs, investors, and kindergarten teachers know how to take calculated risks. Though their goals certainly differ, they all know how to set goals that fit a few key conditions and then take the risks necessary to make those goals a reality. Calculated risks always have a few things in common:

• Failure isn’t devastating - Taking risks that will result in financial, emotional or physical ruin is, over time, a sure recipe for disaster. If you could lose it all if you fail, it isn’t a calculated risk.
• The Reward is Significant - If you have to invest significant amounts of time or money for insignificant rewards, you should look elsewhere.
• The odds are in your favor - Nothing is a sure thing, but many outcomes are likely enough that it’s worth taking a risk. I use the 80-20 rule here as well. If I feel I have an 80% chance of success and the previous two factors are also met, I’ll take the risk without much further thought. When the reward is greater or the result of failure is less significant, I’ll also consider trying it.

5. Hire a Virtual Assistant - I’ve already extolled the virtues of working with a virtual assistant, but it’s worth taking a few moments to return to the subject here. As I mentioned earlier, you have to create value to amass wealth. It’s often difficult, however, to create significant amounts of value in any single interaction. It’s much easier to create moderate amounts and then repeat. If you can find a model that works, you can use a virtual assistant to help you duplicate your efforts. Whether you use your VA to increase traffic to your website, sell your product, or run a PR blitz, you’re much more likely to succeed if you can leverage the power of an effective, low-cost workforce. Imagine if you had your own personal team dedicated to creating wealth for you!

The 4-Hour Workweek

This article will provide a brief overview of virtual assistants, explain how to effectively use them to save time and money, and offer some free tools for improving your VA experience. Read more to learn how you can save thousands of dollars per year, free up your time, and have fun in the process!

What’s a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistants are self-employed personal and administrative assistants who help clients worldwide. VAs work from their own homes or offices and significantly lower the costs of the services they provide by eliminating most of the significant expenses associated with typical employment, including taxes, benefits, and human resource costs. Because virtual assistants work as independent contractors, they cover these costs themselves from their wages. Perhaps most importantly, because most virtual assistants work from international locations where costs of living are significantly lower, they can pass these savings on to you. For example, I currently work with a Sri Lankan assistant who completes common administrative tasks for $5/hr. My assistant, Pradeep, is capable and intelligent, and he completes tasks for me while I sleep (one of the many benefits of the difference in time zones) and returns his work to me the next day via email. Pradeep has a clear accent and his English isn’t perfect, but working with him is fun and effective!

Virtual Assistants can perform countless tasks skillfully and efficiently. Common tasks include managing calendars, compiling data, completing research, planning trips and events, and providing call-center services. Some VAs also specialize in one or more areas, like programming and web design, legal services, and even sales. I’ve outsourced a variety of tasks to Pradeep, including researching the legality of a business decision we were considering at one of the companies I work with, planning an itinerary for a vacation I was taking, and scheduling meetings with clients and coworkers. In all of these cases, Pradeep saved me time and money by allowing me to focus my attention on those parts of my personal and professional life that were most critical.

Benefits

Working with a virtual assistant is an incredibly effective way to save time and money. For the terminally busy, a virtual assistant can free you up to do the things you really want to do, like focusing on making that next sale, and free you from the things that steal your time, like scheduling (and rescheduling) a meeting.

For most, the time and cost benefits of hiring a virtual assistant are obvious. But if you’re not sure whether it’s worth it—or if you’d like to know exactly how much you’re saving—it can be helpful to take a minute and do the math. Say, for example, that you make $25/hr. If your virtual assistant costs you $5/hr. and can complete a task just as quickly as you can (which is very often the case), you’re saving 75% of your time or money every time you outsource a task. Even if your assistant takes twice as long, you’re still saving over 66%. Not bad for something that takes almost no ongoing effort at all, and that’s not even counting the money you might earn with the free time you’ll get! If you’d like to play with the math for yourself (and find out how much you could save in a year), I’ve created a simple excel spreadsheet for you here.

It’s also helpful to think of the benefits in terms of an actual life-style change. What could you do with five extra hours per week? With ten? What about all those new ideas you’ve been meaning to follow up on? Would you have time to finally start that side business or get back in shape? Could you even outsource some of the tasks you’ve been putting off? Maybe you’d have time to watch that new show your friends had been talking about, or spend that Saturday afternoon enjoying the sunshine instead of working inside. Maybe you can even enjoy a 4-Hour Workweek, like Timothy Ferris does! Whatever you’d do with your extra time, it’s clear that using a VA can be a great choice for just about anyone.

Ethical Issues

When I tell people that I use a virtual assistant, I often get questions about the ethics of the practice, and I’d like to take a moment to address those concerns here. Despite some claims to the contrary, I believe that using a virtual assistant is not only ethical, but an incredibly intelligent practice of global citizenship. The most common concern I’ve heard is the belief that paying someone such a small wage is unfair. When you examine the details, however, it’s clear that virtual assistants actually realize significant benefits through their work.

Let’s take my assistant, Pradeep, for example. According to the latest (2007) data I can find, the average individual income in Sri Lanka is approximately LKR 173,484 (Sri Lankan Rupees) or $1610 (as of the writing of this post) per year. Assuming his other clients pay him at $5/hr. as well, and that Pradeep works 40 hours per week for 50 weeks per year, he’ll earn $10,000 per year, or 521% more than the national average salary. This is a conservative estimate, since most VAs do some specialty work for which they charge a premium.

Likewise, Pradeep enjoys personal benefits as well. Pradeep can work from home—or anywhere else with an internet connection—and enjoys the flexibility of setting his own hours, spending more time with his family, and choosing how to best complete his work. Pradeep has even been featured in the Sunday Times, one of Sri Lanka’s largest-selling English newspapers. If this isn’t an enviable lifestyle, I don’t know what is. Perhaps most importantly, the relationship Pradeep and I have allows us to learn about each other’s cultures and benefit from each other’s experience, promoting an interchange of ideas and values.

Finding Your VA

If you’re convinced it’s time to find a VA, there are countless venues to choose from. The ones I’ve used in the past are:

• Elance is easily the most popular option for finding a virtual assitant. The website features a simple, though slightly cumbersome, auction system, where virtual assistants will bid for your job at an hourly rate. Timothy Ferris is even featured in a YouTube video on Elance’s homepage that the explains how to find a VA there. The site is much better suited for single projects than ongoing relationships, but it gets the job done.
• Craigslist is now my method-of-choice for finding a high-quality, low-cost VA. Your best bet is to post a listing in the Jobs section of larger cities in India like Dehli and Bangalore. If you follow my hiring process below, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to find high-quality, low-cost VA’s.

No matter where you choose to look, finding a VA can be incredibly simple if you follow a well-conceived hiring process. It took me a few tries to perfect my process, but it works incredibly well for me now. You can find a virtual assistant quickly and easily if you follow these three steps:

1. Post a simple, descriptive listing of your needs. Take a minute to think about what you’d like your VA experience to be like. What skills does your VA have? What kind of tasks do you giver her? How much do you pay her per hour? Does she complete tasks overnight and return them by email the next day, or do you give her longer deadlines? Do you communicate by phone, email, or chat? Will you pay your VA via PayPal, or use one of the other money-sending services like Xoom? Once you know what you need in a VA, you’ll want to make a post that will attract the best possible candidates. Write a clear job description that explains what you’re looking for, and ask for references of previous work. You’ll get the best possible response if you’re clear about what you need.
2. Ask possible candidates to complete a task. In order to best judge the quality of work you’ll get from your VA, you’ll want to create a sample task for applicants to complete before you bother talking to them further. I asked candidates to plan an itinerary from my home in Boston to a friend’s home in Connecticut that used only public transportation. The task was simple, but it allowed me to judge the speed, accuracy, and quality with which applicants responded. I also avoided having to plan the trip myself!
3. Interview the top three candidates via Skype. To complete the process, you’ll want to interview your top candidates. The easiest way to do this is to set up a time to talk to your candidates via skype, the free VOIP program. Ask applicants to call you, so you can judge their timeliness and responsibility. During the interview, you’ll want to ask about the things that matter most to you. There’s no perfect interview formula, so don’t be afraid to pass on somebody just because they don’t feel right. The best VA’s I’ve used are the ones I enjoy talking to, not necessarily the smartest or most well-spoken.

Working with your VA

Working with your VA should be fun and simple. When assigning tasks, it’s helpful to establish a process early that you and your VA can follow every time. These guidelines are a good start:

1. Assignments should be as clear and specific as possible. Say you’re giving your VA an internet research assignment on the War of 1812. Don’t just say, “research the war of 1812.” Instead, tell your VA exactly what you want. What’s the point of the assignment? What facts are absolutely critical for you to know? How long and how detailed should your VA’s response be? Would you prefer a word document? A PDF? Do you need pictures, graphs, or other media? Considering and specifying these things beforehand is critical.
2. Assignments should have a clear deadline and duration. When you assign a task, be clear about how long you expect the task to take and when you’d like to receive the work. Don’t say, “I’d like this by next Thursday.” If you’re assigning the task on Tuesday, this can be confusing. Which Thursday do you mean? I usually write something like, “I’d like this assignment returned by Thursday the 18th. I expect it to take about 3 hours to complete.”
3. Always have your VA confirm and repeat the assignment. When assigning a task, I have my assistant respond to my email to confirm that he’s received the assignment, that he understands it, and that he can complete it in the time frame I’ve specified. I ask him to summarize the major points of the assignment in this communication, so that I’m sure he understands what I’ve assigned.

Keep in mind that these are just a few guidelines. You’ll want to find out what works for you. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a few tries to get it right; working with an employee isn’t always easy, and non-native English speakers may occasionally misunderstand you. Then again, at $5/hr., mistakes aren’t really that costly.

Tips and Tools

Now that you’ve got a handle on the basics, here are a few resources for you to check out that will make your life easier:

• If you’d like to learn more, you should definitely check out Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss pioneered personal outsourcing with virtual assistants, and his book contains an exhaustive list of ideas and resources to help you get started.
• All the software I use to work with my VA is free! I use Google Documents for sharing office documents, Gmail for assigning work and sending other file types, and Skype for free phone functionality.
• Paying your VA is incredibly easy online. PayPal is a great resource for most locations. If your VA lives and works from a location that doesn’t accept PayPal, you can use services like Xoom to send money for a low fee.

Conclusion

Working with a VA can be a fun and easy way to save time and money. Virtual assistants are easy to find and help free up valuable time. If you’ve thought about using a VA before, or if you like what you’ve read here, it’s time to take the plunge. Using a VA will revolutionize the way you spend your time, and it’s worth the few hours it’ll take to try out. If you have any questions about this article, please feel free to leave a comment below or email me!

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