UPDATE: MobileWorks Premier is now LeadGenius, a specialized service offering lead generation for B2B sales and marketing teams. Please consider one of these alternatives.
MobileWorks is a California-based outsourcing company that was founded in 2011. Specifically, they brand themselves as “socially responsible crowdsourcing,” connecting a network of skilled workers around the globe with businesses in need of a flexible talent-pool.
Indeed, the young company has already attracted big name-brand clients like eBay and Xerox.
Behind the scenes at MobileWorks is a robust technological platform that distributes work to the human cloud in smart and innovative ways. This technology was developed at UC Berkeley in conjunction with their Computer Science crowdsourcing research program and the Information, Communication, and Technology for Social Enterprise department.
And while MobileWorks primarily focuses on enterprise-level crowdsourcing projects, their personal and small business offshoot, Premier, is definitely worth a look for people interested in hiring a virtual assistant.
MobileWorks Premier
Built on top of MobileWorks’ crowdsourcing technology is an innovative virtual assistant service called Premier.
With Premier, you buy blocks of time each month that can be used for any virtual task. Basically you submit your “project” to the Premier cloud, and a qualified VA takes care of it for you.
In that sense, it’s similar to Fancy Hands, except they can handle tasks and projects longer than 15 minutes and requiring more specialized skills. CEO and co-founder Anand Kulkarni explains:
“We’re a heck of a lot more sophisticated than Zirtual and FancyHands – we can carry out complex, open-ended projects; all our staffers have college degrees; we draw from an international workforce of thousands of people, and we can source a dedicated team of people with specialized skills like programming, translation and writing.”
Because you’re not relying on a dedicated assistant, but instead a global on-demand workforce, Premier is a 24/7 on-call service. (Or rather, “on-email” since phone support is not available at this time.)
In addition, each Premier staffer is certified in Microsoft Office and has signed a strict non-disclosure agreement to protect clients. It’s like a higher-level Mechanical Turk.
The Work
So what kind of work can you get done?
Some examples of tasks and projects MobileWorks Premier has been used for include software testing, document editing and preparation, online research, personal assistant type tasks, and more. Essentially anything that can be done remotely and doesn’t require extensive personal training or explanation.
Pricing
Pricing plans start at $49 a month, for 2 hours of virtual assistant service, and go all the up to a full-time level 160 hours a month for $1499. That is the equivalent of a full-time employee for just over $9 an hour, except it’s not just one employee; it’s a pool of thousands of qualified workers you can tap into as needed.
Premier’s most popular plan is called “Plus” and comes with 20 hours a month at a rate of $299. This is perhaps most similar to the service offered by 24/7 Virtual Assistant, only without a dedicated point of contact and a wider talent pool.
Exclusive Offer: Get 5% off your first month of Premier when you sign up through this link.
If you find one particular Premier VA does exceptional work, you can request him or her on subsequent project submissions.
You’ll also be able to try out the service risk-free, because they offer a 100% money-back guarantee during your first week of membership.
Have you worked with MobileWorks Premier? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision making process.