Virtual Assistant Blog

Designhill

Posted by Mica Harvey / Graphic and Web Design Services

Designhill is an online crowdsourcing design platform. You can submit any graphic design tasks and choose the design(s) you like most from a pool of results.

Crowdsourcing marketplaces have grown in popularity in recent years, and it’s easy to understand why. Since graphic designs can be subjective, having a selection of different designs to choose from often works out better than working with one designer.

Designhill has more than 37,000 graphic designers ready to submit their designs based on your requirements. So there should be no shortage of ideas and designs to choose from.

About Designhill

The team behind Designhill are based in Delhi, India and their graphic designers are based all over the world and work remotely.

Their services are quite flexible depending on your budget. You can opt to receive between 20-80 designs from a group of 10-40 designers, giving you a wide selection of designs to work with.

They offer a 100% money back guarantee, and have 24/7 customer support on hand if you have any issues.

Services

You can use Designhill for logos, infographics, book covers, package designs, brochures, and even full websites or vehicle wraps. Basically anything that could use a professional graphic designer’s touch can be fulfilled through the site in a crowdsourcing contest.

The Designhill site is easy to use and with just a few clicks you submit your job. There is a simple 4-step process from start to finish:

Step 1 – Post a brief detailing exactly what you’re looking for. This is your chance to describe your brand, vision, and add any details that will help the designers bring your vision to life.
Step 2 – Wait a few days, then check all the designs that have been returned to see which you like the most.
Step 3 – You can give feedback to the designers and request unlimited revisions to tweak your finished design.
Step 4 – Choose the winning design, release payment to the designer, and get complete ownership and several different file types to work with.

This kind of platform is most suited to you if you know you’re going to want one-off jobs from time-to-time.

If you’re building a brand and want various graphics all in uniform it may be hard to find consistency when working with so many different designers, so that’s something to keep in mind.

Plans and Pricing

Designhill’s pricing system is broken down into four plans, Fast Track, Standard, Executive, and Premium. You can also choose your exact design task from a list of over 50 options, giving you an accurate price per plan for each task.

The different plans include the following services:

Fast Track – 10+ designers, 20+ designs, money back guarantee. Starting at $149.
Standard – 20+ designers, 40+ designs, professional designers, newsletter and social media promotion. Starting at $299.
Executive – 30+ designers, 60+ designs, hand-picked expert designers, newsletter, social media, and blog promotion. Starting at $599.
Premium – 40+ designers, 80+ designs, hand-picked exceptional designers, newsletter, social media, and blog promotion, highlighted contest upgrade, and one free paid invites. Starting at $999.

The larger packages give you a much deeper pool of designers and designs to choose from.

To give you an idea of the difference between the plans, a logo design task starts at $149 for the Fast Track plan, going up to $299 for Standard, $599 for Executive, and $999 for Premium.

Designhill Alternatives

It’s hard to mention a crowdsourced design marketplace without mentioning 99designs. 99designs are one of the largest companies in this space and although their starting prices are a little higher they have the reputation to justify it.

I turned to Designcrowd, which runs a similar business model, for my latest book cover.

For logo design, you might also consider 48 Hours Logo or Deluxe Logo Design. If you have ongoing design needs for your website or social media, a company like UnicornGO might be worth a look.

Your Turn

Have you had design work done on Designhill? If so, please leave a short review to help others with their decision.

Vicky Virtual Receptionists

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Receptionist Services

Vicky Virtual Receptionists is a virtual telephone answering service for small businesses. They have a team of receptionists available to handle your calls, help you schedule appointments, and help you to make sure you don’t miss any calls, which can result in losing sales.

The company has been operating since 2014, they are based in the US and use US-based receptionists.

About Vicky Virtual Receptionists

The company was founded by Donald T. Spann in October, 2014. He decided to start Vicky Virtual when he realized he was losing sales through not having someone on hand to answer calls when he was busy.

When you sign up with Vicky Virtual a team of 4-6 receptionists are assigned to handle your calls. While this means you do not have the same voice on the end of every call, it does mean you have much better coverage at a fraction of the price it would cost to hire employees.

You can provide them with your own scripts to read from, or leave it down to their professional call handlers if you prefer.

Services

Vicky can handle any of your telecommunication needs. Their receptionists can handle your outbound calls as well as answering inbound calls (but don’t think of them as a sales organization or lead generation service).

They can make follow-up calls on your behalf, set appointment reminders, dinner reservations, finding and arranging gifts for you, just about anything you can think of.

They’ll answer calls from any numbers you forward to their receptionists. You can use the service to screen and transfer calls to limit the amount of calls you’re taking. Answer questions from an FAQ, provide information to your clients, and more.

Vicky Virtual does a lot of work with clients in the professional services industry like attorneys and also in the household service industry like cleaners.

Vicky Virtual Receptionists Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

Vicky Virtual has three different pricing plans based on the amount of minutes you require per month, as well as an option to make a custom plan if you think you’ll exceed 300 minutes.

Their plans start at $99 for 60 minutes, which means you’re paying just over $1.50 per minute when their receptionists are on the phone. Their larger plans work out to an even lower price per minute.

Starter – $99/month, 60 minutes.
Entrepreneur – $239/month, 180 minutes.
Executive – $349/month, 300 minutes.

All their plans are month-to-month and include online scheduling and a voicemail box.

They also come with a 7-day free trial. This is a great way to test out their service, and after the 7-days you can either cancel or you will be placed on the most appropriate plan based on your usage.

If you need more than 300 minutes a month someone at Vicky Virtual will contact you to discuss a custom plan. There is also a one-off $50 setup fee due after the 7-day free trial.

VAA exclusive: Check the Virtual Assistant Assistant box on the “where did you hear about us?” form at sign-up to waive the $50 setup fee.

Vicky Virtual Receptionists Alternatives

Ruby Receptionists is probably the most well-known company in the virtual receptionist space, but other options include DaVinci and Remsource, which might be a better fit depending on your call volume and level of business integration you’re looking for.

Your Turn

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

2nd Office

Posted by Mica Harvey / Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

2nd Office is a Philippines-based virtual assistant company. They have a team of virtual assistants, all based and managed in-house and they specialize in providing support to businesses of all sizes looking to outsource tasks.

The company was founded in August 2012, their headquarters is located in Antipolo, Philippines.

About 2nd Office

Their virtual assistants all work out of their offices in Antipolo. Unlike some companies that rely solely on assistants based from their homes, this enables 2nd Office to assign managers to oversee their assistants and provide an additional point of contact.

Carlo Silva is the CEO and founder of 2ndoffice.co. Carlo had an eCommerce business and started outsourcing tasks using companies in India, but was unhappy with the quality of the services he was using and decided to start his own virtual assistant company.

In his words, 2nd Office’s directive is to “help other businesses grow and to stand as a second office and a partner in reaching their clients’ potentials.”

Services

The virtual assistants at 2nd Office provide support across all aspects of running a business. Some of the key skills they list as areas of specialization include:

E-commerce
Web development
Data entry
Customer support
Creative writing
Social media
Graphic design
Marketing

There seems to be a focus on Amazon and eBay sellers, though interestingly you do not get a dedicated assistant to communicate with back and forth. Instead, you talk through your tasks and workload with one of their managers and the work is then assigned internally. It’s like they want a buffer layer between clients and the actual assistants.

Plans and Pricing

Frustratingly, 2nd Office does not have any pricing plans or subscription rate packages publicly available. You need to contact them directly to receive a quote for the work you want to outsource to one of their assistants.

To me, that’s a big hint that the company really isn’t aimed at individual operators or sole proprietors. I get the impression they’re looking for clients who need several full-time staff members and have the budget to pay for it.

2nd Office Alternatives

When hiring virtual assistants from the Philippines you have a number of options. If you prefer to screen and hire work-from-home virtual assistants yourself from a pool of applicants, consider the popular job board, OnlineJobs.ph.

If you want to work with assistants managed in-house like the 2nd Office model, VA Staffer might be worth a look.

Your Turn

Have you worked with 2nd Office? If so, please leave a short review below to help others with their decision.

VA4REI

Posted by Mica Harvey / Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

VA4REI (Virtual Assistants for Real Estate Investors), is a company specializing in providing virtual assistant services to real estate investors.

The company has been operating since 2010. They have a team of assistants trained and experienced in the US real estate market and can handle everything from your website to your real estate listings.

About VA4REI

The company was founded in 2010 by Alex Garcia. Alex has experience in the US real estate market, and in 2011 collaborated with Duncan Weirman of The Weirman Group in Greenville, South Carolina. Then in 2013 partnered with Tim Cook of TMC Property Solutions in Weatherford, Texas.

This means VA4REI is spearheaded up three real estate experts with a considerable amount of experience in the real estate field.

Although they have experience in the US market, VA4REI’s employees are based in the Philippines. This enables them to offer competitive hourly rates. When you sign up you will be assigned a dedicated virtual assistant, as well as being introduced to their supervisor who will be overseeing their work.

Services

VA4REI group their services into the following categories:

Inbound and outbound calls
CMA research
Broker’s price opinion
Website management
Web creation
Squeeze pages
Client services
Data entry
Database or CRM management
Email management and marketing
Online marketing
Business directory submission
Property listing management
Blog posting, press release, and news articles
Lead generation
Social media management
Keyword research
Search engine registration
Search engine optimization

As you can see, their VA’s cover everything from building and maintaining your website, to handling calls, and managing your property listings.

There is a simple 3-step process when you sign up:

Complete a form on their site with all your details and one of their service representatives will contact you within 24-hours.
Their representative will run through a plan of action based on your requirements. When you are happy you can agree and make payment.
Once payment has been received you can start working with your VA, communicating by email, Skype, or a channel of your choice.

VA4REI Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

When you sign up with VA4REI you pay a non-refundable setup fee of $199. Use code VAA10 for a 10% discount off the setup fee. Then you have a choice of four different packages:

Starter – $139 billed bi-weekly. Includes 40 hours of services at $6.95/hour (10 hours per week)
Professional – $259 billed bi-weekly. Includes 80 hours of services at $6.47/hour (20 hours per week)
Business – $379 billed bi-weekly. Includes 120 hours of services at $6.32/hour (30 hours per week)
Enterprise – $459 billed bi-weekly. Includes 160 hours of services at $5.74/hour (40 hours per week)

So they’re not really all about the volume discounts, but that’s fine; the rates are quite competitive, even for a Philippines-based service, and especially starting at the 10 hours per week package.

Use code VAA10 for a 10% discount off the setup fee.

VA4REI Alternatives

There aren’t many virtual companies specializing only in the real estate market, although a lot of companies do offer real estate support as part of their VA services.

My Outdesk, VA Staffer and Task Bullet are three virtual assistant companies offering similar pricing and real estate services within the skillsets of their VAs

Closer to home, you might consider UAssist.me out of El Salvador. They serve a lot of clients in the real estate field as well and have generated plenty of positive feedback.

When I asked what separates VA4REI from the other companies in this space they said there are two things. One is their rates being lower than most competitors, and the other is that their virtual assistants are trained and experienced in the US market real estate market.

If you are looking for real estate support fill out their contact form and arrange a consultation to see if VA4REI can handle the tasks you’re looking to outsource.

Your Turn

Have you worked with VA4REI? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

PicMonkey

Posted by Mica Harvey / Graphic and Web Design Services

PicMonkey is an online tool that allows users to edit photos, carry out some graphic design, create collages, and more. It’s not a virtual assistant service per se, but more like an easy-to-use online software that lets you do your own graphic design work.

Image editing and graphic design can be expensive costs to a small business, so PicMonkey enable users to create their own images with limited experience and technical knowledge required.

The company has been business since 2012, and their headquarters are in Seattle, WA.

About PicMonkey

The company was founded in April 2012 by two former Picnik engineers, Brian Terry, and Justin Huff. Picnik was a photo editing site and the company joined forces with Google in 2012. After learning that Google were planning to close Picnik in 2013, both Brian and Justin decided to leave and create PicMonkey.

With a goal of starting the company to be a “more efficient and feature-rich replacement” for Picnik, PicMonkey fast became one of the most popular online photo editing sites. The owners also had additional backing from some other former “Picnikers”, Jonathan Sposato (CEO), Lisa Conquergood, and Charlie Whiton.

PicMonkey’s headquarters is in Seattle, WA, and they have a regional office in New Zealand.

Services

They offer a range of photo editing options. You can easily make just about any change you want to an image, and with limited knowledge and experience with graphic design or photo editing software.

I know because I’ve been using PicMonkey for quite some time to create social media graphics for another one of my sites!

Some of their features include:

Image Editing – You can crop, color, rotate, sharpen, and resize images with just a few clicks.

Touch Up – There are a range of options to make changes to high-quality photos. From eye-brightening and teeth whitening, to removing wrinkles, you can make sure you’re looking your best for your professional photos.

Graphic Design – You can create graphics from scratch. PicMonkey has some templates to help you get started too.

Collage – You can make a collage of several images, resizing and moving them around to create the arrangement you want.

What I use the service most often is to quickly add text to an image with a wide variety of different fonts.

The control panel is user-friendly, it’s easy to navigate around the site, and there are a lot of instructions and hints to help out beginners. If you’re not experienced with any form of graphic design or photo editing software you should find using this service intuitive and easy to pick up.

Plans and Pricing

For the most part, PicMonkey is free to use. They do however offer two premium plans, a monthly and an annual plan priced as follows:

Royale Monthly – $7.99/month
Royale Annual – $3.99/month (save 50%)

When you purchase a plan you have access to a much wider range of tools to use while editing images.

The Royale plan unlocks some premium fonts, and all the ads are also removed when you’re logged in.

There is a 7-day free trial on both Royale plans.

PicMonkey Alternatives

There are some alternatives to PicMonkey worth checking out. Canva is probably the closest competitor, offering user-friendly graphic design tools and image editing options, though I found the interface harder to understand than PicMonkey’s.

Other options to consider include Piktochart to create your own infographics, and Pixlr offers similar services to PicMonkey.

If you’ve given PicMonkey a shot and still want to hire someone else to do your graphic design work, check out these options here.

Your Turn

Have you used PicMonkey to edit any of your images? If so, please take a moment to leave a quick review to help others with their decision.

How Do You Know If Your Virtual Assistant is Really Working?

Posted by Mica Harvey / News

How do you know if your VA is really working the hours the say they are?

This is a question I get a lot.

If you’re in different time zones, you might not have much overlap during your days.

There are 4 ways to answer this question.

1. Are they delivering results?

My guess is you’ll be able to tell how much work they’re putting in by how much work they’re putting out.

This would be a “results-oriented” management strategy, one that says I don’t really care what hours you work, as long as the deliverables get done.

But this method involves a lot of trust, especially at the onset of your working relationship.

2. Use the Upwork built-in tracking systems.

If you hire a VA through Upwork, you’ll be able to take advantage of their built-in tracking systems track the hours worked and take screenshots at random intervals so you can “look over the shoulder” of your VA to make sure they’re on task.

Even though I’ve been working with my current VA for more than 18 months through Elance (now called Upwork), I can honestly say I’ve logged in and looked at the tracker twice.

Once when I didn’t find her on Skype during her normal hours, and once again to write this email.

The tracker is there as a safety net. If your VA is spending their hours on Facebook instead of on your projects, you’ll have visual proof of it.

And on the flipside, your VA has proof of their hours worked to make sure they get paid.

3. Use a third-party tracking system.

If you’ve hired a VA outside of Upwork, you might consider a third-party tracking software to help keep watch over your VA.

This can be a touchy subject to broach — some VAs will see it as a sign of mistrust, but others will be happy to oblige because it protects them as well.

The best-known tracking software is TimeDoctor, by Rob Rawson (also co-founder of Staff.com). The service starts at $12 per month and has a 30-day free trial.

However, there’s a free alternative called TimeProof from the team at OnlineJobs.ph, that you can use whether or not you use their platform to hire a VA.

It works similarly to the Upwork system in that it tracks hours on the job and takes random screenshots of your worker’s computer.

Related: Upwork Alternatives: 49 Sites Like Upwork to Find Freelance Talent

4. Use iDoneThis.com

iDoneThis.com is a cool software application that sends a nightly email asking what you got done today. You just type out a quick reply and the system logs your responses.

It’s $5 a month per user for teams, so you can set it up to have it sent to your VA each day to get an overview of what they accomplished.

So which method is best? Like a lot of things in this business, it depends on your comfort level and trust.

Perhaps the best way is to have some sort of tracking system to keep everyone honest, but not to spend much of your time checking it — because that micromanaging would be counterproductive to why you hired a VA in the first place.

123Employee

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Employees

123Employee is one of the largest outsourcing firms in the world, with more than 350 virtual assistants working with clients all around the globe.

The company started its operations in 2006 with just ten employees, but has seen tremendous growth following a simple mission of helping small to medium sized businesses get more done at affordable rates.

They now operate 3 different outsourcing centers in the Philippines.

About 123Employee

The physical offices of 123Employee.com are located in the Philippines, and they have American managers on-site. This VA firm offers hard-working Filipinos the opportunity to use their outstanding skills, while enabling American businesses to increase their productivity at minimal costs.

In contrast to many virtual assistant companies who seem to try and remain anonymous, I really like how 123Employee features real VAs in their real offices. While there’s still a little bit of stock photography lurking around, it’s clear the workers and founder Daven Michaels like to have fun too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k2sTSZIQIg

Services

The virtual assistants from 123Employee offer professional help with:

• Customer Support/Service
• Research / Datamining
• Database admin
• Telemarketing
• Video Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Social networking
• Facebook fan pages
• Personal assistance

How it Works

Businesses provide their job descriptions and 123Employee matches them with candidates having relevant education, skill level, and experience and then allow the businesses to interview and select the best candidate. This is a great advantage over other firms that simply assign you a VA based on whoever is available.

You are in control of your VA’s working hours to match your time zone if necessary.

123Employee Intro Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drDMo2XyAOo

Plans and Pricing

If you sign up for 123Employee, you’ll get a dedicated virtual employee, with all the office infrastructure and support you’d expect at no additional cost.

123Employee.com offers 3 different Small Business VA plans, ranging from 10 hours a week to 40 hours a week:

Silver – 10 hours a week, $497 per month ($12.43/hr)
Gold – 20 hours a week, $797 per month ($9.96/hr)
Platinum – 40 hours a week, $1287 per month ($8.04/hr)

The mid-level Gold plan is the most popular offering, and is the equivalent of adding a half-time employee. All plans require pre-payment via credit card after you hire your virtual assistant.

These rates are competitive but perhaps a little on the higher end to support the management layer and added infrastructure investments.

One downside to 123Employee is the one-time admin fee of $199 per employee, which covers everything the employee will use (chair, desk, phone line, computer, etc.). Many other VA companies have the same overhead expenses, but few charge this fee.

At press time, there’s an offer for 30 hours of free virtual assistant service plus an audio version of Michaels’ Outsource This! book.

Beyond the set-up fee and recurring monthly charges, there are no hidden fees or long-term contracts. You can cancel anytime.

If you selected “Enterprise” on their homepage, the story is a bit different. You’ll find a site that’s more call center-focused where you’ll have to contact them to get a pricing quote.

123Employee Alternatives

The trend among VA companies in the Philippines is to hire home office-based staff, so 123 is a strong entry if you prefer an assistant working from a dedicated office environment. (VA Staffer would be another to consider.)

If you’re comfortable with a home-based VA, you might check out Chris Ducker’s Virtual Staff Finder, a virtual headhunting service, or John Jonas’ OnlineJobs.ph, a virtual job board.

And if you’re not married to the Philippines, Uassist.ME out of El Salvador might be worth a look as well. Their 20-hour a week plan is similarly priced.

Your Turn

Have you worked with 123Employee.com? We’d love to hear about your experience in the reviews below.

Blog Hands

Posted by Mica Harvey / Content Writing Services

Blog Hands is a content creation service company based in Pittsburgh, PA. The company was in BETA all through 2015 and officially launched in March of 2016.

They have a small team of project managers, editors, and writers based in-house, as well as utilizing freelance writers all over the world. Blog Hands cite this mix of internal and virtual staff as the reason they can cover all kinds of content orders and work with clients all over the world.

About Blog Hands

The company is headed by founder Chris Hornak. As an entrepreneur, Chris started the company after spotting a pain point saying, “Blogging is an essential strategy to virtually any digital marketing campaign, yet developing content on a consistent basis is a real chore.”

With this in mind, Blog Hands isn’t a single article ordering service like iWriter or Hirewriters. Blog Hands offer monthly packages to keep a constant flow of fresh content coming. Their ideal clients are business owners and businesses of any size, if you need content, Blog Hands can provide it.

Producing content is one of the most time-consuming tasks for any digital business. There is typically a correlation between the amount of quality content produced and the growth of a business online. Using a content creation service is much more cost-effective than hiring a team of writers and editors in-house.

Services

Blog Hands have a team of pre-qualified writers with a wealth of experience across a variety of industries. You can request any form of content, from creative writing, technical writing, to interesting and informative blog posts. By providing them with clear communication you will receive well-written articles on a monthly basis.

As a client you are provided with a dedicated assistant to handle the communications between yourself and their team. There is a 4-step plan in place from signing up with Blog Hands to receiving your content:

Step 1 – Choose your plan (amount and length of blog posts).
Step 2 – Answer some questions about your blog to help the writer understand your content.
Step 3 – Your writer starts working on your articles.
Step 4 – Check your articles and provide any feedback.

Plans and Pricing

Blog Hands charge a flat rate of $0.10 per word, which, according to their website, is 66% lower than the industry average.

What does that mean in practice? An 800 word article for example will cost you $80. Their pricing and plans are split across the length and number of articles ordered.

First, you choose from the following article lengths:

Short – 400 words and $40 each
Classic – 800 words and $80 each
Long – 1,200 words and $120 each
Epic – 2,000 words and $200 each

Then you choose how many articles you want for the month. The minimum order amount is 4 — basically one a week — and the order amounts increase in increments of 2.

For example, four 800 word blog posts a month will cost you $320.00.

Blog Hands Alternatives

An alternative highly rated company offering a monthly article writing subscription service is Copywriter Today. The service allows for “unlimited” article requests each month, and is only throttled by the set turnaround times per article. If you can stack up your requests and take full advantage of Copywriter Today’s US-based writing staff, I’m confident your per-word rate will be much lower than $0.10.

If you’re not sure you want to commit to a monthly content creation plan, check out an on-demand content service like HireWriters (cheaper) or Scripted (not so cheap).

Your Turn

Have you ordered content from Blog Hands? If so, please take a moment to leave a quick review to help others with their decision.

Textbroker

Posted by Mica Harvey / Content Writing Services

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.

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.

Plans and Pricing

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.

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.

Quality Control

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.

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.

Related: My Outsourced Content Writing Process: A Step-by-Step Guide

TextBroker Alternatives

I’ve also purchased copywriting from Fiverr, HireWriters, and more recently, Copywriter Today.

	Copywriter Today	Fiverr	HireWriters	Textbroker
Customer Rating				not yet rated
Established	2014	2010	2012	2005
Minimum Cost (500 words)	$265 per month	$5	$5	$7.50
Type of Service	Subscription	A la carte articles	Pre-screened writers; varying quality	Pre-screened writers; varying quality
Best for	Agencies, ongoing content needs	One off, quick work	Inexpensive filler content	Connecting with reliable writers
Notes	First article free	Check Fiverr Pro for better quality	25% bonus on first deposit	Pricing is per-word
Learn more	Learn More	Learn More	Learn More	Learn More

Your Turn

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

Staffry

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Staffry is a Pakistan-based virtual assistant company and have been in operation since March 2016. They provide dedicated virtual administrative support to business owners and entrepreneurs and aim to allow them to “focus on growing their business and not running it.”

About Staffry

The company was founded in 2016 and the owners have considerable experience with freelancing and hiring virtual assistants. The company is based in Pakistan, with all of their staff working from their offices in Karachi.

Their target customers are business owners of any size and entrepreneurs looking to reduce employment costs and avoid the hassle of staffing.

When you purchase some hours with Staffry and submit your tasks you will be assigned a dedicated 1-on-1 virtual assistant. This enables you to build up a relationship with your VA, reducing the need to repeat yourself or explain tasks over.

Staffry Services

Staffry describe their services as back office or complete administration support. They offer:

Email Management
Calendar Management
Monthly Expenses
Research & Presentations
Word Processing & Transcriptions
Data Entry
CRM Management
E-commerce Support & Inventory Management
Order Processing
Account Management
Project Management
Personal Assistance

It’s important to remember that when you’re working with a virtual assistant it’s hard to categorize all of their skills. You get a more accurate gauge on their skills by communicating with them and working through some tasks.

Staffry Plans and Pricing

Staffry offer retainer plans are as follows:

Entrepreneur – 20 hours per month – $299 ($14.95 per hour) Help with small tasks to keep you on top of things.
Startup – 40 hours per month – $499 ($12.75 per hour) Reliable back office support for your startup.
Small Business – 80 hours per month – $899 ($11.23 per hour) Part-time help with everyday business tasks.
Team – 160 hours per month – $1599 ($9.99 per hour) Full-time help to handle the most demanding workloads.

As you can see, the hourly the rate reduces the larger the plan you purchase so there are some savings to take advantage of. Your unused hours are carried forward at the end of the month too, and those “rollover hours” aren’t something you normally see at a VA company.

VAAExclusive: Use referral code VAA for 10% off your first month on any retainer plan.

Staffry Alternatives

Staffry have a very similar pricing structure to My Tasker and Ask Sunday, two virtual assistant companies based in India that are able to offer competitive rates. I suggest checking out these two companies for comparable quotes and skillsets.

Also in Karachi, Efficise has a number of dedicated assistant business plans at similar rates, plus the option of a task-based plan as well.

When asked what sets them apart from their competitors, Staffry said they offer dedicated assistants, no hidden charges, precision billing, and all unused hours are rolled forward at the end of the month, and don’t feel like other companies are offering all of these options.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Staffry? If so, please take a moment to leave a quick review below to help others with their decision.

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