When you’re looking at your list of potential tasks to delegate or outsource, you’ll find that the items fall into one of two categories:

1. Stuff you know how to do, but your time would be better spent elsewhere.

2. Stuff you don’t know how to do, but needs to get done.

A few weeks ago I told you about my current virtual assistant “stack”. Nearly everything on that list fell into the first category: stuff I know how to do and very easily could do myself.

Years ago, I really struggled with this type of delegation. Why pay someone to do work I could do myself? 

And of course that question leads to the classic time arbitrage discussion of getting work done for a lower hourly rate so you can focus your time on higher value activities.

You already understand that argument, so I won’t dwell on it here.

Still, it’s a challenge (at least for me) and it might be helpful to categorize some of your tasks in this way.

The second type of delegation is MUCH harder.

If you don’t know how to do the work you’re asking your virtual assistant to do, how will you explain it to them?

How will you know if they’re qualified?

How will you know if they’re doing it right?

This is where I’ve run into trouble, especially when trying to outsource large-scale technical projects. Sure, I drew up the project specs as best I could, but could I really tell if my contractor knew the best way to deliver the work?

(I feel the same way when I take my car to the shop. “Sir, we inspected the vehicle and found your front drive shaft power steering discombobulator is worn out. I recommend replacing it immediately.”)

OK, if you say so.

There are a couple ways around this.

The first is to get a second or third or fourth opinion. If you approach each VA or contractor or outsourcing company with the same goal or desired outcome, you can compare their proposed solutions apples to apples.

The ones who take the time to understand your problem and desired destination are probably the ones that will be best to work with long-term.

The other method is to learn the process yourself first. For example, if I want to delegate my social media marketing, I can take the time to learn the strategies and tactics, and develop the processes and the documentation around them.

Then I’m in a much better position to train a VA to take over those tasks, and can probably find someone more affordable than if I was hiring for the “strategy” portion as well.

The tradeoffs are time and money. The first method is faster but more expensive, while the second is slower but cheaper.

But there aren’t any shortcuts, at least that I’m aware of.

Your Turn

Do your delegation efforts focus on the tasks you know how to do but shouldn’t be doing, or the tasks you don’t know how to do? Or both?

A member of my mastermind group asked me recently what my current virtual assistant “situation” looked like.

It made me realize I hadn’t thought about it in a while and have added quite a few helpful resources to it over the past year.

This is my current outsourcing “stack” set-up.

So here goes…

Non-Dedicated Assistants

Fancy Hands

Fancy Hands is a US-based task assistance service starting at $30/mo. I’ve been a Fancy Hands member for years, and have used them for help with research, data entry, proofreading, and lots more.

Primarily what they do for me today is respond to the virtual assistant survey submissions on VirtualAssistantAssistant.com. Based on the responses, I have several templates of suggestions, and the cool thing is it’s all automated and on average they reply much faster than I used to when I was (ironically) doing it all myself.

Dedicated Assistants

OkayRelax

OkayRelax is kind a hybrid model between a task-based, team-based service like Fancy Hands and a fully dedicated assistant.

You still get a bucket of tasks to submit each month (25 tasks for $50), but you’re assigned a single dedicated assistant. That means turnaround times may be slower than with a pooled service, but hopefully you can realize the advantages of a dedicated assistant like trust in your business, some specialized training, and more consistent quality performance.

Right now I’m having my assistant John focus on research and data entry tasks, but am looking forward to expanding our relationship this year.

MyTasker

MyTasker is a helpful India-based VA company I’ve been working with regularly for the last year or so.

My dedicated assistant Bhaskar handles a couple recurring daily tasks for me, including drafting some client emails and saving them in my drafts folder in Gmail.

I’ve found the service super-reliable and a big time-saver. Rates start at $120/month.

Specialist Freelancers

Rounding out my outsourcing “stack” are a handful of on-demand contractors.

The person I turn to most consistently is a writer who helps me out with website articles and podcast notes. But in the past few months I’ve also turned to specialists for social media graphic help and of course technical web development support.

I connected with my writer and graphic “guys” through my network and social media, and with my most recent web development project guy through the Codeable marketplace.

Your Turn

What’s your current virtual assistant set up look like?

Traveling can be stressful and time-consuming, so I wanted to share a list of the stuff I try and offload when I’m on the road.

1. Hotel and Flight Research

In this case, I’m staying at the conference hotel, but I often don’t because it’s sometimes overpriced.

Hey, I don’t blame them — they’ve got a captive audience.

So I’ll have Fancy Hands look into nearby places that might be more affordable within walking distance. I don’t mind walking a couple blocks to save $100 or more over the course of my stay.

When I’m traveling with my wife, we tend to stay in Airbnbs to have a little more space and get more of the “local” experience. A virtual assistant is great to help you narrow down your initial search and to get an idea of what’s available.

VAA Bonus: Get $25 off your first Airbnb stay.

2. Flight Check-In

I find myself flying Southwest a lot because they have a decent hub here in Oakland. But because of their cattle call boarding, it sucks to get stuck with the dreaded “C Pass” and have a middle seat in the back.

I get around this by having Fancy Hands check in for my flight 24 hours in advance. It’s one less thing for me to have to remember to do, and especially useful while I’m at a conference or event and don’t want to be interrupted to check in.

An “A” boarding pass every time 🙂

3. Meetup Location Research and Reservations

Although I don’t think I’ll have time for it on this trip, I try and host informal meetups with readers and people I know in the cities I’m visiting.

So far this year I’ve hosted dinner and drink meetups in Phoenix, Washington DC, Fort Worth, and most recently, Chicago.

I like to have a VA do the initial research and if they find a great spot, make the actual reservation.

For my Chicago trip, I trialed a service called OkayRelax, and my assistant Ainee came up with several options that met my criteria:

• Downtown location close to public transport.
• Able to accommodate a group of 10.
• Outdoor patio seating.
• Lots of beer on tap.

4. Check Local “Rules”

In Chicago, the activity I was most looking forward to was a baseball game at Wrigley Field.

Still, you never know what you’re allowed to bring into stadiums these days in terms of outside food, beverages, and backpacks.

So I texted GoButler (a free SMS assistant) “are you allowed to bring outside food into wrigley field?”

Right away they responded with a detailed outline of what was and was not allowed to bring into the ballpark.

(Yes, our food was allowed, but we made sure to get a Chicago Dog too.)

5. Suggestions of Fun Things to Do

Sure, I could go on TripAdvisor myself, but occasionally this request uncovers some cool lesser known attractions.

Last year in Spain, the Fancy Hands assistant who picked up the task happened to have done a study abroad semester in Madrid and had some fun suggestions for us.

I’m OK “burning” a request on something like this to see what comes back. I know, pretty wild. That’s the extent of my gambling persona 🙂

6. Airport Transportation Options

I always feel more confident if I know exactly where to go and what to do once I land. For that reason, when I’m arriving at an unfamiliar airport, I like to have a virtual assistant research my ground transportation options.

The results vary like crazy. In Fort Worth, my best option turned out to be a Lyft ride across town for $43. When I land in Charlotte tomorrow, an airport express bus will drop me 4 blocks from my destination for $2.20.

Bring exact change, they advised.

VAA Bonus: Get $20 off your first Lyft ride.

7. Keep the Wheels Spinning While I’m Away

Keeping tabs on the business and being available to help put out fires while I’m gone is probably the most important travel task.

Having that assistant (or assistants) on hand makes the trip much more stress-free, and in some cases, enables the trip in the first place.

What I Don’t Outsource

I still haven’t had a VA complete a plane or hotel reservation on my behalf.

That’s just one thing I really feel better about doing myself, double-checking the dates and times, and just making sure it’s exactly what I want.

I don’t know, maybe that’s being a little controlling and I should relax more, but when it comes to making big and often non-refundable purchases like that that could make or break the trip, I’m OK doing it myself.

What do you think?

Your Turn

What do you outsource when you travel? Anything I missed?

There comes a point in any website redesign project where you “push the button” and your changes go live to the world.

(At least you hope that’s what happens and nothing breaks!)

A couple Saturdays ago was that day for the redesign of the VirtualAssistantAssistant.com site. We picked that day because it’s historically the lowest traffic day of the week, so if anything did go wrong, at least fewer people would see it.

And as expected there were a few bugs and errors, but for the most part the transition has been pretty smooth. Yes, the project took a lot longer than I expected it to, but in the end I’m happy with the results.

Here are a few metrics to keep an eye on when you update the look and feel of your online presence.

1. Revenue

Obviously nothing trumps the bottom line, so keep a close watch on your sales numbers before and after the transition.

I don’t have enough data to make a firm conclusion on this yet, but the other metrics look OK so I’m guessing this one should be OK too.

If you see a sharp decrease in sales — even if the old site is ugly — it makes sense to change it back or continue tweaking the new version to make up the difference.

2. Traffic

In your Google Analytics, it will be easy to see if there was a “breaking point” at or shortly after your redesign.

This is always my biggest fear.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

Thankfully the traffic numbers have been holding steady.

3. Index Status

In Google Webmaster Tools, there’s a handy report I use to gauge the overall health of a site in Google’s eyes.

If you login, you’ll see it under Google Index > Index Status. It shows you how many of your pages Google has stored and are eligible to turn up in search results.

Over time, you’d expect to see a slowly upward-sloping graph as you add more content to be discovered.

In my case, I saw about a 5% decline in indexed pages following the redesign. This is something I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on in the coming weeks.

4. Crawl Errors & Broken Links

Over time it seems like certain parts of your website are bound to break, but thankfully there a couple tools you can use to identify the problems.

The first is in Google Webmaster Tools, under Crawl > Crawl Errors. This will help you discover the pages and links on your site that could use some attention.

The other tool I use is a WordPress plugin called Broken Link Checker. After you install it, it will generate a report of all the “broken links” it finds in your site so you can fix or remove them. (The reason this is important is because broken links create a poor user experience and signal to Google that the site is no longer being maintained — which could hurt your rankings.)

5. User Behavior

One thing I like to keep an eye on in Google Analytics are the user behavior metrics like Time on Site, Bounce Rate, and Pages per Visit.

If you see a dramatic shift in any of these coinciding with your redesign, it’s time to take a closer look and what the cause may be.

I had a momentary freak-out when I saw that my bounce rate had more than doubled! (Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who come to your website and view only 1 page before leaving.)

Digging a little deeper, I’m not sure I have any cause for alarm because the other “behavior” metrics didn’t see a similar change. The Average Session Duration and Pages per Session are consistent before and after the redesign, so I’m not really sure what’s causing the Bounce Rate to spike. If those other metrics pointed to trouble as well, I’d be much more worried.

6. Leads

Although this will naturally play into the Revenue number mentioned above, one of the most important functions of your website is to capture leads.

Often, this is in the form of email addresses signing up to hear more from you or requesting some resource. (In my case, the First-Timer’s Guide to Hiring a Virtual Assistant.)

I am seeing a slight decrease in the number of sign-ups (from roughly 4 a day to roughly 3 a day) and this is something I’ll have to play around with a little more — though it’s not a pure experiment since I changed a couple other variables as well.

Your Turn

If you have a website redesign on the horizon, or have recently completed one, keep these metrics in mind.

Anything else to look out for when making website changes?

Last Sunday I posted a new job to Elance.

It was actually to transition the VirtualAssistantAssistant.com site to a new theme and migrate the data.

The last design update was in 2012, so it’s overdue for a refresh!

I found a new WordPress theme I liked, crafted my project spec, detailed out the modifications that would be needed, and posted the job.

Waking up on Monday, I was excited to see what proposals awaited me in my Elance inbox.

This is actually one of the most fun parts of delegation for me, and maybe this is a little heartless, but I really like the “process of elimination” part where I go through and disqualify all the candidates I don’t like.

Straight copy and paste response without looking at the job description? See ya!

Zero Elance feedback? Adios!

Quote too high? Or too low? Goodbye!

Ugly profile? No relevant work history? No thanks!

Making it past this first stage is so ridiculously easy, yet 80% of candidates are eliminated here.

Give me ONE reason why you’re worth a second look. Show me you understand the project. Prove you have the experience to get this done.

Write something personal and have someone proofread it for typos. This is your first impression — and in many cases, your only impression.

The problem was, out of the 47 proposals I’ve received so far, no one has stood out as the clear winner.

Not ONE instilled confidence in me they could get this done in a timely and professional manner.

And it’s NOT a big job (the average bid was $300)!

So now I’m kind of at a crossroads. Do I pick someone I’m not 100% confident in just for the sake of moving forward?

After all, there’s not a ton of risk if they screw it up. It’s a very short-term, one-off project. The dollar figures are low and I can make sure everything is backed up.

Or do I hold out for my ideal candidate — who may not even exist?

Am I being too picky? Are my expectations too high?

I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit toggling back and forth between proposals and profiles over what amounts to a pretty small decision.

In a case like this, where the risks are low, it probably makes sense to just pick the best of the bunch and move ahead. But the paralysis of analysis can be pretty, well, paralyzing.

What would you do?