Tweaky

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

Tweaky is a marketplace for quick website customization projects. These small “tweaks” start at just $39 and are accomplished by a talented cloud-based team of developers.

VAA Tested_smaller Tweaky was founded in 2012 and is based in Melbourne, Australia.

This is not a virtual assistant service, but it is an interesting outsourcing concept that falls between Fiverr and the big freelance marketplaces. If you’ve ever been in the situation where you’re banging your head against the wall trying to make some small fix on your website or figure out how to do one seemingly simple thing in the code, Tweaky is for you.

These small fixes and customizations can be frustrating thorns in your side, and Tweaky takes that pain away. I first learned about the company at a marketing conference in Las Vegas, and was anxious to try them out the next time I had a need.

The advantage over Elance or oDesk is just in the amount of time it takes from initiation to project completion. You’ll still need to create a pretty detailed scope of work for what you want done, but you don’t have to spend any time going through the applications and picking a winner. Tweaky quotes the project a low fixed rate and assigns a competent developer to the job.

I tested it out myself on a fix I’d been procrastinating on for the mobile version of this very website. Even though the theme is responsive, certain pages looked pretty messed up when viewed on the mobile browser. Here’s an example of what I submitted to Tweaky and asked them to fix:

Before

They came back with a quote of $39 and I reasoned it would be a worthwhile investment since 20% of the site’s traffic is from mobile users, and that number isn’t getting any smaller.

So I accepted the job and within a couple hours, the mobile site looked a million times better:

After

Well worth it! Super fast and quality work.

A couple other important things to note. The first was in sharing the WordPress access details. They have a secure system to input your login and password information and I didn’t have to create a separate developer account. I would have probably preferred to use LastPass, but I felt OK with the security level at Tweaky.

Tweaky supports a huge variety of web software, including WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, BigCommerce, MailChimp, AWeber, and much more. Pretty much anything you can think of related to your website, they can handle for you without the potential headache of going through a freelance site.

One thing that might be interesting, that I didn’t bother with, would be to post the same project on Tweaky and on oDesk and see if the rates end up being much different. My hunch is that Tweaky is pretty competitive on price because they’re built specifically for these one-off micro-jobs — jobs the freelancers on oDesk might not be as attracted to or suited to.

Tweaky has a 100% money back guarantee so there’s no risk to try them out. I would just take a backup of your site before handing over the access, just on the off-chance something really blows up beyond repair.

If you want to try Tweaky yourself, use this link to get $10 off your first project. [Tweaky coupon code]

Have you used Tweaky before? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below.

Posted in Low Cost Virtual Assistants, Project-Based Virtual Assistants

VAhut

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

VAhut is a newer virtual assistant company in China, but they may not have survived their first year. I reached out to them on two occasions and never got a response.

The company is based out of Hangzhou, a city with a metro population over 20 million — a city that in typical ignorant-American fashion I’d never even heard of. They maintain a US-presence and sales office in South Carolina. VAhut.com began operations in 2012.

It was really only a matter of time until some entrepreneurial Chinese began a VA company to compete on an international level. At the moment, the only other one I’m aware of with any significant market presence is BPOVIA, but they seem to be aimed at larger corporate clients.

Naturally, the environment in China makes it a great place to build a virtual assistant firm catering both to the massive and growing domestic market as well as the mature worldwide VA market. The workforce is young, educated, and still has relatively low wages compared with more developed countries. The only real obstacle to international success is the language barrier.

VAhut offers the familiar administrative virtual assistant services, but much of their work is China-specific. For instance, they really specialize in travel assistance to China, sourcing and managing the relationships with manufacturers and suppliers, factory audits, and helping clients enter the Chinese market.

The company offers three levels of service: pay as you go, a monthly subscription, or project-based engagement.

The Pay as You Go plan allows you to pay an hourly rate for services on-demand. As I mentioned, when I inquired about what their hourly rates might be, I was greeted with silence.

Monthly subscriptions are available in 10, 20, 40, 80, and 160-hour packages. Again, prices are unknown at this time.

VA Hut will also quote one-off projects, and could be a good resource perhaps for initial research into the Chinese market or some other job that requires local expertise on the ground.

For most cases, VAhut uses a team-based approach where tasks are handled by different VAs on an as-available basis.

I wish these guys success because they have a well-designed site and seem poised to tackle to the giant opportunity of being the first real Chinese virtual assistant company aimed at small businesses and individuals. But until they figure out how to respond to customer inquiries I’m afraid we’ll have to keep looking for a better solution.

Have you worked with VAhut? If so, please share a review of your experience below so others can make an informed decision.

Posted in Virtual Assistant Companies

Best Virtual Assistant…

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Nick Loper

For Personal Tasks
Efficise – Starts at $45/mo for 30 tasks
My Tasker – Starts at $39 for 30 tasks
Zirtual – All-American support with an “Epic Guarantee”
Fancy Hands – US-based assistance starting at $25 a month
Rent A Smile – Personal outsourcing for at $2-3 per task
Red Butler – Virtual concierge with tons of extra perks
TimeSvr – $69/month for unlimited quick tasks

For Small Business
Any of the above, plus:
oDesk – One-stop shopping for any job imaginable (Worldwide)
My Tasker – Professional support from $5/hr (India)
Hire Your Virtual Assistant – Great plans for entrepreneurs (Philippines)
24/7 Virtual Assistant - Qualified help, fast (India, Philippines)
UAssist.me – Professional outsourcing close to home (El Salvador)
VMG BPO – 24/7 live chat support from $195 a month (India)

For Medium Business
Longer Days – 100% American business process outsourcing (Michigan)
eaHELP – Expert help right here in the USA (Georgia)
BPOVIA – A popular choice among growing companies (China)
Brickwork India – One of the most famous VA companies (India)
Worldwide101 – Talented VAs on demand (Global)

For Full-Time Dedicated Help
Remote Staff Recruit – $297 to start, $400 – $750 per month ongoing
Virtual Staff Finder – $395 to start, $400-750 per month ongoing
Staff.com – From $500 per month
VirtualEmployee.com – $895 – $1495 per month
Rent A Smile – $920 per month
My Tasker – $960 per month
Task Bullet – $960 per month
A to Z Tasks – $995 per month
24/7 Virtual Assistant – $999 per month
Team Launcher – from $999 per month
Hire Your Virtual Assistant – $1120 per month
UAssist.me – $1400 per month

For One-Time Projects
oDesk – Have qualified workers bid on your tasks
Elance – Access thousands of freelancers with just a few clicks
Freelancer.com – The world’s largest freelance marketplace
Fiverr – You’ll be surprised what you can get done for just $5
Mechanical Turk – Outsource small jobs to the cloud for pennies
Tweaky – Fast and cheap option for small website customizations

For Graphic Design Work
99designs – Crowdsourced logo and web design
crowdSPRING – Marketplace for graphic design
Witmart – Crowdsourcing design platform that’s huge in China
Logo Garden – Great looking DIY logos on the cheap

For Writing
HireWriters – Cheap copywriting
TextBroker – Another cheap copywriting option
Scripted.com – Higher-end content-creation service

Posted in Uncategorized

Virtual Assistant Credit Card Security

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

One of the questions I get most frequently is how to securely share your credit card details with your virtual assistant, so they can make purchases and arrange travel on your behalf.

Like any transaction — online or off — there is still a certain level of trust involved, but there are a few ways different virtual assistant companies handle your private information, and there is another way you can keep your data secure with freelance VAs as well.

Option 1: Reimbursement

The most secure way to share your credit card information is not to share it all. With the reimbursement method, your VA completes the purchase and bills you for the appropriate amount.

To prevent abuse, written confirmation should be required because you don’t want any surprises showing up their expense report.

“Last week week when you were stressed out and said you really could use a trip to Hawaii, I took the initiative and booked your plane tickets. First class, all the way!”

Fancy Hands employs a variation on the Reimbursement option that lets their team of assistants make purchases on your behalf (after written approval) using the Fancy Hands company credit card. Then, they just bill the card you have on file with them for your subscription for the amount of the purchase.

I’ve only tested this once, but it’s executed fairly well. Currently, it’s limited to transactions of $100 or less though.

Option 2: LastPass Access

LastPass is one of my favorite online tools, and it’s free! The browser add-on saves your website passwords and auto-fills login forms so you don’t need to clutter your brain with all those logins anymore. I love it.

The cool thing about LastPass is you can share your account access for certain websites securely by simply going into your LastPass Vault, selecting the site you want to share, and entering in the email of your VA. Then, when they go to the site, LastPass will help them login with your information but they’ll never see the actual password.

The way to use LastPass to have your VA make purchases on your behalf is to set them up with account access for sites where your credit card details are already stored in your account. For example, you probably already have a credit card stored with Amazon, Delta Airlines, PayPal, or any number of other sites.

For security, only the last 4 numbers of the credit card is ever visible inside those sites so your VA will be able to login and make purchases on your behalf without ever seeing the full credit card number.

Option 3: A Secure Virtual Wallet

Other VA companies have a “virtual wallet” or similarly-secured area of your profile where you can store sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer accounts.

This data is afforded the same level of encryption as a website’s shopping cart pages, but when it comes time to make the purchase, someone from the VA company will still have to access it and be able to see the full credit card number. The security features limit access to only those who have your permission, and this method works well as long as the trust doesn’t get abused.

Option 4: Naked Trust

If you’ve been working with a freelance virtual assistant for a long time, you may trust that person implicitly. In that case, you may just read off the details of your credit card to them over the phone and have them store it in a secure place in their office.

This method was enthusiastically espoused by Kevin Zittle during the Elance Work Differently Summit I attended.

While this option seems pretty cavalier, keep in mind it’s in your VA’s interest to keep your credit card data secure as well. After all, they probably want to continue the relationship for the long term, or at least get a referral or recommendation when you’re done. If they start making unauthorized purchases, they’re burning their bridges with you and potentially jeopardizing their entire future in the industry.

Liability Protection

One last thing to note is that most credit cards now come with a zero liability fraud protection guarantee against unauthorized purchases. That doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t be careful with your credit card information, but it does mean that should your data get compromised, it probably won’t hurt you financially.

What method do you use to keep your credit card secure when working with virtual assistants?

Posted in News

SG Solutions

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Nick Loper — 1 Comment ↓

SG Solutions is a virtual assistant company that connects you with a growing global network of VAs. This modern, cloud-based set up utilizes primarily home-based virtual assistants in the Philippines and India, but also some North American staff in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Although the company is decentralized, they maintain a US presence from their Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sales office. SG Solutions has been in business since 2007 and supports a number of entrepreneurial and small business clients.

Aside from the basic virtual assistant services, SG also offers graphic design, content writing, customer service phone agents and virtual receptionists, along with bookkeeping and social media marketing services.

New clients who sign up for SG Solutions are assigned a dedicated team leader, but have access to their entire network of talented professionals in case there are specialized tasks that need to be done. If you have a repetitive process to outsource on a predictable and ongoing basis, a dedicated VA will be assigned to handle that job and report directly to you.

I had the chance to speak with Troy McCauley, the Director of Business Development at SG Solutions, and I appreciated his straightforward approach to outsourcing. Like Elance and oDesk, he believes the best combination of talent and affordability you need for your business is not always located near your office.

But unlike those freelance sites, he explained, SG Solutions offers a more hands-on management and oversight when it comes to the performance of your virtual team members.

Rates for SG virtual assistants begin at $255 for 30 hours a month ($8.50/hour). A half-time plan of 20 hours a week is just $600 a month ($7.50/hour), and a 30-hour per week plan is priced at $1120, or just $7 an hour. No full-time plan is listed, but my guess is you could negotiate one if you wanted to engage their services on a full-time basis.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA for 10% off your first month!

One cool thing about SG Solutions VA plans is that for all but the lowest option, a portion of the hours roll over the next month if you don’t use them all. Since most virtual assistant companies operate on a use-it-or-lose-it system, that can be a nice feature to have if you don’t anticipate having a consistent workflow.

The company also sells graphic design and web development work at the bargain rate of just $12 per hour. In addition, they’ll quote 1-time project-based work for you as well.

Have you worked with SG Solutions? If so, please take a minute to drop in a quick review below and help others make an informed decision.

Posted in Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Myaa

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Nick Loper — 3 Comments ↓

Myaa is a global virtual assistant talent pool, based out of their Las Vegas headquarters. The company has been in existence in one form or another for several years but has only begun aggressively marketing since late 2012.

Myaa virtual assistants specialize in higher-end VA services for affordable rates. Beyond that, many customers have engaged Myaa for content writing and customer service help. There are also resources available for more technically skilled work like web development, engineering, and accounting.

They call their platform cloud-based manpower, which is a good description because the VAs (also called Myaas) work on an on-demand, scalable basis from their home offices worldwide. Because the rates are usually in the ballpark of $10 / hour, most Myaas are overseas. (That said, I found a surprising number of US VAs on the site as well.)

Clients can either select their Myaa themselves based on their profile and portfolio of skills, or they can submit an overview of the kind of work they need done and the Myaa team will assign a VA they know will be a good fit. Since the matching service is free, most clients go for that option because they don’t want to stress over making that selection themselves.

Myaa Intro Video

Aside from assigning VAs to clients, the Myaa team also puts each prospective VA through a rigorous screening process before they’re ever allowed on the site. Each goes through a 2-week, 40 hour training course that includes skills tests, role playing, phone calls, dealing with irate customers, and more.

Then, they move onto a short period of on-the-job training doing in-house work for Myaa. Finally, they’re ready for prime time. Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Office Daniel Palladino explained that of every 1000 applications they receive, perhaps only 70 VAs will ever have their profile live on the site.

MyaaWorld

One interesting thing Myaa has set up is their virtual office environment, called MyaaWorld. Here you can see the little green “Nick L” avatar hanging out all by himself in the Myaa Team 4 conference room.

myaaworld

It has kind of a video game feel, but has some cool collaboration tools built in. You can make Voice over IP calls (with or without video), share screens, share documents, and allow for multiple participants to edit the files in real time.

The company is aiming to differentiate themselves from the giant freelance marketplaces with their screening process, training program, free VA matchmaking, and tools like MyaaWorld. They also offer a certain level of management oversight you don’t get at oDesk, for example.

Of course, as it stands now, the talent pool can’t compete with the sheer breadth of freelancers available at an Elance or an oDesk.

Every new Myaa customer gets a 10 hour free trial. When I signed up for mine, I immediately got a welcome call from Daniel, who explained what the company was all about and how they have a different approach to outsourcing. I’m looking forward to using my free trial and will report back on the results soon.

Have you used Myaa? If so, please share a quick review of your experience to help others with their decision-making process.

Posted in Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Freelance Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Prialto

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

Prialto is a virtual assistant company with outsourcing centers in Guatemala and the Philippines. They have been in business since 2009 and maintain their main US sales office in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Prialto is actually an interesting case because you won’t find the term “virtual assistant” anywhere on their site or in their company literature. Instead, they prefer the term “productivity assistant,” which admittedly sounds more professional.

I’m not sure if this is in response to Siri and other “virtual assistant” smartphone apps or just an attempt to differentiate themselves from the other virtual assistant companies in the market, but for the sake of comparison, the functions of a VA and a Prialto productivity assistant are one and the same.

In fact, the company lists several tasks their assistants can do, including managing your calendar, making reservations, scheduling meetings, and generating leads for your business. Sounds a lot like a VA to me.

I had a call with Eric Taussig, the CEO, a few months ago and to be completely honest it was a really weird call. He was adamant Prialto was NOT a virtual assistant company, and that he was sitting right next to a real life human assistant in the Philippines. I explained I understood that VAs are real people, having worked with them for years, but the terminology really was a sticking point.

One thing you get with Prialto you might not get with another VA company is a little bit of hand-holding during your first month. They’ll work with you to set up some high-value processes to hand off to your new virtual assistant as part of their “productivity implementation.”

Regardless of the physical location of your assistant, they will be made available during your local business hours. The service is aimed at high-performing sales professionals and executives, and Prialto’s team-based approach allows for a dedicated assistant and a backup for holidays and sick time.

Last month while at the Elance Work Differently Summit, someone asked if I was familiar with Prialto. I indicated I’d heard of them and described my limited interaction. It appears they tried to use Elance several years ago but didn’t gain much traction on the platform and are no longer active there. (Ironically their only completed job is categorized as “virtual assistant.”)

One frustrating thing is the complete lack of pricing information available. I understand wanting to be able to control the sales process and make custom quotes for each customer, but I think at least having a ballpark estimate would be useful for potential clients and help qualify leads. I sent a note via the contact form on the Prialto site to inquire about price rates and never got a reply.

All this makes me believe the rates will be comfortably at the higher end for virtual assistants. Positioned as a premium entry — and really trying to carve out a monopoly in the “productivity assistant” market — my guess is Prialto’s pricing is well above those down in the lowly “virtual assistant” trenches.

If you like the idea of a Central American virtual assistant, it might be worthwhile to check out Uassist.me, based in El Salvador. And as you know, there is no shortage of VA companies in the Philippines.

Have you worked with Prialto? If so, please be sure to drop in a quick review below to help others with their VA search.

Posted in Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Other Virtual Assistant Companies

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

While I’m striving to build the most comprehensive virtual assistant company directory and review platform out there, there will always be certain companies I haven’t had a chance to fully research yet.

Still, visitors are searching for information on these companies so I don’t want their search to come up with the disappointing “no results found.”

Here are some of the VA companies people have searched for over the past few months and what limited information I could find. Sometimes it’s just first impressions.

If you have any experience with any of the companies below, please leave a comment to help others in their search. Thanks!

ACstant

ACstant.com is “your assistant via email.” This company has gone through a couple pivots over the years and it looks like their current service is by-invitation only at the moment.

AgentAnything

Agent Anything, or AgentAnything.com is a go-fer and errand-running service similar to TaskRabbit, but specializing in using local students.

AllDayPA

UK-based call-answering service similar to Call Ruby in the US. Virtual assistant service is also available but no price estimate is given.

Answer America

A US-based telephone answering service starting at $1 per call.

AssistantToGo

A virtual assistant company with a crazy 100% flash-based website. You don’t see that too often anymore! In business since 2001, (although the site has only been around since 2004). I believe the company is owned by Fran Esposito and based in New York. Assistant ToGo and Assistant To Go are possible variations. No relation to the owner of the Twitter handle AssistantToGo.

Azure

Azure VA Services was a small Canadian virtual assistant firm. They appear to be out of business.

Backup Men

BackupMen, or BackupMen.com is a task-based virtual assistant service similar to Fancy Hands or My Tasker. I haven’t heard anything from them since late 2011.

BestJobs.ph

An online jobs board for finding Filipino VAs, with the MAJOR downside it is against their terms to post work-from-home overseas jobs. My account was shut down without notice or warning when I went to test out the site. No idea why they have that rule! An alternative would be OnlineJobs.ph.

BPO24Hour.com

BPO 24 Hour — start-up VA company in the Philippines.

bsetc

Bsetc, as in they’ll take care of all your BS, etc, is a popular virtual assistant company based in Ottawa, Canada. Founder Erin Blaskie is a well-known entrepreneur.

Burn Your To Do List

BurnYourToDoList or BurnYourToDoList.com appears to be out of business. Rough since it sold for $85,000 not too long ago!

Call Ruby

A well-regarded virtual call-answering service with all-US agents.

DistantSupport

Distant Support, or DistantSupport.com is a virtual assistant company in the Philippines. Their website hasn’t been updated since 2010, and they offer no hint as to what kind of rates they charge (or charged, as my guess is they might be shut down).

DoMyStuff.com

DoMyStuff was a virtual and in-person errand-running service. It appears they’ve had their lunch eaten by TaskRabbit and are all but out of business.

DoNanza

DoNanza.com is a newer freelance site along the lines of Elance and oDesk.

eCyberGurus

A recruiting company in India. Their site has not been updated since 2008 so I’m not sure if they are still around or not.

Elite VA

A small VA shop owned by Maria Novey and based in Pennsylvania. No updates to her site since 2006 so not sure if she’s still in business.

Elite-Virtual Assistants

A one-woman show based in Wisconsin. The yahoo email address and stock photos and text on the about us page would be red flags for me.

Elite Virtual-Assistants

Scammy looking VA site (that’s actually offline now). Appears to be owned by a scammy-looking get-rich-quick-type Internet marketer.

eSupportGuru

eSupportGuru.com is a small virtual assistant company in India. Their website looks pretty crappy and hasn’t been updated since 2009. I got attacked by the floating chat-invite box (which was offline) and it wouldn’t close when I hit the “x”.

EVAS

EVAS could stand for Executive Virtual Assistant Services, a tiny one-woman VA company out of Yorkshire, England. Or it could reference the EVA virtual assistant app for android smartphones.

EXEC

EXEC is an on-demand house-cleaning and errand-running service. They’re based in San Francisco but hope to rapidly expand to other markets. Everything is a flat rate of $25/hr. Task Rabbit might be considered the primary competition.

FlatWorld Solutions

A legitimate outsourcing provider aimed at larger companies.

GeekyStaff

Geeky Staff or GeekyStaff.com was a Filipino VA company. Now out of business.

GhostBloggers.net

An outsourced writing service that delivers content on demand. Similar to HireWriters or TextBroker.

GlobolStaff

Globol Staff, or GlobolStaff.com, is a small outsourcing company in Singapore that specializes in SEO.

Go to Girls

Several companies are using this name or a variation such as Go2Girls or GoToGirls. There is a Denver, Colorado-based VA service from $40/hr, and also a Jacksonville, Florida service from $18/hr.

Hit Rate Solutions

Call center operation in the Philippines, that also offers virtual assistants. Pretty bare bones website, with no pricing estimates given for VA service.

HRFAX

Or HR Fax. There are several Ripoff Reports of this company being a giant scam. I would stay away.

IVAA.org

The International Virtual Assistants Association is a non-profit trade organization for virtual assistants. They offer professional education and certification services. If you want to hire from their member-base, you can submit a request for proposal on their site. Also might be searched for as IVAA or ivaa.com.

Jplayers

An mid-sized Indian outsourcing shop that does web development, design, and more. Looking through their portfolio though, I’m not loving their work.

Live2Care

Part of the Live2Sell group is a call center operation in the Philippines. The CEO, Chris Ducker, also runs Virtual Staff Finder, which might be worth a look for smaller businesses.

LiveHelpIndia

I had to test the “Get a Quote in 5 Minutes” box on the LiveHelpIndia.com website. I did get a response with 24-hours, but not within 5 minutes. That’s a tough promise to deliver on for anything that’s not automated. After that though, my subsequent emails have been ignored. Check out other India virtual assistant companies.

LRN LLC

Also doing business as LRN.biz. The content of this site is almost identical to the HRFAX site, and has received similar scam complaints. Stay away.

Maxim Liberty

Virtual bookkeeping service in India, with rates starting at $5 per hour.

MiPA

Or Mi PA. Virtual assistant company in India, appears to be out of business.

MobileWorks

A new crowdsourcing platform based in Berkeley, California. Also running Mobile Works Premium, a unique virtual assistant service. It is branded as “fair trade work,” so I’m curious to see how this company does.

My365Assistant.com

My 365 Assistant, or My365Assistant was a New York-based VA company that has gone out of business.

Out of the Box Virtual Assistant

I couldn’t find any information on this company so I can’t really say anything.

OutsourceEverything.co

Virtual assistant company gobbled up by Zirtual.

PAEveryday.com

PA Everyday or PAEveryday is a virtual assistant company in the Philippines. I was in touch with the CEO, Tim Reading, earlier this year, but after a couple emails neither him nor his team continued to reply.

RemoteJobs.ph

RemoteJobs is a job board in the Philippines that can be more effective than Craigslist in finding qualified virtual assistant candidates. The site is similar in function to OnlineJobs.ph, only it appears to be completely free to use.

Sales Rain VAs

Also listed as salesrainvas. Newer VA company in the Philippines. Nicely designed site with rates from $250 per month for 5 hrs a week, up to $850 for a full time dedicated VA.

Scripted

Scripted.com is a higher-end content creating and writing service than you’ll find at HireWriters or TextBroker.

Sourcefit

An outsourcing / staff leasing company in the Philippines. They’ve been in business since 2007 and serve the mid-size business market with professional in-office staff.

Supreme Outsourcing

A virtual assistant company in the Philippines, founded in 2011 by Louis Lautman. For full-time VAs, the pricing is pretty attractive, especially for the longer-term contracts.

Talk2Assistant

Talk2Assistant.com never responded to my request for information. Check out their flash intro for a good example of a bad example.

Task Angels

TaskAngels.net is a small virtual assistant company in the Philippines from the makers of Task Army.

TaskHire

TaskHire.com or TaskHire.ca is a Canadian errand-running service similar to TaskRabbit.

Today’s Admin

Today’s Admin is a US-based virtual assistant company that charges a flat rate of $55 an hour for their services.

Top Hat Concierge

An Atlanta-based virtual concierge service that appears to be out of business. I contacted them for more info several months ago and never got a response.

VA4Business

VA4Business.com is a virtual assistant company founded by Steve Arun. I’m not sure whether they’re targeting US or UK customers, as rates are quoted in dollars on some pages and pounds on others. Their site hasn’t been updated since 2011 so they might no longer be open for new business.

VAdirectory.net

VAdirectory is a network of virtual assistants where you can submit your VA job for proposals.

VAnetworking

A large virtual assistant networking community founded by Tawnya Sutherland in 2003. You can join as VA, and pay for premium resources to help with your virtual assistant business, or if you’re looking to hire, you can submit a request for proposal to the community of VAs. Also vanetworking.com.

Virtual Assistant Chick

Southern California virtual assistant company founded by April Sullivan. They specialize in helping real estate agents.

Virtual Assistant Forums

A popular and active forum for virtual assistants. You can also submit your request for proposal to the community to hire directly through the site.

Virtual Office SA

South Africa virtual assistant and virtual office admin company. Website could use a little love. All boilerplate content with no real USP.

Virtual Web Outsourcing

Small virtual assistant company in Davao City, Philippines. No updates since 2011 so not sure if these guys are still in operation. Also VirtualWebOutsourcing or Virtualweboutsourcing.com.

VirtualJobs.ph

Filipino job board now redirects to RemoteJobs.ph.

YourUSAVA

YourUSAVA.com is a small California-based VA company. Rates are quoted on a one-on-one basis.

Zaarly

Zaarly started out as a competitor to Task Rabbit but has pivoted to be more of a peer-to-peer marketplace for goods and services.

Zeerk

Zeerk is a Fiverr clone except the prices can range from $2 all the way up to $100.

Have you worked with any of these companies? If so, please leave a quick note down below and let others know about your experience (good or bad!). Thanks!

Posted in News

Contemporary VA

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

Contemporary VA is a (primarily) American virtual assistant company, based in Pittsburgh, PA. The company was founded in 2002 and has grown to provide remote administrative support for clients across the US, Canada, and now the UK as well.

contemporary va review ContemporaryVA (CVA) uses a diverse team of qualified work-from-home VAs to support their clients. Customers trend toward coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs, but CVA is serving a growing number offline businesses as well.

Hiring

One thing that sets the company apart is their rigorous screening process. As you might imagine, any legitimate job that allows the freedom and flexibility to work from home is in high demand.

Beyond the detailed application, prospective VAs are asked to complete a skills test and several sample tasks that might be common in their job. The company can monitor the results of these tasks, along with how long they took to complete and the tools the candidate employed.

Once hired, Contemporary VA virtual assistants are essentially in apprentice-mode for a minimum of 60 days. That means they are assisting with work behind the scenes, but aren’t yet directly interacting with clients. During this time, the new hires are receiving ongoing training and their deliverables are constantly evaluated by senior team members to ensure quality.

For prospective clients, the benefit is not being assigned to a rookie VA on her first day on the job.

Contemporary VAs also sign exclusivity agreements, meaning even if they’re part-time employees, they won’t be off on Elance or trying to get other VA clients on the side.

Service Plans

I had the opportunity to speak with Jennifer, the General Manager of CVA, and she was gracious enough to explain to me how it all worked. The company assigns VAs based the skills required and time zone proximity to the client.

ContemporaryVA has two levels of client service: Gold and Platinum.

Gold

The CVA Gold plan is a pre-paid plan with no minimums and no commitments. It is best for ad hoc projects and for customers who aren’t ready to commit to a VA on an ongoing basis. As a good intro to outsourcing, the rate for this plan is a flat $35 an hour.

Gold clients are assigned a dedicated project manager, but the actual work may be carried out by another VA, depending on availability.

Platinum

The Contemporary VA Platinum plan is an ongoing “retainer” service, where clients have a minimum of 20 hours a month worth of work to outsource. The rates for this plan range from $21 to $25 an hour, depending on how many hours a month you need.

For example, a 20-hour plan would be $500 a month ($25/hr), and a full-time VA would be $3360 a month ($21/hr). Obviously the rates are higher than what you’d find in India or the Philippines, but are quite competitive among similar US virtual assistant companies.

Platinum clients have a dedicated virtual assistant, and after 3 months, the company will even train a backup at their expense for when your primary VA is out sick or on vacation.

Delegation Education

I recently went through their free 21-day email course on how to delegate effectively. It’s super detailed but definitely worth the read if you’re new to outsourcing and working with virtual assistants.

I just signed up via the opt-in box on their homepage.

Have you worked with Contemporary VA? If so, please leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision-making process.

Posted in US Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

24/7 Virtual Assistant

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Nick Loper — 13 Comments ↓

24/7 Virtual Assistant is a personal outsourcing company with locations in Atlanta, GA, India, and the Philippines. The company has been in business since 2008, and has attracted clients all across the country and around the world.

247VirtualAssistant.com is geared toward the small business customer, with several dedicated plans starting at 30 hours a month for $299 ($10/hour) and going all the way up to full time 160 hours a month for $999 ($6.25/hour). The 30-hour plan is the most popular offering.

The advantage of these plans is a dedicated virtual assistant you can train to the specific needs of your business. If you don’t need so much time, 24/7 Virtual Assistant also sells hourly pay-as-you-go plans for $15 an hour in 5-hour increments.

You can take advantage of the services offered by 24/7 Virtual Assistant, regardless of the type of business you have or even if you just need someone to deal with your personal tasks. The services offered range from clerical and secretarial tasks, such as responding to messages or calls, to web research, customer service, human resources, and real estate services. They even do web design for just $20 an hour.

247VirtualAssistant.com Review

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code 2ni4ck7 for 10% off your first month!

The virtual assistants from 24/7 Virtual Assistant also offer services which are extremely creative and technical. These could be managing your technical calls from important clients and helping with computer related issues. You can get help from creative VAs who are able to design programs for Internet marketing campaigns. You get to train them as if they were a real employee.

You can also use these assistants as customer support staff to answer calls from potential customers. This service is offered at very affordable cost and you are not required to sign a contract. What’s even more interesting the service is offered on a month to month basis, so you can unsubscribe at any time without incurring a penalty.

Since launching this site, 24/7 has been one of the most popular companies around. The competitive rates and diverse skill-sets of the team are a major contributing factor, but the behind-the-scenes service is important too.

My main contact there has been very responsive to customer questions and concerns, even working to create custom solutions or handling some of the workload himself until a more permanent set-up can be established. I think an important measure is the speed at which customer issues are resolved, and it’s been my experience that Thomas (my contact) and his team genuinely care about delivering a great service and doing whatever they can to make it right for their clients.

Is that a guarantee? No, but you can learn more about my personal trial with 24/7 in the video above or in the comments down below. I had the opportunity to test out their 30-hour plan for a month.

Have you used 24/7 Virtual Assistant? Please share your experience below.

Posted in Dedicated Virtual Assistants, India Virtual Assistants, Low Cost Virtual Assistants, Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Employees

Why Fortune 500 Companies Need Virtual Assistants [White Paper]

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Nick Loper — 1 Comment ↓

Companies large and small are always striving for increased efficiency. In the past 20-30 years, we’ve seen unprecedented investment from Fortune 500 companies in business process outsourcing, creating leaner and more focused enterprises.

And on the other end of the spectrum, the small companies and solo entrepreneurs have embraced outsourcing as well, but on a smaller scale. Instead of building out giant call centers overseas, small businesses have been utilizing virtual assistants to help support their operation.

Earlier this year, Bryan Miles of eaHELP posed a question to me. Why have Fortune 500 companies been slow to adopt virtual assistants?

We couldn’t come to a satisfying answer off the top of our heads so we thought it was a question worth exploring.

For companies with such massive scale, there are tremendous cost savings and efficiencies to be gained by implementing a virtual assistant strategy for administrative support.

We compiled the results of our findings in a free white paper entitled “Why Fortune 500 Companies Need Virtual Assistants.”

Download the white paper HERE (no opt-in required).

Let me know what you think!

Posted in News

Virtual Assistant Trial: Efficise vs. Red Butler vs. My Tasker vs. Fancy Hands

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Nick Loper — 9 Comments ↓

Virtual Assistant Trial

As you know, I’ve been a happy Fancy Hands customer for several months now, but I wanted to put a few more virtual assistant services to the test to see how they stacked up.

Lately two start-ups had been generating a lot of positive response here on the site so I thought I would try them out myself. The first was Efficise, out of Pakistan, and the second was My Tasker, out of India. Both of these companies were founded by veteran VAs from other firms who decided to strike out on their own.

And finally, Red Butler was kind enough to offer me a trial gift membership so I could compare their service to other virtual assistant companies.

How would the American VAs compare against their overseas competition? Who would deliver the best results?

Over the course of a month, I tested these guys with a series of tasks. They featured a broad range of topics but the actual “work” being done was primarily online research and analysis, with a few phone calls sprinkled in here and there for fun.

Breakdown of the Virtual Assistant Plans

Fancy Hands – $45 for 15 tasks (50% off your first month through this link)
My Tasker – $39 for 30 tasks
Efficise – $45 for 30 tasks (30% off your first month with code NLIND30)
Red Butler – $99.99 for 30 “credits” (I’ll explain later) + Red Butler Privilege Card (20% off your first month with code VIRTUAL)

Fancy Hands gives the guideline of 15 minutes per task, but in one case spent over a half an hour on the phone without charging double.

My Tasker doesn’t really offer a time-limit on tasks but I imagine if you started to abuse the system you would be asked to upgrade to one of their professional plans. If you run out of tasks before the end of the month, extra ones can be bought at the rate of $2 each.

The Efficise guidelines suggest requests take no longer than 15-30 minutes.

Red Butler charges 1 credit for each “action” they take. For instance, ordering movie tickets and making dinner reservations would take 2 credits. The Red Butler privilege card carries a ton of perks at hotels, restaurants, and bars all around the world. It’s a cool add-on if you live in a major city; out in the San Francisco suburbs I didn’t get much use out of it.

Sign Up Process

The sign up process for each company went pretty smoothly so I just wanted to make a couple notes.

With Fancy Hands, you need to use either a Google or Facebook login to create your account. Just about everyone will already have at least one of those so it’s not a big deal unless you’re really opposed to granting 3rd party access to your accounts. They don’t see your password; it’s just a way to keep you from having to create a separate Fancy Hands account.

My Tasker uses PayPal for their recurring billing, which is pretty pain-free.

Efficise uses the Plimus payment processing system, an up-and-coming competitor to PayPal. If you don’t already have a Plimus account, you’ll have to create one to sign-up. I didn’t and it was still quick and easy. One thing I thought was weird was the tax Efficise added to the subscription fee. At less than $3 it wasn’t a huge deal, but normally VA companies either aren’t charging any tax or they’re baking it into the price.

With Red Butler they created the account for me so I can’t really comment on the sign-up process. One nice touch was I got a welcome call from Amber, their Director of Experience. The downside? It went to voicemail because she called from a blocked number. Can’t imagine many of their too-busy clients make a habit of picking up unrecognized numbers.

Submitting Tasks

Whew, I’m in! And now the fun part can start.

With Fancy Hands, you can submit tasks through their online dashboard, via email or phone, and now through their new mobile app.

The Fancy Hands Dashboard

For My Tasker, you can submit tasks through their online interface or via email or phone. I primarily used email so I didn’t have to keep logging into their website. Similarly, Efficise accepts requests online, through email, or over Skype. Rumor has it phone support is coming soon.

Efficise member dashboard

Red Butler users can beckon their VA by email, phone, mobile app, or the web dashboard. These guys win the design contest with their super-slick new website.

Red Butler member dashboard

After you submit a task, you’ll get an email confirmation they received it from every company except Efficise.

Virtual Assistant Performance

My basic methodology was to submit the same task to all 4 companies and see who came back with the best results. Most tasks were submitted during US business hours, which put Efficise and My Tasker at an immediate disadvantage because those requests fell on their night-shift crews.

I tried to think of a variety of tasks that would test the VAs in different ways. See if they could understand my idioms and problem solve a bit, you know.

I gave each response a letter grade A through F. Yes, completely subjective but I wasn’t sure how better to normalize the data set I was collecting. In some instances the grades were on something of a “curve” — meaning if I thought the response was good, but then another one came in and blew it out of the water, the initial one probably got downgraded.

One thing I was looking for was some insight and analysis beyond just Googling something. Anybody can do that. The best responses were the ones that took the time to dig a little deeper and provide some personal recommendations.

To view the complete list of tasks I submitted, along with the response times, grades, and some commentary, please click here.

–>> VA Smackdown Trial – Detailed task list and performance results <<–

Otherwise, I’ll continue with my summary.

The company I was most pleasantly surprised by was My Tasker. Out of 15 tasks, they scored 7 A’s and 5 B’s, the best result of all the virtual assistant companies.

My Tasker Virtual Assistant Quality Performance

Kudos to Ronny and the team at My Tasker for delivering the goods, even in the middle of the night India time and for a probably too-cheap price-point.

Fancy Hands also scored well, earning 9 A’s and B’s out of only 12 tasks. (I was running low on Fancy Hands tasks so they didn’t get to participate on every one!) In general, I’ve found their assistants willing to go above and beyond for some of the more complex jobs, but every now and then you get the idea they just want to churn through the tasks as fast as possible.

And who can blame them? That’s how they get paid.

Fancy Hands Quality Performance

Occasionally you get the impression it’s just a glorified “let me Google that for you” service, which is not my idea of a value add. Most of the time, very good though. I’m a fan.

Red Butler was unique in that they made every effort NOT to just drop in links from the search results they found, at least not without some personal explanation and analysis. Their responses were generally very detailed and useful, and they ended up tying My Tasker with 7 A-grades.

Red Butler quality performance

One thing that set Red Butler apart was reading beyond the question itself. For example, when I asked about dividend investing, they offered to connect me with a qualified financial planner. When I talked about FHA loans, it was congratulations on the decision to buy a house. I think that extra understanding of the WHY behind the query was really useful and it definitely showed in their responses.

One downside to Red Butler that diminishes the value somewhat is the credit system they use to charge tasks. One relatively simple task I sent was charged 7 credits when the other companies only deducted one. Perhaps not a deal breaker but just something to be aware of, especially when combined with their premium price point.

Finally, Efficise did well on certain tasks but seemed to struggle with understanding and context on others. In general the performance was OK, but more inconsistent than the other companies.

Efficise quality performance

Several of their responses were very short, containing just a few links to the answer. I would have liked to see a little more in-depth thought come through in their answers. I’m asking for help because I don’t have time to read through a bunch of links; I just want the summary version or a recommended action to take.

Response Time

In terms of response time, Fancy Hands’ distributed virtual assistant model proved to be the winner, followed by Red Butler, My Tasker, and Efficise. Their average response time was just over 2 hours. (I removed outliers for this chart.)

Virtual assistant response time

My Tasker promises to have a response to you in 4-8 hours and they did well keeping within those limits. I think the only time they went over was on the weekend and the task required making calls during US business hours. My Tasker also allows you to double down (get charged 2 tasks) and set a task to “urgent” for a response within 2 hours.

Other Notes

The service I tested was for team-based task support. My Tasker, Efficise, and Red Butler all offer dedicated virtual assistant packages at higher price points. However, I was curious to see just how “un-dedicated” these low-priced options were.

For the 15 tasks, I was helped by 7 different My Tasker VAs, 4 different Efficise VAs, and 4 different Red Butler VAs. In comparison, I had a unique Fancy Hands VA 11 times out of 12.

If it matters to you, many of the My Tasker VAs use Westernized names, like Tom, Jay, or Daniel, rather than their real Indian names. Remember Rent a Smile and their fake celebrity / superhero names?

Efficise and Red Butler signed their emails with their full names which I always think is a nice professional touch. With Fancy Hands, you get a first name and a last initial.

Next Steps

You made it this far, now what? Here are the profile page links for the different companies:

Fancy Hands - $45 for 15 tasks (50% off your first month through this link)
My Tasker - $39 for 30 tasks
Efficise - $45 for 30 tasks (30% off your first month with code NLIND30)
Red Butler - $99.99 for 30 credits + Red Butler Privilege Card (20% off your first month with code VIRTUAL)

There you’ll find a more detailed write-up for each service, reviews from real customers, and any relevant sign-up discounts offered through Virtual Assistant Assistant.

Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions about this trial or about virtual assistants in general, please let me know.

Posted in News

Fancy Hands

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Nick Loper — 15 Comments ↓

Fancy Hands is a New York-based virtual assistant company that was founded in 2010. In itself, it’s not a revolutionary business model, but what sets Fancy Hands apart from its low priced outsourcing competition is its use of US-based, native-English speaking assistants. fancy hands review For that, they’re gaining a lot of momentum and exposure.

Customers primarily use Fancy Hands as a time-saving tool for small one-time tasks, like restaurant reservations, online research, and quick event planning. You can submit tasks via the web interface, email, or phone, and rumor has it a mobile app is coming soon.

Initially Fancy Hands wasn’t touching any tasks that involved making purchases online, but they’ve added the capability now to make purchases on your behalf up to $100. For these transactions, your credit card details stay hidden from the VA. They use a company card, and then just bill the card you have on file for your membership for the amount of the purchase.

Another cool feature is that adding events to your Google Calendar is free.

For just $45 a month you can outsource up to 15 tasks, and 25 15-minute tasks is just $65 a month. A smaller 5-task plan is $25 a month, and you can save 25% on all plans by pre-paying for a year in advance. The pre-pay option is a great deal but of course is a little risky for first-time outsourcers.

Fancy Hands Review

Virtual Assistant Assistant Referral Bonus: If you want to try Fancy Hands, get 50% off your first month when you sign-up through this link.

I tested Fancy Hands against a few of their competitors, both in the US and overseas. The trial pitted them against Red Butler, Efficise, and My Tasker. Please click here to read the full review of my test.

Without a dedicated virtual assistant option, Fancy Hands is aimed at a personal-use audience rather than a business-use audience. Unless of course your business requires lots of online research done in 15 minute increments, for example. Longer, time-intensive tasks like writing articles or ongoing business process tasks aren’t allowed. That said, I’ve had them do the initial baseline research for writing projects.

The company recently introduced a TeamWork platform, that gives Fancy Hands access to your entire team. For employers, it’s a nice perk to offer and allows your workers to be more productive on the job. The service is integrated with the web interface, email, phone, and Basecamp project management software.

Once you create your account, you’ll see a dashboard that keeps track of your requests and some other stats on profile. Fancy Hands has spent over 8 hours on the phone for me!

fancy hands dashboard may

I’m a pretty happy camper to have not had to make those 138 calls myself.

Another feature added is the ability to use Fancy Hands to set up your conference calls. It’s easy and included in your subscription (only charges one task), which probably amounts to less than some other conference-calling services may charge.

The Fancy Hands App

fancy hands app In March 2013, Fancy Hands launched their mobile app. It has a very slick user interface with nearly all the functionality of their browser-based site.

You can check on view your usage statistics, track existing requests, and submit new ones via text or voice. Very cool. It also allows you to take pictures that might be helpful to your VA or choose an existing photo from your library.

fancy hands app screenshot

In the Cloud

Fancy Hands virtual assistants are “in the cloud” – a largely part-time, on-demand, and remote workforce that handles tasks as they come in. The unique set-up has attracted a lot of positive press during its first year in business, including articles in Fast Company, Slate, and Forbes. Users email their requests to a common account and a Fancy Hands assistant tackles it and follows up.

One advantage of this team-based approach is 24/7/365 coverage for your requests, whereas a “real” would probably need to take some time off or sleep every now and then.

However, to give off the appearance of a dedicated assistant, you can give this team of VAs a real name. The feature is called Personal Touch, and you can set up a dedicated email account to give correspondents the illusion that you have a dedicated personal assistant.

For instance, Fancy Hands founder Ted Roden uses the name Lucille Bluth — as in “I’ll have my assistant Lucille will set up the meeting.” And regardless of which Fancy Hands VA assumes the task, the meeting request will appear to come from Lucille.

Hmm… what clever name should I use for my assistant?

If you have any experience with Fancy Hands, please share it below!

Posted in Low Cost Virtual Assistants, Task-Based Virtual Assistants, US Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Elance Work Differently Summit

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Nick Loper — 9 Comments ↓

Last night I had the chance to attend the first annual Elance Work Differently Summit, held at their corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.

As an Elance user and outsourcing nerd, I was excited for the opportunity to visit “the mothership.”

Elance work differently summit

Networking Time

The evening began with open networking time and attendees were able to mingle with each other and with Elance employees. I met some interesting and motivated entrepreneurs, each with their own unique take on the Elance system.

There was also an open bar and a selection of hors d’oeuvres to keep people from getting too hungry or thirsty.

CEO Presentation

The scheduled program opened with remarks from Elance CEO Fabio Rosati. He discussed the tremendous growth of the platform and where they see the future of online work going. (up!)

Despite the recent headlines at Yahoo on banning telecommuting, the global trend is moving toward decentralized workforces and remote teams.

In terms of scale, he mentioned that Elance is on pace to fill over a million jobs this year and process more than $250 million in contractor payments.

Elance CEO Fabio Rosati Presenting

Freelancer Presentation

A successful freelance project manager named Corrina told her story about getting started with Elance and the happier life she’s been able to build since going into business for herself.

It was pretty inspirational to hear about the potential for Elance connections to really make such positive changes in people’s lives.

Platform Features and Enhancements

Two members of the Elance team presented on some improved functionality of the platform and answered questions from the audience. Specifically they talked about:

Pre-populated job descriptions
Inviting pre-qualified contractors to bid your job
A “portfolio” view that is now in Beta
Folder options for organizing and managing your account

Me in front of the big Elance sign.

Elance Success Panel

Finally, 3 Elance power users held a lively panel discussion on how they’ve used the system to transform their businesses. The consensus was (not surprising for an Elance-sponsored event) that they were able to delivery higher quality results faster and at a lower cost than ever was possible before.

The panelists also discussed feedback on the platform, bidding and hiring strategies, and what to do when things go south.

My favorite part was when one of the panelists openly advocated for virtual assistants, proclaiming everyone needs one, and it’s an amazing feeling to just “let go.” (paraphrasing)

Takeaways

All in all I was happy I made the trip, and it definitely got me thinking about how I can better utilize the global talent pool available on the site.

Where you there? What did you think?

If you want to learn more about the company, please check out our Elance page for more information and user reviews.

A Giveaway

I have a free paperback copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Elance” to give away. Leave a comment letting me know a funny VA story or anything else outsourcing-related and I’ll pick a winner by April 3rd*.

*Sorry, I can only ship to US addresses.

Posted in News

Win a Free VA for a Month ($1000 value!)

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

I have an exciting opportunity to share today — the chance to win a FREE full-time VA for a month, courtesy of Hire in the Philippines.

You can have your VA help you grow your business by:

- Posting your business to directories
- Create, manage and update your website through WordPress
- Create custom graphics through Adobe Photoshop
- Manage your Email Marketing Campaign
- Manage Your Social Media
- Create Powerpoint Presentations, Excel Spreadsheets, and Word Documents.
- Perform Keyword Research and write articles for your blog and article directories
- And so much more!

Here is all you have to do to qualify:

1. Like the Hire in the Philippines Facebook page.
2. Like, comment, and share the above video promoting the “Win Your FREE VA” with your friends and family.
3. Check back on May 1st to see whether or not you won!

That’s it!

You could be working with your very own VA, managed and supervised for maximum productivity, absolutely free.

No contracts.

No long term commitments.

Posted in News

Uassist.ME

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Nick Loper — 22 Comments ↓

Uassist.ME is a virtual assistant company with offices in Miami and El Salvador. The company was founded in 2009 with the idea of providing remote administrative services to clients in the US and around the world. uassist.me review

Because of their location and timezone – El Salvador is only a 2 hour flight from the US and operates on Central Standard Time – Uassist.ME considers themselves “nearshoring” more than “offshoring.”

The company has earned a number of accolades in its relatively short history. In 2012, co-founders Alfredo Atanacio and Rodolfo Schildknecht were named to Inc. Magazine’s 30 Under 30 List, which honors “America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs.”

Their standard plan is $699 for a full-time shared assistant. This means you have a dedicated contact who is there during your business hours, 40 hours a week, but they also report to one or more other clients as well.

The advantage is you have a dedicated resource “on call”, without the full time salary. If you have enough work to keep your virtual assistant busy full-time, Uassist.ME offers full-time dedicated service for $1400 a month.

A smaller, 20-hour per month plan is available for $250. In this case, your shared assistant would be available all day during US East Coast business hours but would only be able to spend an hour or two on your tasks. It’s a great entry-level outsourcing plan because you still get a dedicated point of contact who’s “on call” during the day, without having to front the full or half-time salary.

Uassist.ME service is billed month-to-month, with no long-term contracts.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: mention referral code NL01 to get 10% off your first month.

Uassist.ME Review:

If interested, please mention referral code NL01 to get 10% off your first month.

I spoke with Joselin at Uassist.ME, who helped walk me through the company’s services. I found her to be professional, friendly, and energetic, with excellent English skills. She explained that her Uassist.ME co-workers are all fluent English speakers with neutral American accents because of their proximity to the US and familiarity with the culture. In fact, El Salvador uses the US Dollar as their official currency.

The company specializes in remote administrative services, but is expanding into SEO and social media marketing services, as well as telemarketing and cold calling. Uassist.ME has attracted clients in the US and Canada, and even India, the proud leader of virtual assistant outsourcing.

Uassist.ME has developed an expertise in real estate services and claims a number of brokers and agents as clients. Beyond that, their flexible and custom solutions allow customers to ramp up teams of multiple VAs quickly if needed.

If you have worked with Uassist.ME, please share your experience using the comment form and star-ratings below.

Posted in Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Low Cost Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Employees

How to Build an Automated Marketing Machine with a Virtual Assistant

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Chris Kilbourn — 1 Comment ↓

This is a guest post from Chris Kilbourn. Chris is an innovative entrepreneur who is the founder of TaskBullet, a virtual assistant company in the Philippines, and TOFU Marketing, a full service Internet marketing firm.

When it comes to marketing your business there are a million and one things that need your attention. How could any business owner get the time to do it all?

The secret: utilizing a virtual assistant!

You need to focus on the important stuff. So, there’s no better way to do it than hiring a virtual assistant to help you scale your business.

Our customers with TaskBullet use these techniques frequently, and you can too!

Just follow the 5 marketing tasks below to help you build and automate your marketing machine.

Scheduling Your Social Media Posts for the Week

Many of your best social media postings will be real-time responses to customers, colleagues or events; however, a virtual assistant can easily schedule the postings of your basic messages in advance. By doing this you ensure you won’t miss opportunities each day to keep your social community engaged.

There are several social media tools that enable the scheduling of posts for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Buffer and Hootsuite are probably the two most popular because they are so easy to use.

bufferapp

Buffer’s scheduling interface allows you to select the days and times you want a post to go live.

To use a virtual assistant for this task you simply need to provide him or her with:

Log in details for your social media accounts
Pre-written messages, links and images for your posts
A basic schedule for when to take the posts live

For example, you might tell your virtual assistant that you want to schedule one Facebook post each day at 3pm Eastern Time while scheduling Twitter posts to go out at the top of the hour each hour between 8am and 6pm Eastern Time. Your assistant can then go through your document with pre-written messages and queue them up.

Your virtual assistant can also help you find relevant links to share if you don’t have the time for that.

Prepping Your Weekly or Monthly Email Newsletter

Writing and sending a weekly or monthly e-newsletter takes up a lot of time. Free up some bandwidth by hiring a virtual assistant to take care of the basic prep work for you.

Your virtual assistant can set up your email campaign so that it goes to the appropriate list, assign the correct template to each campaign, add Google Analytics tracking code and even set up the campaign type (a/b test, basic, etc.) for you.

mailchimp dashboard

A virtual assistant can fill in the basic information for your email newsletter.

With all of that prep work completed in advance, all you need to do is go in and add in your copy, images and links before shooting off a test!

Adding Alt Tags to All Images on Your Website

Most SEO tactics require a hands-on approach from someone very knowledgeable in search marketing. Old school (scalable) techniques like social bookmarking, directory submissions, and comment spam no longer work because of Google’s Penguin and Panda updates. In fact, they can likely damage your site’s SEO if Google identifies it.

However, there is a basic task that your virtual assistant can help you with: adding ALT tags to all of your images.

An ALT tag is a small line of code that helps a search engine crawl and index an image.

It can be hand coded into a site like this:

(You can see that the ALT text of “Smiley Face” describes the image smiley.gif and goes within the “img src” tag.)

Or, if you use WordPress there is a place to add ALT text for each image in the editor:

img alt text wordpress

Your virtual assistant can be tasked with adding ALT text to each image on your website.

When possible, you should use keyword friendly phrases in the ALT text while still accurately describing the image. To have your virtual assistant help with this task you will want to provide him or her with a list of your top keywords.

If you have never added any ALT tags to your website, you’ll want your virtual assistant to go through the entire site and add them in to each image. If you’ve been doing this all along, you can simply have your assistant add ALT text to each new image added for you. This is particularly helpful if you blog often and use multiple images in each post.

When considering other SEO tasks to have your virtual assistant help with, it’s important to note that social bookmarking, blog commenting and directory submissions no longer work to give your rankings a boost. Certainly commenting and social bookmarking can help you get found by your target audience, but do not count on them as SEO tactics.

Routing Qualified Leads to the Appropriate Sales Rep

It’s important to get qualified leads to the appropriate sales rep as soon as possible. If you don’t have expensive software that can help you automate this task, having a virtual assistant can be very useful.

For example, if you have a form on your website used for lead generation you may also have certain questions in the form that help determine if a lead is qualified or not.

Consider this scenario: you are a marketing consultant and someone fills out a form on your site that says she is interested in hiring a consultant within one month. You probably want to get in touch with her faster than a lead that says he is going to hire someone within the next six months because the one month lead at this time is more qualified.

Similarly, if all your lead gen form asks for is name and basic contact information and each lead needs to go to a certain sales person, your virtual assistant can help with the sorting.

For example if all leads with a last name that begins with A-L should go to Sales Rep 1 while leads with last names that begin with M-Z should go to Sales Rep 2, your virtual assistant can help sort and send the incoming leads to the correct person.

Putting Together a Weekly or Monthly Analytics Report

Your analytics software, whether it is Google Analytics or something else, holds a lot of information. Depending on your role within a company, the information you find most important will vary.

A virtual assistant can put together a daily, weekly or monthly report for you that focuses on just the information and trends that you find most important.

For example, if you are the owner of a business and have a marketing person or team under you, it is likely that you don’t need to see the in-the-weeds data on the conversion rate of each specific organic keyword coming in. Instead you may want to see a chart that shows the top 10 keywords alongside their bounce rate, average time on site and conversion rate. Or you may just want to see overall trends by month for increased organic traffic.

analytics

A virtual assistant can pull together analytical data into easy-to-read charts for you.

Your virtual assistant can put together a report template and fill in the relevant data you request for each day/week/month. This allows you to optimize your time spent on reviewing analytics rather than pulling the reports yourself.

Other Tasks a Virtual Assistant Can Help With

The above list of marketing tasks a virtual assistant can help with is certainly not comprehensive. And of course a virtual assistant can help with many things outside the realm of marketing.

Whether you don’t have the time for marketing, or just need some extra hands to help you build a marketing machine, hiring a virtual assistant is a wise choice to scale your efforts.

Your Thoughts

What types of tasks do you outsource to your virtual assistants?

Can you think of any that we could add to this list?

We’d love to hear from you! Just let us know in the comments below.

Posted in Uncategorized

Outsource IT Book Review

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

If you are tasked with managing overseas outsourcing in any capacity, you owe it to yourself to read Nick Krym’s new book, Outsource It!: A No-Holds-Barred Look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Offshoring Tech Projects.

Your boss will thank you.

This is the book I wish I’d written, but I don’t have anywhere near the depth or breadth of experience to pull it off. The subject matter centers on outsourcing information technology functions in large corporations, both on one-time projects and long-term ongoing engagements.

However, I found the overarching themes of the book to be applicable far beyond the strict scope of the title. Much of the content could be easily applied to searching for contractors in other areas of work as well.

If you’re a solo entrepreneur looking for a virtual assistant or freelance web developer, I think this book will generally be too detailed for you, but I still gleaned some valuable takeaways. The author talks about multi-million dollar contracts and how to best structure them for success.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the discussion about the technical talent levels at the various outsourcing vendors. Nick makes the point that top-tier talent gets scooped up by global powerhouses — household names like Google or Microsoft, and second-tier talent happily works for any number of multinational corporations that may operation locally. In many parts of the world, that leaves only those with 3rd-rate skills to work for the outsourcing companies.

I’m not sure if the outsourcing jobs aren’t as well paid, aren’t as glamorous, or just don’t have the career growth opportunities, but it’s definitely something to be aware of when considering a technical project.

Nick debunks myths about the cost savings achieved with outsourcing, and explains that in some cases the reduced productivity of overseas staff can erase any potential savings.

When you read the book, you’ll immediately recognize you’re dealing with a seasoned veteran of negotiating high-stakes outsourcing contracts. Indeed, Nick Krym has more than 25 years in the business and also runs a website called PragmaticOutsourcing.com.

For those in a similar organizational role, you’ll get a kick out of some of the personal anecdotes, culture clashes, and “lost in translation” stories included. Beyond that of course, you’ll find great value in the lists of questions to ask vendors, how to interview the actual workers, and the objective approach to comparing all your options.

In fact, building some sort of empirical comparison tool like Nick suggests would be helpful even in sorting through various freelance candidates on oDesk, for example.

Outsource It! is well-written from years of first-hand personal experience and walks the reader step-by-step through the outsourcing process. It covers everything from vendor selection, contract negotiation, communication, and minimizing your risks.

There are tons of pitfalls to avoid with outsourcing, but the benefits generally outweigh the negatives, especially with this useful “instruction manual” in hand.

The author was kind enough to give me a copy to review on this site. This write-up and all opinions in it are my own.

Posted in Uncategorized

Worldwide101

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Nick Loper — 8 Comments ↓

Worldwide101 is an international virtual assistant company with clients in USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and more. The team is based around the world, with team members in the USA, Canada and throughout Europe.

Founded in 2009, Worldwide101 focuses on providing virtual professional services to small and growing businesses, with a specialty in multilingual services.

All clients have a dedicated team member assigned to them (typically for admin support, customer service, or project management), as well as access to a broader team when additional services are needed such as web development, design, book-keeping etc.

Background

Founder of Worldwide101, Sandra Lewis, explains “Our approach is very personalized, carefully matching team members with clients based on skills and personality. The team member assigned learns the client’s business and becomes an integral part of their operations.”

“We have listened carefully to clients over the years and assembled a team with the variety of skills that clients need as they grow their business. The experience for clients is that we become an extension of their business. Why should a client have to find an assistant, and then find a web developer, and then find a book keeper – the time it takes to find competent, reliable people when you are already full-on is prohibitive. Instead, with Worldwide101 clients have immediate access to a team of tried and tested professionals with all the skills they need, when they need them.”

One of the things that many business owners wonder is how they can find people to work for them that are as committed to the success of their business as they are. People that are reliable and diligent, people that care, people with skills that are willing to go the extra mile.

Worldwide101 has a simple premise. They only recruit people that are passionate about doing a good job, and passionate about working from home– people that share the belief in going the extra mile in order to retain that privilege.

Sandra explains: “We recruit people that have an innate sense of service, and we find that the motivation of continuing to work virtually from home, translates into team members that shine. At Worldwide101 ‘your success is our success’ is not a cliché. It’s true and we live by it. Worldwide101 has the capacity to grow with your business, and respond to fluctuations in your staffing needs.”

Services

Worldwide101’s vision is to be the “go-to-company” for reliable, quality virtual support of all kinds. Many of their clients originally sign on for multilingual admin support or customer service. Indeed, the company specializes in providing businesses with multilingual support with native speakers (French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, etc.).

Beyond that, they offer support in a complete range of services. It’s a relief for many clients to know they have a trusted and responsive company they can call on for web development, design, marketing, copywriting, book-keeping etc.

Exclusive Offer: Mention referral code VAA for 10% off your first invoice.

Clients

The clientele of Worldwide 101 is generally more business-focused, although support is offered to individuals that need an ongoing assistant or need support for a ‘more involved’ project. For example, the company often works with people who are relocating to another country and need support with research and making complex arrangements in another language.

Customers are always assigned a dedicated team member to work with on an ongoing basis, as well as training a backup in case of illness, etc. This ensures continuity and provides a level of care and reliability for customers.

The average customer signs on for around 15-20 hours a week, but a wide range of customizable options are available.

Cost

In terms of pricing, Worldwide101 bills hourly with rates starting at $20/hr and increasing for more specialized services such as development and design. Clients are billed based on time used, with no commitment required, and no retainers. Discounts may be available for long-term engagements.

Exclusive Offer: Mention referral code VAA for 10% off your first invoice.

And again, per Sandra, the 3 areas that set Worldwide101 apart from the competition:

Our people – reliability and quality is EVERYTHING. We recruit people that have an outstanding professional background and a great attitude – people that have made the transition from a corporate career to working from home, and who bring a wealth of training and experience with them. Clients get the best of both worlds – a team member with extensive experience, available to them when they need it.
A personal service. We really get to know our clients and assign an assistant that will be a perfect match. We stay attuned to clients needs so that we can grow with them, and are flexible enough to adjust as needed. Need a service that we don’t currently offer? No problem, we’ll add it for you.
Many providers offer either a team-based service, or a dedicated service. We offer a hybrid model where clients can have a dedicated assistant and take advantage of an extended team for additional services.

Have you worked with Worldwide101? If so, please take a moment to share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Posted in Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Employees

iMysecy

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

iMysecy is an around-the-clock virtual assistant service based in India. The company was founded in 2009 by a group of entrepreneurs from the United States, England, and India. The sales office is in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. I’m thinking the name is like “i – my – secretary” — but I could be way off.

According to their website, the founders of iMysecy are engineering graduates from the best Ivy League universities as well as holders of MBA’s from the “top 5 B-schools on the planet.” However, it looks like they want to remain anonymous because no names are listed.

Service wise, iMysecy runs a unique hybrid model of dedicated assistance and team-based support. You do get assigned a dedicated point of contact, but the actual work may be completed by someone else on their team or a qualified freelancer, depending on the expertise required.

Commonly outsourced tasks range from content creation to all aspects of administration, the latest in technological issues, and various forms of marketing and even accounting.

iMysecy is quite affordable, offering up five different pricing plans that can suit you, regardless of what your needs and budget are. They are keenly aware of the fact that many folks in the initial phase of their endeavors cannot afford to break the bank when seeking out virtual assistance services.

You can get your feet wet with a Pay As You Go plan at a rate of $8 an hour. Then there are the Silver Plan at $49 monthly in a 7 hour pack, Gold at $99 for 15 hours, Platinum at $149 monthly for 25 hours and lastly the Super Saver, which will get you 35 hours for a very affordable $199 (less than $6 an hour).

Hours don’t roll over month-to-month.

As you can see, there is something for everybody, regardless of their budget. The Pay-As-You-Go plan might be a good way to start out so you can see if their service meets your expectations. At the time of this writing, no free trial is available.

The primary targets of iMysecy are small to medium sized businesses worldwide. Some clients are also individuals who find they are too busy with other demands and need to strike some kind of balance. This is especially important as many entrepreneurs, especially when first starting out, experience some form of burnout and sometimes strife in their personal life as well.

Some things that really stand out about iMysecy are that they have experts from different cultural backgrounds, as well as the unique team-based way tasks may be assigned.

The disappointing thing was that someone from the company attempted to post spam comments on this site promoting the business. Poor form!

Among other virtual assistant companies in India, you might consider My Tasker or VMG BPO.

Have you worked with iMySecy? If so, please take a minute to share a quick review of your experience below and help others with their decision.

Posted in India Virtual Assistants

TaskUs

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

TaskUs is a “boutique” outsourcing company in the Philippines, with a sales office in Los Angeles. The company has grown from 5 employees in 2008, to over 400 today, all working out of a dedicated office space in Manila.

The story goes that co-founders Bryce Maddock and Jaspar Weir tested virtual staff from several countries around the world before concluding that workers from the Philippines were the best. Impressed by the passion and high level of service, they decided to set up shop for their new company there.

TaskUs is aimed at mid-sized companies looking to leverage the cost benefits of outsourcing. The primary clients are start-ups, tech companies, and ecommerce stores.

TaskUs allows firms to scale up rapidly, bringing on dedicated teams of workers in a short time, who embed themselves in your company’s culture like virtual employees. The focus is skilled computer-based work, like photo-editing or product feed management, but outsourced team members can also perform customer support functions, data verification, and even content creation.

TaskUs Intro Video:

This made laugh.

The company will bid on project-based work, but the majority of clients opt for full-time workers on a long-term engagement.

The facility in the Philippines is staffed with on-site management and company directors, so you know your employees are being kept accountable. And unlike the home-based VAs who may disappear for days on end when there’s a power outage, TaskUs has backup generators and transportation in place so your business stays online.

When I spoke with TaskUs, I couldn’t nail down a price range for their services, only that their rates vary by the skills you require and the number of employees you need. I interpreted that as if you’re looking for the absolute bargain basement virtual employee, this is not the place. But then, the $2.50/hr people you might find on oDesk often come with hidden costs as well.

Ultimately the value comes from getting consistent quality work done at an affordable price, and not having to deal with the headaches of the hiring process yourself.

Have you worked with TaskUs? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below and help others with their decision.

Posted in Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees

3 Ways to Make Your Commute More Productive

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

The most efficient commute is no commute at all, but unfortunately that is not the reality for most people. In fact, a 2012 Ipsos study found that while telecommuting is on the rise, more than 90% of global employees have to physically go into work at least some of the time.

In the U.S., the average commute is 25 minutes one way (2011 Census Report). That means we have a solid 50 minutes a day worth of time to work with – time I believe is often wasted.

If you commute every day, that’s more than 4 hours a week and more than 2 full work days a month. The best part about it is it’s “free” time – you don’t have to sacrifice any other activities, and a few small habits can yield great results in your overall wellbeing.

Here are three activities you can do to utilize your commute time effectively, whether you’re driving yourself or taking public transportation.

Breathe

You don’t need to go to a yoga studio to do breathing exercises, and proper breathing has been linked to a number of physical and mental benefits.

Breathing deeply increases oxygen intake, which aids your immune system, improves brain function, and may even help burn excess fat.

Deep, slow breaths help expel toxins from your body and release tension.

It can be a meditative exercise as well; to help clear your mind and get you ready to face the day, or relax on the way home.

So what do you do?

Inhale slowly through your nose. Try and inhale for 5 seconds. Feel your stomach and chest expand.
Hold for 3 seconds at full capacity.
Exhale slowly while counting to 5. Feels good, doesn’t it?
Repeat for 5-10 minutes during both your morning and evening commute.

Work the Core

Just because you’re sitting on a bus or behind the wheel of a car doesn’t mean you can’t exercise.

What you’ll do is squeeze your stomach muscles and obliques and hold them in a contracted position. Hold this “flex” for a predetermined amount of time, say until the clock changes to the next minute, or for the duration of one song on the radio.

Then take the next minute or song off, and repeat.

A strong core is critical to your physical health and general athleticism, and this is a great way to work on your strength without going to the gym. The trick is you have to provide all the resistance in this exercise, so it all depends on how hard you squeeze and how long you hold it.

Bonus points if you can do this on the subway without looking constipated!

Learn

The late great Zig Ziglar called drive time “Automobile University” for a reason. You can choose to fill your ears with dozens of different entertainment options, but no amount of music or talk radio will do much to advance your goals.

Instead, download a podcast from iTunes. There are hundreds of amazing free shows. Just search any topic you’re interested in (productivity, for example) and prepare to have your world rocked.

Or, check out the audio books section at your local library website and download that book you’ve been meaning to read for the last 2 years.

Your commute time is the perfect opportunity to further your informal, pragmatic education.

Bringing It All Together

Let’s end the days of brainless autopilot commutes.

Let’s turn this necessary evil into a conscious time of self-awareness, a time to strengthen our bodies and our minds.

Posted in Uncategorized

HiretheWorld

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

HiretheWorld is a crowdsourced design marketplace. The company was founded in 2009 in Vancouver BC, and has hosted more than 75,000 design contests.

I think the crowdsourcing model is particularly useful for graphic design projects. You can tap into a wide network of visions and ideas, rather than being tied down to one designer or freelancer.

HiretheWorld specializes in logo designs, website designs, and book covers, but can run a contest for anything graphic design-related.

The way it works is you fill in a brief questionnaire about what you’re looking for in your design, and then you start to collect submissions from all over the world. HiretheWorld boasts a truly global network of designers, with active representatives from more than 130 countries.

That broad range of perspectives can help yield unique and thoughtful designs. The average HiretheWorld design contest attracts over 100 entries.

After you’ve reviewed all the entries, you get to pick the winner and the designer gets paid. If you don’t like any of them, you don’t have to pay; the company has a risk-free money back guarantee.

HiretheWorld Intro Video:

Logo contests start at $265, which is a little less than market-leader 99designs. In general, the more you pay, the more entries you’ll get and the higher caliber of designers you’ll attract. And if I was a betting man, I would wager that many of the designers active on 99designs and similar sites are also active here.

One alternative for cheap logo design is Logo Garden.

Web design contests start at $665. For me, I might look at some premium WordPress themes before plunking down that kind of cash. Plus, that’s just for the design, not any of the html or functional coding.

Authors can get a professional book cover designed from $365. Again, and maybe this is me being cheap, but I’m pretty happy with the book cover I had made on Fiverr.

Before you sign up, take a look through the HiretheWorld design gallery to get a feel for the kind of work their designers are producing.

Have you tried HiretheWorld for graphic design work? If so, please share a quick review below to help others with their decision.

Posted in Project-Based Virtual Assistants

HireWriters

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

HireWriters.com is an on-demand content creation service. The company began in 2012 as sort of an article marketplace, linking those who needed content with writers from around the world.

hirewriters review I was lured in by the low prices ($5 for a 700 word article), but should have known better. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. That price is for the lowest quality tier, meaning it will probably be illegible to most of your website visitors.

Still, the HireWriters rates are pretty affordable, all things considered. A 500 word article from a “Skilled” writer is just $8.25. Where things get more expensive is when you want to jump to the next tier, “Expert.” A 500 word article from an “Expert” writer is $19.

Skilled writers are defined as those who have completed at least 7 jobs and earned a feedback rating of at least 4.1 in the HireWriters system. Expert writers have completed 12 jobs with a 4.6 rating or higher.

HireWriters Intro Video:

I tested out a couple articles using the HireWriters system. I made the minimum required $10 deposit, and was pleasantly surprised to find it earned a 25% bonus! So if you really need a lot of content written, it would make sense to make a bigger initial deposit to maximize the bonus.

I had two 300+ word articles written by “Skilled” writers for $5.50 apiece. Both were tackled by the same author, and neither were amazing.

The writer struggled to follow the directions and examples I gave them, and failed to answer all the questions I said the articles should address.

I specifically asked for neutral, news-style, articles (who, what, where, when, why), but got back a lot of generic fluff content that didn’t really deliver. Maybe this is me being cynical, but if felt like they were really just looking for anything that would get them to the 300 word target so they could be done.

And for $5 I shouldn’t be so harsh.

In the end, I had some usable sentences but had to re-write most of the articles myself. I can’t even share the articles as examples because they’re almost unrecognizable from what I got back. But like I’ve said before, there’s still some value in getting a shell back and having some structure to start with, rather than staring at a blank screen.

I wish I had the budget to test an “Expert” writer to see the difference. One of these days I’ll stop cheaping out and pay for someone who’s really good!

So that’s the thing. If you want an article you’re going to sign your name to, you’ll probably have to pay a bit more, or just do it yourself. If you don’t care, or are just churning out content for search engine digestion, HireWriters is a great choice.

I’ve also tested articles from Fiverr and Textbroker, with pretty similar results — though every now and then you get a homerun.

Another service HireWriters offers is a re-writing, or article spinning service. The theory behind this is you can use the same content in multiple locations without triggering any “duplicate content penalties” from Google, because each will by slightly different.

Have you tried Hire Writers? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Posted in Project-Based Virtual Assistants

Textbroker

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Nick Loper — No Comments ↓

Textbroker is a content-writing marketplace where webmasters can tap into a network of professional writers. The company was founded in 2005 in Mainz, Germany, and has since expanded to an impressive international presence with sites catering to several popular languages.

textbroker review The company delivers what it promises: it’s a place to buy written content. There are more than 80,000 writers in the Textbroker network, and unlike a virtual assistant or freelance site, you don’t have to do any decision-making in terms of who to hire. Just submit your job and it gets done.

The articles are priced based on the length of the piece and the quality desired. The rates start at $0.012 per word and the quality at that price is optimistically described as “legible.”

If you want content that is readable and valuable to actual human visitors and not just search engine spiders, you’ll have to pay a bit more.

The next tier, labeled “average,” is $0.016 per word. That equates out to $8 for a 500 word article. However, “excellent” content can be had for just $0.022 per word, or $11 for that same 500-word article.

The most dramatic jump is between “excellent” and “professional,” which costs 3x as much! I think this is Textbroker’s way of steering demand toward the lower tier.

So what about the writers? Are they any good?

The company utilizes a short test writing assignment that every writer must complete before they can start working. The Textbroker editors assign the writer a rating, based on their demonstrated skill and writing style.

That rating determines which writing jobs they’ll be eligible to work on, so no “legible” writers get assigned the “excellent” work.

After you spend some time in the Textbroker marketplace, you may begin to develop relationships with your favorite writers and want to use them over and over again. The DirectOrder and TeamOrder features allow you to do this.

In this case, you set your own price per word (subject to a $0.0195 minimum) and get to work with those writers who have proven themselves to you. The company tacks on a $0.30 fee for facilitating this transaction.

Turnaround time is usually 24 hours or less.

I had the opportunity to test out Textbroker’s services in 2011, and I found the quality pretty good. In total I tested four different articles, including this Virtual Assistant Assistant blog post on President Obama’s jobs proposal.

Looking back it’s difficult to judge the true “out-of-the-box” quality, because I’ve never been able to publish anything without editing it myself. Well I guess that is in indicator of the quality – that it wasn’t up to my standards to be published as is. But I still think there’s value in copywriting services because it’s still faster to tweak an existing article than to try and create one completely from scratch yourself.

I’ve also purchased copywriting from Fiverr and HireWriters.

Have you worked with Textbroker? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below.

Posted in Project-Based Virtual Assistants