Virtual Assistant Blog

Your Resume Girl

Posted by Mica Harvey / Content Writing Services, Recruiting Services, Resources/Tools, Resume Building Services

Your Resume Girl is a career development, coaching, and resume writing service. If you need help landing your dream job, changing your career, or seeking higher-paying employment, Your Resume Girl can help.

Based in Florida, U.S. company founder Michelle da Alba has been helping job seekers and working professionals land their dream jobs and earn more for around 3 years.

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About Your Resume Girl

The company started operations in 2017 and is headed up by founder Michelle da Alba.

Michelle is the “Girl” behind Your Resume Girl. She has an assistant helping out with some of the day-to-day operations of the business, however, it’s Michelle you’ll be working with directly when you sign up for coaching.

Michelle has 20+ years of experience working for billion-dollar organizations and has hired and trained more than 100 employees for Fortune 500 companies.

She took that knowledge and experience and started Your Resume Girl to help job seekers land their dream jobs. Michelle is an expert in crafting personalized, strategic resumes, and coaching people to success in job interviews.

Her target clients are professionals in mid-level management roles to director and executive level and has the capability to work with a wide variety of industries.

She works remotely with clients, so you can contact Michelle regardless of where you’re based. Currently, most of her clients are from the U.S., Mexico, and Central and South America.

Michelle told me that 90% of her clients get a job within 6 weeks of following her coaching and implementing her strategies. She also said most of her clients end up making $10k more than they were making in their previous job, or the offers being presented.

One caveat; Michelle also pointed out that you should prepare yourself for a lot of homework when working with her. But that’s to be expected, and the hard work will pay off when you secure that dream job you’ve been chasing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPUOGbnxJA8

How Your Resume Girl Works

To get started, you can reach out to Michelle via the contact form on her site or through her Facebook page. She will get back to you and arrange a time for a consultation to find out exactly what you’re looking for.

Your Resume Girl Services

Michelle helps clients through every step of their job-seeking process. She will help you write your resume in a strategic and tailored way, and coach you on a 1-on-1 basis in the areas you need support.

She groups her services into the following three core areas:

Strategic Writing – This includes putting together your resume using industry-specific keywords and other tips she’s developed over the years to increase your chance of getting a call back.
Job Search Training – Michelle will help formulate a search strategy to help you find your dream job. This includes writing cover letters, LinkedIn training, strategy hacks, and more.
Career Coaching – This includes mock interviews, coaching you on interview techniques, advice on how to negotiate offers, and more.

Plans and Pricing

Pricing varies depending on how much time Michelle will need to spend with you. Michelle will arrange a time to discuss your requirements, after which she will send you a custom proposal.

To give you an idea, she did tell me that minimum packages typically cost around $350-$600. But again, this is dependent on how much work is required.

Michelle spends anywhere from 5-8 hours on the low end perfecting a resume. With this numbering being as high as 10-12 hours for a director-level position.

All-inclusive job search packages are usually in the $1,200-$3,000 range. Michelle said she will typically spend around 20 hours personally working with clients with this package. She also sticks with clients for a job search timeframe of 3 months.

Your Resume Girl Alternatives

There are a number of content writing services and virtual assistant companies that may have the expertise to help write your resume.

Not many can match the personal 1-on-1 service Michelle offers with Your Resume Girl though.

Michelle told me that this is where she sees her business offering more value to her clients. She spends a lot of time with each client formulating personalized strategies and said this results in a higher success rate.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Michelle at Your Resume Girl? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

Virtually Yours

Posted by Mica Harvey / Australia Virtual Assistants, Bookkeeping Services, Content Writing Services, Customer Service, Freelance Virtual Assistants, Graphic and Web Design Services, Legal Assistants, Project-Based Virtual Assistants, Task-Based Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Assistant Resources, Virtual Receptionist Services

Virtually Yours is an Australian-based virtual assistant network providing training and support for virtual assistants and business owners in Australia.

The owner, Rosie Shilo is located in Melbourne, AU. Most of the VAs and businesses joining the membership program are also based in Australia.

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About Virtually Yours

The company started operations in 2004 and is headed up by founder Rosie Shilo.

Rosie started Virtually Yours because she wanted to create a safe and knowledgeable community for Australian VAs and business owners to connect.

To do this, she created a membership community on the backend of Virtually Yours. Here, VAs and businesses can connect. Rosie also shares training materials and works with members.

If you’re a VA, you’ll get access to training resources and information to help you develop your skills and learn how to find new clients. As a business owner, you can post jobs and connect with VAs looking for clients. It’s a win-win.

There are currently more than 190 virtual assistants signed up as members, so it’s a large and ever-growing community.

Virtually Yours is aimed at VAs and businesses located in Australia. So, I do have to point out it’s going to be a lot more relevant if you’re based in Australia.

However, Rosie is an expert in the VA field having published books on the topic and mentored VAs. I can imagine there is value for VAs based anywhere in the world, so it might be worth checking out Virtually Yours is you’re a VA looking for training resources.

How Virtually Yours Works

Virtually Yours operates on a membership model. To get started, you need to sign up for one of their membership plans.

This will give you a login to access the members-only area. From here, you can browse the forums, post job listings, and start to find a VA or a business to work with.

For the most part, professional relationships between VAs and businesses are handled independently. Virtually Yours only provides the platform for professionals to connect, they do not oversee any contractual agreements.

Virtually Yours Services

When you sign up for one of the monthly membership plans, you gain access to a number of resources and perks depending on your membership level.

A complete list of all the services you can use as a member includes:

Access to forums and private Facebook group – You can meet and connect with other VAs and businesses in these private membership areas.
Business listings – As a business owner, you can list your business to attract leads.
Jobleads – You can place a job lead to the network of VAs within the Virtually Yours ecosystem.
Promotional opportunities – Premium members are given opportunities to guest blog and appear on the VY podcast, webinars, and social channels.
1-on-1 mentoring with Rosie – You can book mentoring sessions with company founder Rosie for $120 AUS (approx $87 USD at the time of publishing).

Plans and Pricing

Virtually Yours have three different pricing plans as follows:

Listing – $9.90/mo, this plan gives you access to some of their resources and you can add your business to their VA directory.
Inspire – $33/mo, this plan gives you access to the VYVA community, webinars, guest blogging opportunities, and more.
Connect – $55/mo, this plan gives you access to the entire VYVA ecosystem. As well as featured listings, opportunities to guest on the VY podcast, and more.

If you sign up for any of these plans annually, you’ll receive one month free.

Virtually Yours Alternatives

Virtually Yours is a little unique in the way they provide a platform for both helping VAs and businesses connect independently. You also have to keep in mind that they are targeting Australian VAs and businesses.

However, if you’re looking for alternative VA networks I recommend checking out The International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA) and Outsource School.

As a VA; the IVAA is a non-profit organization providing tools and resources to help VA develop their skills and further their professional development.

As a business owner; Outsource School is a membership platform providing detailed training materials and a community for businesses looking to hire and train VAs.

Your Turn

Have you joined Virtually Yours? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

Reps Direct

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Receptionist Services

Reps Direct is virtual employee company specializing in providing virtual employees to handle contact center needs like call answering, appointment setting and confirmation, and order processing. The company is headquartered in the US, while most of the virtual receptionists work from Managua, Nicaragua and Tijuana, Mexico.

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About Reps Direct

The company was founded by Scott Kacmarski in response to seeing other virtual assistant providers either charging too much, or not delivering enough. He decided to start his own virtual receptionist agency and offer more value to the company’s clients.

The company has been operating since 2015. Their target customers are small to medium sized businesses looking to outsource their contact center tasks at an affordable rate. When I asked Scott what the company’s goal is, he said “to be a customized solution for your virtual employee needs, not just a generic answering service.”

He went on to add that they assign reps to each client, building up a good understanding of the business over time and becoming a valuable part of the team.

Services

The core of Reps Direct services include telephone call answering, handling text messaging, replying to emails and live chat. If you are a small business and the volume of calls and inquires are starting to build up, outsourcing the receptionist type tasks to a virtual assistant is a cost-effective way of getting on top of things.

These type of services also have the added benefit of giving small companies a much bigger appearance.

Being greeted by a dedicated receptionist when calling a company always helps give a good first impression. While Reps Direct does not offer a complete virtual assistant solution to all the ad-hoc tasks a business owner would typically outsource, they do offer a dedicated solution to a particular area of a business.

Plans and Pricing

Reps Direct have three different plans. Their Basic Package starts at $4.99 per week. You get a free phone number, call answering, call transferring, and message taking. Each minute you use is billed out at $1.25/minute.

(You can also forward your existing number to Reps Direct, or set it up to only forward during non-business hours as they’re open 24/7.)

This plan is Pay-As-You-Go, with a minimal weekly cost and charges based almost exclusively on how much you use. If you anticipate more than a couple hours worth of call volume each month, it probably makes more sense to look at one of their higher tier options.

Their next package is their Reception Package. This costs $199 per month, and you get a free phone number, 225 minutes included, and their call answering, appointment setting and message taking services. There is an additional charge of $.99 per/min for extra minutes used.

Their largest package is their Small Business Package. This plan costs $499 per month, you get all the services of the other packages along with 625 minutes of call time. There is an $.89 charge for additional minutes, and I’d say this plan is aimed at a busy and growing small business.

All packages include a 7-day free trial to test out the service and see if it’s a good fit for your operation.

Reps Direct Alternatives

Ruby Receptionists are probably the most well-known company in this space. Gabbyville and Conversational also offer similar services and are worth looking into.

What sets Reps Direct apart from these alternatives is their starting price. Their packages are very competitively priced. While it’s hard to match all the services on a like-for-like basis, Reps Direct pricing structure is lower than their competitors.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Reps Direct? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

Hire My Assistants

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, India Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees

Hire My Assistants is a virtual assistant company located in Mumbai, India. Their team is comprised of professionals in areas of expertise including administrative services, office assistance, customer service, online services, professional services, web marketing, web design and development.

HMA prides themselves on being a one stop location for all personal assistant services from small businesses to medium sized corporations. Whether personal assistant services are needed for a one-time project or a more lengthy relationship is established, HMA has the capacity to handle both with efficiency and professionalism.

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About Hire My Assistants

Sagar Khupsare is a veteran of the virtual assistant and business process outsourcing industry, and serves as the leader and driving force behind HMA.

As a fresh and dynamic leader he embraces challenges and looks forward to providing clients with the best the Hire My Assistants team can provide.

Established in the beginning of 2014, Hire My Assistants is a newer establishment when compared to other Indian virtual assistant companies. However, clients take comfort in knowing that the leadership of HMA has had goals of becoming one of the largest virtual assistant service providers. All HMA team members hold years of experience providing excellent customer assistance and high quality services.

Services

Client tasks are assigned specifically to skilled professionals in that area; human resource tasks are assigned to human resource experts and payroll to payroll experts, etc. This ensures that client tasks are handled in the most professional, efficient manner.

Hire My Assistants provides virtual assistant services in the following fields:

Accounting & Finance Managers
Administrative & Office
Chat & Email Customer Service Support
Ecommerce Development
Executive Secretary
Inbound & Outbound Call Center
Market Research & Analysis
Personal Assistant
SEO
Website Designing

HMA is always looking to expand their service offerings so stay tuned for additional areas of expertise.

Hire My Assistants Founder Interview

Plans and Pricing

The Hire My Assistants plans and pricing are very straightforward and affordable; and are intended to be so. They purposely make choosing a plan and pricing a simple process.

Being part of the industry for many years, HMA recognizes the value of a cost effective and quality service tailored to meet the needs of each individual enterprise. Given this, their pricing is laid out very simply.

Rates start at roughly $180 a month for 20 hours of support ($8.98 an hour) and go as low as $4.98/hr for a full-time VA ($800 per month).

There is great flexibility in hours to ensure that there are plans to meet the needs of all businesses, and no long-term contracts.

Hire My Assistants Alternatives

The virtual assistant industry in India (and elsewhere) remains a competitive one with companies like 24/7 Virtual Assistant, My Tasker, and VMG BPO all vying for your business.

While Hire My Assistants may lack the marketplace experience and client ranks that other companies boast, Sagar tells me their leadership, quality team, fair pricing and exceptional service set them apart from their competitors.

Have you worked with HMA? If so, please be sure to leave a review below to help others with their decision.

Crew.co

Posted by Mica Harvey / Freelance Virtual Assistants, Graphic and Web Design Services

UPDATE: It appears Crew.co has changed to Dribbble.com. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Crew.co is a marketplace that provides a platform for freelancers, or “members” as they refer to them, to connect with business owners and entrepreneurs. They specialize in providing professional services of web designers and developers.

The company was founded in 2012 and their headquarters are based in Montreal, Canada. Through their platform they connect freelancer designers and developers to business owners from all over the globe.

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About Crew.co

The company is headed up by Mikael Cho, and they have been in operation for over three years. Crew is not a service company and does not carry out or oversee any of the work for their members or manage projects, rather they provide the platform for business owners to find designers and developers, and handle the contracts and financial transactions.

The company screens and vets the freelancers, and matches them to the best-suited projects for their skills. They also hire additional freelancers from around the globe to meet demand when required.

How it Works

When you post a project, the team at Crew matches you with 3 fully-vetted freelancers for you to choose between to complete your project within 48 hours. This is different than platforms like Upwork or Freelancer.com, where unlimited freelancers can bid for your project and you narrow down the applicants.

Anyone who have had a bad experience on an open marketplace may feel more comfortable with the way Crew are operating. With Crew manually selecting freelancers, you do not need to invest as much time vetting the applicants yourself.

Services

Unlike some other freelancing marketplaces, Crew focuses specifically on programming and graphic design projects.

They specialize in providing website development, app development, eCommerce support, logo design, branding, and custom graphic design work.

There is a three-step process when submitting a project to the Crew platform:

You post your exact job, or “project” requirements
You will receive an automatic budget recommendation to look over
Three handpicked freelancers will contact you within 48 hours, you then decide who you want to work with

Because Crew use their own vetting process when taking on freelancers to join their platform there should be a higher level of consistency than open marketplaces.

Their target customers are busy business owners or entrepreneurs who do not have in-house web or graphic designers and need individual projects completed. If you’ve been thinking about a logo redesign or having an app developed, Crew is worth checking out.

Plans and Pricing

Because it’s a project-based platforms, pricing varies depending on the specific work you need done. Once you and your chosen contractor agree on the scope of the project, you pre-pay into Crew’s escrow account.

Crew holds the funds for the project until the work is completed and both parties are satisfied. The company takes a 15% fee from the total payment to cover processing, overhead, customer support, and of course, their profit.

The company uses a third-party payment system through their platform for safe and secure transactions.

Crew Alternatives

The biggest competitor to Crew is the giant freelance platform Upwork.com. The main difference is that they try to be a one-stop shop for all your outsourcing needs, instead of just focusing on only designers and developers.

If you’re looking for development help, you might consider Codeable (for WordPress projects) or TopTal (for a wider range).

For one-off graphics work, 99designs and DesignCrowd are popular choices.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Crew.co? If so, please leave a review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

iWriter

Posted by Mica Harvey / Content Writing Services

If you need written content for your website, iWriter is an easy and reliable way for you to post projects that will be professionally and quickly done.

Located in Carmel, IN, iWriter includes a network of thousands of freelance writers from around the globe ready to work on writing assignments.

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About iWriter

iWriter is designed to help the business owner who no longer wants to or has time to write their own content for their websites. The company was launched in 2011 and was the first service created to exclusively facilitate the process of hiring a professional to write your articles.

As a client, requesting an article to be written is easy and costs as little as $1.25.

Pro tip: If you’re only paying $1.25 per article, odds are it will be illegible.

Once registered, click on a link titled “Submit a New Project Page” and input all the necessary information so the writer can produce a quality article.

iWriter Services

Clients that sign up for the service have a variety of options to customize their service experience.

iWriter Services Include:

An unlimited amount of articles
Articles on any topic
Turnaround time as fast as 1 hour
Article lengths of 150, 300, 500, 700, and 1000 words
Select the article language of English, French, Spanish, German, or Other
Easy download format
Select article quality
Select the article tone
SEO keyword selection

Because thousands of writers from around the world are available to write articles on iWriter, clients have the option to choose which writers they submit their project to. Clients select writers based how many stars they have earned and their reputation.

You can even request longer-form projects such as ebooks if you find an excellent writer who can get the job done.

iWriter Video Overview

Plans and Pricing

Pricing at iWriter depends on the requirements you need. The article length and the star-quality of your desired writer all increase the cost of the article. If you want SEO keywords in your article the price will also increases.

My take on it is this: Don’t stress on the keywords and just try and write naturally. The search engines are getting smarter and if your articles are stuffed full of keywords in an unnatural way, you may get penalized.

The baseline advertised cost may be just $1.25, but expect to pay more than that if you want anything readable. Think in the ballpark of $5-20 for a 500 word article. Naturally, writers with better feedback history command higher rates.

iWriter Alternatives

Alternative outsourced writing services do exist where business owners can have articles written, including on-demand services like HireWriters and subscription-based models like Copywriter Today.

Freelance sites like Elance.com and oDesk.com will also connect you with writers, but these sites are more complex than iWriter because freelancers will bid on your project while iWriter will assign your project directly to a writer. In my mind, those are definitely more trouble than it’s worth for a single article.

Your Turn

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

Time Dog

Posted by Mica Harvey / Task-Based Virtual Assistants, US Virtual Assistants

UPDATE: Time Dog has merged with iBlog Media Group, and has stopped taking new virtual assistant clients and requests. Please consider one of these alternatives or see below.

Time Dog is a task-based virtual assistant company based in Tampa, Florida. The business began in 2011 and has grown to a small team of virtual assistants, all working from the company’s Florida headquarters.

Founder Matt Cherry created Time Dog to help busy people (primarily busy women and moms) better manage their hectic schedules. He’s enlisted a team of service-oriented “superheroes” to make lives easier for clients around the country.

Time Dog offers remote personal assistance for quick tasks, and specifically targets busy individuals. The service is appropriate for personal use but is currently not open to business-related tasks.

Like other US-based VA companies such as Fancy Hands and Red Butler, Time Dog specializes in one-off online research type jobs and concierge tasks. Unlike those however, they offer an “unlimited” plan with no specific time limits on tasks.

One thing that really surprised me was the pricing. Time Dog is really inexpensive relative to their competition. At this time, the service is just $35 a month for unlimited requests, serviced by office-based US VAs. The service comes with a very generous 30-day free trial.

And they offer a free account that comes with a 15 day free trial with no credit card required.

I say “at this time,” because I’m not sure how long they can survive at that low rate! There’s nothing comparable in the US, and even overseas you have to go to almost double that price before you find a similar “unlimited” virtual assistant plan (TimeSvr, Pakistan).

Time Dog Intro Video

I took advantage of their free trial and submitted a handful of tasks. In general, the response times were quick and the results were good. Here are a few of the tasks I sent in:

Find a replacement motor for my treadmill.
Send me some butternut squash recipes.
Are dogs allowed on this hiking trail?

Obviously none of these were super-urgent, but Time Dog operates on standard East Coast business hours so if you need support at odd hours that could be a consideration.

You can submit tasks via text, email through the online interface, live chat, phone, or through their free iPhone app. The only drawback I experienced was not being able to send a request directly from my email, as I can with Fancy Hands.

If you’re looking for a creative gift idea, Time Dog offers personalizable gift memberships.

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

WELLReceived

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Receptionist Services

WELLReceived is a US-based virtual receptionist service that specializes in helping medical practices and other healthcare businesses ensure every phone call is answered by a live person 24/7.

The company is headquartered in Oregon and employs live agents across the United States. WELLReceived’s virtual receptionists are available 24/7 and have over 20 years of experience in call handling.

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About WELLReceived

As your practice grows, it’s important to provide every caller with the utmost professional and compassionate care. When patients call, the last thing they want is to be placed on a long hold. At WELLReceived, we answer every call within the first three rings.

If your practice isn’t large enough to justify paying a full-time in-house receptionist, or if you need help answering overflow and after-hour calls, you can forward your phone to WELLReceived’s receptionists. These HIPAA-compliant agents will handle calls according to your customized scripts. They can forward urgent calls, schedule appointments in your calendar, update records in your system, and more. It’s no different from having your own in-house receptionist.

WELLReceived’s 24/7 availability and professional virtual medical receptionists can increase your practice’s reputation, enhance patient/provider relationships, and streamline your front office productivity.

How WELLReceived Works

If you want to partner with WELLReceived, contact them via the contact form on their site or by calling them at 1.800.800.4449.

To find the best plan for your practice, one of WELLReceived’s Sales Executives will work with you to figure out your call volume, times you’re needing coverage, and the best custom script to serve your patients.

Each account is given unique login credentials for their online web portal. Patient safety and security is their highest priority and WELLReceived ensures that every piece of information is stored in their encrypted Google API system.

Patient care is at your fingertips with the WELLReceived mobile app. You can view messages, number of minutes used, and view your booking calendar straight from your smartphone.

WELLReceived Services

WELLReceived provides a range of virtual receptionist services. Some of their key features include:

24/7/365 Live Virtual Medical Receptionists
Appointment calendar integration
Bilingual Services
HIPAA-Compliant
Live Chat Support
Teleport Video Appointments

WELLReceived Plans and Pricing

Plans are based on your practices’ monthly call volume. Whether you’re looking for 300 minutes or 1,000 minutes of call handling, they’ve got you covered. No long-term contracts are required, and scaling your plan up or down is easy.

A complete list of their plans at the time of publishing was:

200 minutes – $319/month
300 minutes – $379/month
500 minutes – $629/month
1,000 minutes – $1,259/month

All of their plans include access to a client portal, where you can keep an eye on the number of minutes used. Another bonus is that appointment scheduling is free and included in every plan.

WELLReceived Alternatives

For alternatives to WELLReceived, I recommend checking out Ruby and Gabbyville as they both offer similar services and pricing.

Something that separates WELLReceived from their competitors is that they specialize in medical practices. If you are working in any of the industries WELLReceived specializes in, it’s worth giving them a try to take advantage of their industry experience.

Your Turn

Have you worked with WELLReceived? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

GoButler

Posted by Mica Harvey / SMS Virtual Assistants

Update: I’m sad to say, but GoButler has pivoted (as startups do) to only offer text messaged-based flight search and booking. The free general VA service described below is no longer available. I knew it was too good to be true! Please consider one of these alternatives or see below.

GoButler is an SMS-based virtual assistant service. They have assistants known as “Heroes” available to receive and respond to SMS messages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

They currently have around 50 employees. With their headquarters being in New York and home to most of the development team, and another office in Germany where most “Heroes” are situated. The company only came out of their BETA testing phase at the end of July, so they are still growing their team.

Go Butler secured $8 million in Series A funding this year, so it’s going to be interesting couple of years seeing this company grow.

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About Go Butler

There are three founders behind GoButler; Maximilian Deilmann from the UK, Navid Hadzaad from the US, and Jens Urbaniak from Germany. With this is mind It’s easy to understand their decision to have offices in the US and Germany.

With the service coming out of BETA at the end of July, they have opened up the availability to use the service in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Singapore, Spain, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the time of writing this. With further expansion into new countries expected in the near future.

Their target customers are busy consumers. So if you need a suggestion where to eat out, want to place a food order for delivery, or book flights – you can send an SMS to Go Butler and expect a speedy reply with an answer to meet your needs.

Services

GoButler’s motto is “Anything you want. As long as it’s legal. Try it!” So if there is a service of product you want without the effort of finding it yourself, send them a text.

Customers are using GoButler to make travel plans, complete restaurant reservations, find and order products online, and get food delivered. You won’t be assigned a dedicated assistant, so it would be tough to delegate ongoing business-related projects or tasks, but for one-off requests, quite an interesting concept.

They process secure payments through their partner Braintree. There really are no hidden costs or charges, you pay exactly what you would pay if you had sourced the product or service yourself.

It’s really as simple as it sounds. All you need is a device to send and receive SMS messages, and you can use the service. They aim to respond to all queries within a few minutes, so this seems like a pretty cool “intro to delegation” service for people to test out and see how well they can text specific requests and instructions.

GoButler Review

Plans and Pricing

This is what sets Go Butler apart from similar services: it’s completely free.

Founder Navid Hadzaad has stated they plan to keep it free too. There are plans to monetize the service from the B2B side. So you, the customer, should never be passed on any of the costs.

Plus, there is currently no limit to the number of requests you can make in any given month.

My guess is on the backend GoButler is earning an affiliate commission on any products they purchase on your behalf. But it seems like a heavy labor burden to respond to all the other non-monetizable tasks that inevitably will come through.

To sign up, just text GO to 25400. When I did, I got a response right away asking for my email, and explaining there is currently a waitlist to join. (I got in a few days later.)

Go Butler Alternatives

Go Butler was not the first company to think of the SMS-assistant model. There are several competitors vying for attention in this space:

Magic – Magic has a very similar process to Go Butler. Customers can receive information on products and services via SMS.
Operator – Operator has an app for smartphones enabling customers to search and shop for products through their interface.
Scratch – Scratch is like a personal shopping assistant in a smartphone app, great for finding gifts.
Fetch – Another text-message based shopping service, though when I tried it I didn’t get a response for days.

The main hook that sets Go Butler apart from all of these similar services is that it’s the only service to be completely free to the customer. I’m sure this will be a big factor when it comes down to a choice between which service to try for the first time.

(One friend of mine was using Magic and was absolutely THRILLED he was able to buy shorts through a text message, and was more than happy to pay the service fee the company tacked on.)

My main alternative for task-based assistance is Fancy Hands, and I’m confident GoButler has actually saved be a few tasks this month. Now I find myself using Fancy Hands for slightly higher level tasks with more in-depth instructions that are better suited to email instead of text.

Your Turn

Have you tried Go Butler? If so please leave some feedback below to help others with their decision.

Perssist

Posted by Mica Harvey / Task-Based Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Perssist is a virtual assistant service that’s part human and part technology.

Over time, Perssist learns user preferences and becomes more integrated into users’ daily routines via personalization technology. Various existing and upcoming third-party app integrations help Perssist work directly with the tools you are already in the habit of using.

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About Perssist

The New York-based company was founded in 2014 by Evan Britten-Bozzone and Albert Wang. Their virtual assistants are located all over the world to ensure coverage in every time zone.

Per Evan, “Location of workers is not as important to us as ability. We hire less than 3% of the people that apply for an assistant position, after filtering them through an intensive multi-round interview process. For the few that do get hired, we put them through a rigorous training process. We have accomplished overseas workers that have earned Bachelor’s degrees, and in some cases Master’s degrees.”

He explains that the company aims to provide busy people with a channel to outsource all the time-consuming and undesirable tasks that could be taken care of by an intelligent and tech-savvy virtual assistant.

How it Works

Perssist brings on-demand access to a virtual personal assistant to do the bidding of busy people and entrepreneurs everywhere.

Users submit requests via web, email, or phone, and Perssist gets started on them in short order. Perssist offers a new level of convenience, with a service that’s flexible enough for a 10 minute phone call or 10 hours of event planning.

When you submit a request to Perssist, an assistant will check-in with you after 20 minutes, which prevents assistants from spending too much unnecessary time on a request and makes sure everyone is on the same page.

Services

Perssist virtual assistants can make calls, do research, make appointments, or do a variety of other remote tasks.

Each request is routed to the right assistant for that task. Whether it’s web research, calling customer service or local stores, scheduling, finding local services, helping with travel planning, editing WordPress, or anything else that can be handled remotely by a smart and tech-savvy assistant.

To be more specific about what Perssist does and does not do: “Anything an intelligent, Internet-savvy liberal arts major with a long-distance calling plan can do, we can do.” So nothing too technical or requiring professional training like coding or accounting.

Evan says the requests they’ve received so far have been about 40% business-related and 60% personal.

“In the near future,” he adds, “We’ll be able purchase items on a users’ behalf without sharing sensitive payment information.”

Plans and Pricing

Perssist offers 3-tiers of pricing plans, ranging from 2 hours a month at $28 ($14/hr), to 15 hours per month at $150 ($10/hr).

New users can take advantage of a 1-hour free trial.

Perssist charges time in 5-minute increments, and your unused hours and minutes roll over to the next month.

Perssist Alternatives

Although Perssist doesn’t wave the “All-American” flag like Fancy Hands, the services are similar — an on-demand virtual assistant service. However, with the hourly plans instead of the by-the-task plans, Perssist allows for greater flexibility in what you can delegate, even accounting for Fancy Hands’ new multiple-task requests.

The other company that comes to mind is OkayRelax, which connects you with a dedicated VA for an affordable monthly membership fee.

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

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