AssistNinja

Posted by Mica Harvey / Philippines Virtual Assistants

UPDATE: It appears AssistNinja is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

AssistNinja is a virtual assistant head-hunting company based in Manilla, Philippines. They are a new company, starting operations in January 2018. Although their parent company has been in business since 2015.

They specialize in finding the ideal Filipino virtual assistants for entrepreneurs and small business owners all over the world based on their specific needs.

About AssistNinja

The company is run by Cody McLain, and their target customers are small businesses and entrepreneurs across North America, although they work with clients all over the world.

When you sign up with AssistNinja a member of their team will give you a short survey to fill out. This provides them with all the information they need to find a selection of ideal candidates for you to interview.

How it Works

Unless you specify otherwise, AssistNinja will narrow their list of candidates down to three for you to carry out the final interviews with.

Once you are happy with your chosen virtual assistant they hand over full responsibility to you. You are responsible for the contract you set in place, managing your assistant, salary, and so on.

This is where AssistNinja differs from virtual assistant companies who employ their virtual assistants, manage them in-house, and hire them out per hour.

In this case, you’ll have a much more hands-on role. This gives you the flexibility to negotiate pay, hours of work, and other employee benefits directly with the assistant.

The main drawback however is that there is no one to fall back on if things aren’t working out as planned. That’s why the screening and interviewing process is very important.

Services

AssistNinja will headhunt an assistant to best meet your requirements.

Here are some of the areas and skillsets they specialize in providing:

  • Bookkeeping Assistant
  • Content / Blog Writing
  • General Virtual Assistant
  • Graphic Designer
  • SEO / Marketing Assistant
  • WordPress Developer

Plans and Pricing

There is a one-off fee of $500 payable after you’ve completed a survey and AssistNinja knows exactly what you’re looking for.

They will then present you with three virtual assistants meeting your requirements to choose from in around 2 weeks.

AssistNinja Alternatives

There are plenty of choices when looking for Filipino virtual assistants. Most similar is Chris Ducker’s well-known recruiting service Virtual Staff Finder, though last I heard they were only recruiting general VAs.

If you’re comfortable hiring a work from home assistant, you might also consider OnlineJobs.ph. For a low monthly price, you get access to their entire database of candidates; but you have to do your own screening and vetting.

Your Turn

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

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Athandz Research

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

UPDATE: It appears Athandz Research is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Athandz Research is a Sri Lankan based company specializing in carrying out customized research and business intelligence.

The company has been in operation since 2003. They gather data as per client instructions, filter and summarize the information and return it in an easy-to-use format. This gives clients the information they need to improve on their own KPI’s and the performance of their business.

About Athandz Research

athandz research reviewThe company is based in Sri Lanka. They work with clientele all over the world, with the majority of their clients being based across Europe.

Their services are aimed at companies or individuals who want to outsource any form of research. Searching the internet for information and formatting the results is a time-consuming process. Athandz Research has a team of people who specialize in these areas, and can do this at an affordable rate.

When asked what their areas of specialization were, Athandz said “medical related web research.” Their services are not limited to the medical field however, having worked with clients in the banking, software, telecom, pharmaceutical, insurance and consulting niches to name a few.

If you currently spend a lot of time carrying out research tasks or have a large task coming up, the starting point is to provide details to Athandz along with your budget to receive a quote. As with any virtual assistant services you need to weigh up the opportunity cost of tying up your time against other tasks within your business you could be focusing on.

Services

Athandz carry out a wide range of research and intelligence services. They can gather information on your competitors to help you better understand how others in your industry are performing. Helping you make comparisons with your business, and look for areas where you can improve.

They also carry out all kinds of online research, such as finding news articles, events, products, vendors, and any information as specified by yourself. You can ask for lists of information to help you with research you’re carrying out or help you put together a list of contacts to email.

Athandz Research specialize in the medical niche. If you are in this space you can use their services to data mine and summarize medical information for research and educational purposes. As well as carrying out medical transcriptions, formatting large volumes of information, and performing ad-hoc research.

Athandz Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

Their rates vary per project based on the individual requirements of the task.

Their hourly rate is usually $10 to give you an idea of how much a task will cost. To get an accurate quote I suggest you contact Athandz with as much detail about the tasks you want carried out and they will call or email you to discuss the project and provide you with a quote.

Athandz Research Alternatives

With most virtual assistant companies you will be able to hire a virtual assistant and have them carry out research tasks for you. What separates Athandz Research apart from virtual assistant providers is that they specialize in research and business intelligence. If you are after research only and not the general VA assistance I would check them out.

For general virtual assistant services companies like My Tasker and OkayRelax offer very competitive rates.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Athandz Research? If so please leave a review below to share your experiences and help other with their decision, thanks.

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Lifenzyme

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

UPDATE: It appears Lifenzyme is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Lifenzyme is a virtual assistant company based in Bangalore, India.  They got their start in 2008, and have been helping clients with remote tasks ever since.

The Lifenzyme.com website is a mess. I work with dozens of virtual assistant companies but this one is probably the hardest to navigate. Now I’m not saying that this site has the greatest design in the world, but I’m not the one selling web design and development services either.

lifenzyme reviewAll over you’ll find strange syntax and random capitalizations in the text. I hate to be the grammar police but this is your sales brochure to the world. I found the process-flow charts, service plans, and unfamiliar acronyms really confusing. The promo buttons on their site don’t make much sense. Four months of free service for existing customers? Why are you showing that to me?

Other red flags:

  • Live Help was offline, even though they claim to run a shift during US business hours.
  • At the time of this writing in 2012, the copyright date at the bottom of the homepage was 2009.
  • At the time of this writing, their twitter account has tweeted only once in 12 months.  Prior to that, nearly every tweet was 100% self-promotional.
  • They charge people $35 to join their affiliate program.  Hello? Affiliates promote your business for free, and only get paid you make a sale.  Why create extra barriers to entry?

I would hesitate to sign-up for Lifenzyme based just on those issues. It makes it seem like they don’t understand the needs of their potential clients.

However, their pricing is competitive among Indian virtual assistant companies. Rates begin at $15 an hour and fall to $7 an hour for a full-time plan. You can sign-up for a “full-time” 150-hour a month plan for just $1000. I say “full-time” because normally full time is considered 160 hours a month.  To add to the confusion, Lifenzyme also has a 120-hour “full-time” plan.

The granddaddy of all the Lifenzyme plans is their dual-dedicated-assistant plan, which comes with two virtual employees each working 7 hours a day. At a price is $2350 per month, it’s unclear why someone would opt for that instead of 2 150-hour plans for $2000.

Some of the larger plans allow for rollover time if you have a slow month, and any plan can be cancelled free of charge with 30-day notice.

Lifenzyme offers a 5-day free trial if you want to take their virtual assistant services for a test drive. Otherwise, you might consider My Tasker or 24/7 Virtual Assistant for well-rated outsourced help in India.

If you have worked with Lifenzyme, please share your experience (positive or negative) in the reviews below. Thank you!

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Hire in the Philippines

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

UPDATE: It appears Hire in the Philippines is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Hire in the Philippines is a young outsourcing company founded by entrepreneur Bobby Hicks.

The startup story is a somewhat common one. Hicks, a graphic design and video production professional, grew frustrated with the existing virtual assistant options. In his experience, VAs were flaky, irresponsible, and unproductive.

hire in the philippines reviewBut rather than give up on outsourcing altogether, Hicks thought there’s got to be a better way. So he packed up and moved from California to the Philippines in 2012 to start his own virtual assistant company, HireInThePhilippines.com.

Hire in the Philippines VAs speak English well and are experienced in common business process outsourcing tasks such as article writing, website management, SEO, customer service, and even programming and app development.

The main differentiator between Hire in the Philippines and some of the other VA companies is that their VAs are required to come in and work from the company office. Many other companies employ home-based workers, a practice Hicks believes kills productivity.

Hire in the Philippines Intro Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udGrNCjuMf8

When I spoke with via Skype, he explained how he was in the office every day personally overseeing the virtual assistants — something he wished someone had been doing for him when he was outsourcing. It was also interesting to hear about all the business challenges a foreigner must go through to set up shop in the Philippines.

My takeaway was if Hicks was willing to move halfway around the world to make sure his vision became reality, he’s already shown the “whatever it takes” attitude necessary to build a successful operation.

With HireInThePhilippines.com, you can hire full-time 40 hours a week or half-time 20 hours a week, but you’ll need to have a  discussion with the company first to determine your specific needs. This is so they can recruit the best talent and best fit for your job. Their specialty is in placing long-term virtual employees.

Because of this, the company doesn’t quote prices on their website as the rates can vary depending on skills and experience. Generally speaking (just to give a ballpark idea), a general VA might be in the $700-900 per month range, and more technically skilled VAs might be in the $1000-1200 per month range.

The rates will likely be higher than with a freelancer or with a VA found through a recruiting service like Virtual Staff Finder or Remote Staff Recruit, but the theory is it’s worth it to pay a bit of a premium for the extra productivity that comes from having on-site management and office infrastructure.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA9000 for 10% off your first month!

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

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Outsourcing Blueprints

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Assistant Resources

UPDATE: It appears Outsourcing Blueprints is shut down. Check out Outsource School for an awesome alternative.

Outsourcing Blueprints isn’t a virtual assistant company or even really an outsourcing company at all.  Outsourcing Blueprints operates on a membership model where you have to sign up to get full access to all their step-by-step written guides and video tutorials.

The Ottawa-based firm is an one-stop tutorial shop for all your online entrepreneurial needs.

About Outsourcing Blueprints

outsourcing blueprints reviewFounders Sylvie and Michel Fortin created the site as a resource for freelancers and business owners. As entrepreneurs themselves, they understood the needs of this market and were able to develop their training tools from their own experience.

A popular application (and the reason I’m including Outsourcing Blueprints on this site) is for small business owners to use the tutorials as training tools for their own virtual assistants.

It makes complete sense. You hired a VA to help you save time, but then you’ve got to spend all this extra time training them in the job that you need done. Outsourcing Blueprints says there’s no need to reinvent the wheel; they’ve created step-by-step guides to the most common tasks so you can just share those with your team and move on.

The topics range from article marketing and copywriting, all the way down to list building, keyword research, and webinars.  There are helpful guides on setting up a membership website and even on how to sell your business when you’re ready to cash out. Plus, new guides are being added all the time.

Plans and Pricing

Outsourcing Blueprints membership starts at just $27 per month (a limited time discounted rate), and comes with a 30-day risk free guarantee. If you’re not 100% satisfied you can cancel within 30 days for a full refund.

Your Turn

What do you think? Could Outsourcing Blueprints help streamline your business processes and your relationship with your VA?  If you’ve tried Outsourcing Blueprints, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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Remote Staff Recruit

Posted by Mica Harvey / Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees

UPDATE: It appears Remote Staff Recruit is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Remote Staff Recruit is a virtual assistant recruiting firm in the Philippines. Founders John Paul Grant and Matt Canty are a pair of Aussies who’ve lived in the Philippines for a several years and are very familiar with the local culture and working with VAs.

Based on your detailed job description, their team of expert recruiters will source you three qualified candidates for you to interview.

remote staff recruit reviewLike Virtual Staff Finder, another well-known VA recruiting company, Remote Staff Recruit charges a one-time fee for their services. However, their fee of $297 is approximately $100 less than Virtual Staff Finder’s fee, AND you don’t have to pay upfront. Instead, they’ll source the candidates for you for free, and then you only have to pay when you want to see the candidates’ contact information to arrange the interviews.

Another point of differentiation between the two companies is that Virtual Staff Finder focuses on finding VAs in only 4 main areas of expertise (general admin, writing, SEO, and web development), where Remote Staff Recruit can find VAs across a broad range of skills.

The team recommends Filipino virtual assistants over those from other countries because they’ve found them to be extremely trustworthy, loyal, hard-working, and well-educated. On top of that, the rates are extremely affordable, with full-time help starting around $300 a month (that actually seems a little low to me, but maybe I’m a softie).

Remote Staff Recruit Intro Video:

Remote Staff Recruit goes the extra mile in their proven recruiting process. All applicants are pre-tested and pre-interviewed so you only see the best of the best. The company also does background and reference checks to make sure the VAs are who they say they are.

Remote Staff Recruit also takes care of the salary negotiations ahead of time so you don’t have to worry about that. And if you don’t like any of the 3 candidates, they’ll find you another 3.

After you interview your candidates and select the winner, you can train them in your business processes and you pay them directly as an independent contractor of your business. This keeps the ongoing costs much lower than you would find through a traditional virtual assistant company, although there’s always a certain amount of trust involved with any home-based remote working relationship.

If you do prefer working through a company, John and Matt have you covered there as well with their Remote Workmate operation.

Have you tried Remote Staff Recruit? If so, please share your experience below and help others with their decision.

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RushMore VA

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

UPDATE: It appears RushMore VA is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

RushMore VA is a virtual assistant company in Kolkata, India. They’ve been providing affordable overseas assistance since 2010.

Their modern facility allows them to perform a number of services, ranging from all your standard administrative tasks, to more high level B2B sales and telemarketing. Unlike some other VA companies, they appear to not offer some of the more technical jobs like programming and web development.

rushmore va reviewRushMore is a time-based service (as opposed to a task-based service), which has its pros and cons. On the plus side, you don’t have to worry as much about breaking up your tasks into 15- or 30-minute chunks, and you don’t have to worry about running up against your monthly task limit as long as you still have time left on the clock.

On the downside though, most plans only bill in 15 min. increments, which can result in less-than-optimal usage. To make up for it, RushMore allows up to 30% of your time to be rolled over to the next month if you had a particularly light workload during the period.

With RushMore, you get the best of both worlds in that they assign you a dedicated virtual assistant, but still make their services available 24 hours a day, completing tasks with a backup VA.

The Good

RushMore VA has a variety of service levels at competitive pricing. Rates start at $240 a month for a 1-hour a day VA, and go all the way up to $1040 for a full time virtual employee. What is unclear is whether the 1-hour a day plan would allow for 5 hours one day a week and nothing the rest of the time, or if the work would need to be spread out more evenly.

If you know you’re going to stick around for a while, and can afford the upfront cost, you can save money by pre-paying for a quarterly, half-yearly, or annual engagement.

There is a 5 hour free trial available on all plans.

The Bad

Not being familiar with the company, I submitted an inquiry requesting some more information. It took 16 days before I got a response! And the response wasn’t very useful. I wrote back within a half an hour, and I haven’t heard back since. Not a great start for a business that claims to be open 24/7/365.

There are some other hesitations I might have as well. They list social media marketing as one of their services, yet have no Facebook page of their own, and at the time of this writing, only 1 lifetime tweet to their name. The social links in their footer don’t even work.

Alternatives

If you’re shopping around different virtual assistant companies in India, it might be worthwhile to check out 24/7 Virtual Assistant or My Tasker.

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

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Trade Virtual Services

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

UPDATE: It appears Trade Virtual Services is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Trade Virtual Services is a small but growing virtual assistant and outsourced marketing company in India. They were founded in 2011 by a couple alumni from another VA company.

The company began sourcing clients on Elance but now collects customer information for personalized quotes right on their website.

trade virtual services reviewTrade Virtual Services is staffed with a team of young, ambitious, and helpful professionals to help you achieve your business goals at affordable rates. They work out of a managed office in New Delhi with the infrastructure already in place.

For services, they offer dedicated virtual assistant packages, SEO service, web design and development, data entry, social media marketing, and more. When I spoke with the co-founder, Vijay, he explained the VA service and SEO packages were the most popular.

You can start with one VA for as little as 5 hours a week, or ramp up an entire team of remote workers. Your VA will work in the time-zone you require and you can communicate via chat, email or phone.

The virtual assistant service is sold at $5 an hour, which is quite low for Indian VA companies, especially at the lower-hour increments. Normally you wouldn’t see that rate until you’re committing to a full-time virtual employee.

Vijay laid out the 3 separate VA plans that have been most popular with existing clients:

  • 20 hours for $100/month
  • 40 hours for $200/month + 8 hours free
  • 80 hours for $400/month + ask about a special bonus

There is no initiation fee or ongoing monthly commitment. You keep your VA as long as you’re happy with the service.

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

The SEO package runs $200 per month and includes both on-site and off-site optimization to earn the highest rankings possible for your business. With any outsourced SEO service though, it’s important to understand what tactics they’ll use, especially for link-building, so you don’t end up getting penalized by Google.

The Trade Virtual Services website itself is riddled with typos so I wouldn’t be in any rush to outsource any copywriting or proofreading tasks, but for general administrative tasks or online research, I’m sure they’d be fine. Beyond that, you’ll be able to train your dedicated VA in whatever business-specific processes you need done.

Have you worked with Trade Virtual Services? If so, please leave a quick review below to help others with their decision.

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Team Launcher

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

UPDATE: It appears Team Launcher is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

TeamLauncher.com is a virtual employee service with locations in Miami, India, and the Philippines.  Their claim to fame is the ability to source qualified new full-time workers within 48-hours and starting at just $999 a month.

Team Launcher calls themselves a “talent leasing service,” and their unique business was named one of CNBC’s Top 10 Websites for Entrepreneurs.  The TeamLauncher name is appropriate, because when you need to scale your business quickly, you may be hard-pressed to find a faster option.

teamlauncher reviewI was impressed by the clean and professional look of the TeamLauncher.com website, which definitely makes them standout over the competition.  Isn’t it funny how many of these other outsourcing companies pitch their web-design services on sites that look like crap?

Team Launcher has virtual employees in a variety of disciplines ready to help, including administrative support professionals, social media experts, SEO people, and even designers and programmers.  The price varies by education required and technical expertise.  Rates start at $999 per month for junior positions, and go all the way up to $3999 a month for a “master programmer.”

Regardless of what kind of job you’re hiring for, TeamLauncher is going to be substantially cheaper than hiring someone local in-house.  Virtual employees are available during three shifts so no matter your timezone, you can have support.  The company also boasts a “generous” cancellation policy and you have no long-term commitment.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA50 for 50% off your first month of full-time Team Launcher virtual employee service!

In the spirit of the “talent leasing” theme, Team Launcher also has hourly and weekly plans so you can scale as needed without the big up-front cost.

The other service you might consider is Virtual Staff Finder – they charge an upfront fee for finding your Filipino worker but your ongoing monthly costs will be lower.

Have you worked with TeamLauncher?  If so, please share your experience below, positive or negative.

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DoNanza

Posted by Mica Harvey / Freelance Virtual Assistants

UPDATE: It appears DoNanza is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

DoNanza is an online job board aggregator and freelance database. The company launched in 2009 and is based in Israel. At the time of this writing they had over 370,000 registered freelancers, and over 170,000 projects or jobs from all over the world.

Where DoNanza differs from the other giant freelance marketplaces is that whey make their money from the workers instead of the employers. Elance and oDesk, for example, process every payment, take a percentage of each project, and pass the rest along to the freelancer.

donanza reviewWith DoNanza, freelancers join for free but are encouraged to upgrade to a “premium” membership for as little as $2.17 a month. They offer a 7-day free trial on all paid plans.

Employers can’t even post their own job requirements. Instead, you can search through their database of freelancers based on their self-described skills. The interface for this search feature looks strikingly similar to oDesk, but the frustrating thing for me was that none of the freelancers had even a ballpark estimate of their rates displayed.

However, since DoNanza isn’t concerned with transactions taking place “off-network”, this allows for much more robust freelance profiles than you’ll find on the other sites. Freelancers are free to link to their social media pages and their personal blogs and websites to present a well-rounded view of their professional portfolio and online presence.

There is no built-in feedback or rating systems, though some of the profiles I saw had recommendations imported from LinkedIn.

All in all, I think DoNanza can be a good resource for doing due-diligence from the other freelance sites. For example, you might be able to find out a little more about an Elance applicant if they maintain a profile here as well.

Other than that, I’m not sure I would use it for. It would definitely be a “push” strategy rather than a “pull” strategy, since every virtual applicant you’d find would have to be searched out and identified individually by you, rather than posting the job and waiting for the responses.

The company is pulling in and syndicating jobs listings from a number of sites, including FlexJobs, Monster, Mechanical Turk, CareerBoard, Dice, and more. The aggregation idea is nice, but the weird thing is many of the jobs I found I wouldn’t classify as “freelance.”  They were full-time positions in specific locations, although users can filter to only see those that are location independent.

I suspect they’ll add the ability for employers to post a job directly on DoNanza soon. They have an army of freelancers hungry for work — I mean why not feed them directly?

Have you worked with DoNanza either as a freelancer or an employer? What did you think? Please take a moment to leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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