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Creating Content while Being Mobile with the Help of Dropbox and a VA Has Never been so Easy

by Francis
(May 31, 2013)

All you need to create content is your mobile phone and a virtual assistant

All you need to create content is your mobile phone and a virtual assistant

I have found an android app which makes it even more easy to record blog posts on the run. It is called SkyRecorder.

Why Is This App So Cool?

The cool thing about this app is I need only 2 taps to:

  1. Create a recording,
  2. Upload it to my Dropbox,
  3. Have it transcribed,
  4. Proofread,
  5. Formatted,
  6. Illustrated,
  7. And uploaded to my blog

Each Step in Detail:

Step 1 – I open my app.

Step 2 – I tap on Start Recording.

Step 3 – I record my blog post.

This can be anywhere. It can be in my car, I don’t need my hands. It can be anywhere when an idea strikes me.

Step 4 – Tap a second time to stop the recording. That’s all!

Step 5 – The app synchronizes with my Dropbox in case wireless LAN is available. That’s important because it doesn’t use my data connection too much only when I’m having wireless available. Then the app synchronizes with my Dropbox right away.

Step 6 – My Dropbox folder where the recording is synchronized to, is being shared with my virtual assistant.

Step 7 – My virtual assistant sends the recording to my transcriptionist.

Step 8 – My transcriptionist creates a transcript from the blog post.

Step 9 – My virtual assistant proofreads, illustrates, integrates the post and creates it on my website.

Step 10 – The work is done.

Time Savings of At Least 90%

I think it’s a conservative estimate to say that I save 90% of my time when I’m creating blog posts this way.

Sure, the blog posts are not as crafty as an article where I’ve sit an hour above and re-wrote and re-edited it without end. But it is a valuable written content.

Record Your Ideas While They Are Fresh

How often have you had an epiphany – a moment of absolute genius?

A great thought that crossed your mind. Did you have a pencil and paper ready to jot that thought down?

If yes, did you do it every time?

How many good ideas have been lost forever because you didn’t have a tool handy to push that great idea out into the world?

Well, for me, I feel I have found the solution.

The combination of great gadgets, the never endingly useful tool, Dropbox, and a clever use of a team of virtual assistants makes great productivity and works that content creation possible for me.

What do you say? Is this a method you would like to use?

Please leave a comment in the section below.

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What’s a Personal Assistant? What’s a Virtual Assistant?

by Francis
(May 31, 2013)

virtual assistant with a headset

Where is the difference between a personal assistant and a virtual assistant?

In my opinion, those two terms are pretty similar. But I’ll explain to you how I think we should make a difference between those two terms.

Where a Personal and Virtual Assistant Overlap?

In both cases, these assistants are real human beings. We are not talking an iphone application here. These are real persons working on real computers and working for you as your assistant.

In general, these assistants are both types of freelancers but sometimes they work together as a team. Be sure to check out my favorite service on how to find both sorts of assistants.

Where’s the Difference between a Personal and Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant can do everything virtually especially working on your online presence or websites. My main assistant with whom I have been working most of the time is, in the sense of the word, a virtual assistant.

A personal assistant on the other hand helps you with personal matters. He helps you organize your calendar. He helps you organize meetings. He can also help you to plan a travel.

Of course, you can ask your personal assistant to research a picture for your website. Or, you can ask your virtual assistant to do some research on a vacation location. But in general, it makes sense to separate those two jobs.

What Was My Experience of Having A Personal Assistant?

I’ve had two main personal assistants which are worth mentioning with whom I’ve worked together for at least one year.

One was from India and the other was from the Philippines. Both were very nice, understanding, extremely fast to respond to my requests and we interacted on a more personal level.

After I have trained them enough, they had access to many of personal information and could help me organize that.

Does someone who’s Not a Big CEO or Very Rich Would Need a Personal Assistant?

In my opinion, there’s always room for improvement in your life. You can improve your efficiency. You can get more organized especially if you are chaotic like me. You can get more done simply by knowing that your personal assistant is supporting you.

Must you pay a hundreds of dollars per hour for a personal assistant?

Not necessarily. I have found that hiring assistants from overseas can be much more affordable.

Your Thoughts about the Difference on Personal and Virtual Assistants.

Please let me know if this differentiation between personal and virtual assistants makes sense to you.

Are those definitions you can understand and relate to?

Do you think those two terms are simply similar and interchangeable?

And do you have made any experience with one or the other?

Be sure to share this in the comments.

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Can I Outsource My Link-building for Increased Profit on My Website?

by A Visitor

Some time ago, a visitor who is a fellow SBI user wrote a question to me.

“Can I outsource my link-building to increase traffic and monetization of my websites?”

I wrote him an answer by email.

Still I wanted to share the message to you users too.

Here is what I wrote:

I know that hiring a virtual assistant can be a serious ongoing financial commitment. However, if you find it in your budget to hire someone for one hour a day for five days a week, this corresponds for $20 a month.Your budget should be able to pay for $20 of a virtual assistant from Asia for example. If you assume an hourly price between $1-$3 per hour, which is pretty realistic, then you will pay between $20 to $60 per month.

Once you see how much difference it makes having someone help you out for one hour a day using my tips, you will expand from your own motivation. That I can promise to you.

As you save time with formatting pictures, researching pictures and doing other stuff on your website which takes your time that you could well-implement into content creation, you will never look back.

One word about building links:

It’s greatly overrated and you should be very careful to outsource this process. Your best time investment at this moment is into building more quality content. Have a virtual assistant at your site to help you with the research and illustration of your pages and then implement your monetization strategy slowly.

It will take some time until your monetization has paid you back for the cost of SBI! and the cost of your virtual assistant, which will get you there faster with the help of a VA.

That much is sure 🙂

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How My Virtual Assistant Increases CTR and Income on Blog Pages by Illustrating Them

by Francis
(May 03, 2013)

woman working on computer with a thumbs up

My VA has been instructed and is working on posting fresh content to my other website, without me lifting a finger.

(Of course, I check his work periodically. There is never a magic pill. But it sure does save lots and lots of time!)

He has access to my Google Analytic Stats. That’s what helped him determine that the 70% of the most visited posts with an illustration at the top were those with:

  • the highest Adsense CTR
  • the lowest bounce rate
  • the biggest earning pages.

 

How My VA Generates Fresh, Original Content on Auto-pilot

My VA takes care of requesting, managing, paying, formatting and posting articles written by workers on Mechanical Turk.

I prefunded an account he set up (he is from Pakistan), using the instructions on the workaround of getting a requesters account if you live outside of the US.

He then posts the HIT, checks the submitted work for plagiarism and quality, pays and reviews it and implements it.

In addition, he takes care of illustrating the content with creative commons stock photos.

Since I know that, on average, each article on that site earns a certain amount of money per year, I know exactly how much to invest in each HIT, in addition to the working time for my VA.

Using this set up, I arrive at an ROI of roughly 200% after one year.

This Strategy Can Work for Any Niche

No matter what you work on, an assistant that fills your blog or website with new, quality content based on these tips, could easily multiply your traffic.

Doing this all on your own is possible, too. That’s what I did at the beginning.

But there is so much to do…

Having a Virtual Assistant take care of all this is just so much easier.

What do you think? Questions? Comments?

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Use Your Daily Commuting Time Effectively to Give Your Virtual Assistant Instructions

by Francis
(May 02, 2013)

I recorded this very blog post while taking a walk in a park. My team of virtual assistants transcribed and formatted it.

I recorded this very blog post while taking a walk in a park. My team of virtual assistants transcribed and formatted it.

If you are anything like the most of working people, you lose at least half an hour each single way driving back and forth to work. I find it very effective to use this very time to work together with your virtual assistants.

There are several ways you can do that. You can either:

  1. Record audio recordings and send them to your virtual assistant
  2. Or you can use a smartphone or laptop to write instructions or response to his work updates.

Disadvantages of Audio Recordings in Trains

Most of the time, I commute back and forth to work via train. I find it too uncomfortable to record stuff including detailed information about my online business in public. If I talk into my phone, everyone is looking at me in a weird way. Also, I don’t want to risk telling specific information that might put my business in “danger”.

So that’s why I recommend maybe writing notes on paper and perhaps taking a photo and then sending that to your virtual assistant.

Another tip is to use your handheld computer to work on your virtual assistant’s business whilst you are on the train.

Your Daily Car Ride is Optimal to Record Audio Recordings for Your VA

Since the very first time I’ve started commuting back and forth to work by car, not only does it save me time and give me one hour each day effectively, it also grants me total privacy.

It will be easy to mount my mobile phone in the car, set it on voice record and use my half an hour commute travel to record instructions for my virtual assistant. He could transcribe them into blog posts very much like this one or he could implement the work instructions.

How?

It’s very simple. Just ask what you need your virtual assistant to do for you.

For example:

  1. Research this and that topic.
  2. Put together a report in this manner.
  3. Implement my tips and instructions.
  4. Start doing project X.

Instructions like these are recorded very fast. There’s not much time typing needed. So that it can be effective in order to allow your virtual assistant, for example, to use this time on a work instead of losing the time with not working.

How are you using your daily commute time?

I hope these tips helped you manage your time to instruct your VA more efficiently. So, if you have any other idea or wants to share your thought about using your time when commuting effectively, please leave them in the comments.

Comments for Use Your Daily Commuting Time Effectively To Give Your Virtual Assistant Instructions

Aug 27, 2014 Good vibes
by: Jomvie

Wow, that’s the first time I heard~~commuting while relaying some thoughts and ideas. Probably, calls are just too common.

But that’s a good way of putting your time into something useful and advantageous on your end also.

And I don’t commute to work since I am working online, but often when I commute to work back then, I just stare into the horizon and just think of positive thoughts to start my day right..

Feb 20, 2015Works Well Outside, Not Ideal In the Car
by: Francis

Since almost everyone seems to work around with a headset or a mobile phone all the time when going from A to B, it isn’t that unnatural anymore to record audio recordings. However with my sound recording app, I tend to hold my mobile phone in front of my mouth. Not in a natural phone calling position. So I still feel very self-conscious when recording audio messages for my virtual assistants in public.

I tried doing audio recording once while I was in the car. It worked out okay. The background noise was acceptable. The only disadvantage was that I couldn’t turn off the recording while I was driving. Note that in our country, driving and texting at the same is pretty much illegal.

In trains or in metros, I feel that the background noise and prying eyes and ears are too much of a distraction to use the time effectively for instructing your assistant.

Still, nowadays everyone is connected to the internet 24/7. I can check up on the progress of my virtual assistants any free minute I have. And if I need to record something quickly, it is recorded, saved and shared to my Dropbox in a matter of less than a minute and five clicks.

Then if you auto connect to wireless LAN in some of your preferred areas, the file is automatically distributed half away round the globe. It’s pretty effective really, but the constant checking up on your virtual assistants from your mobile phone is probably not the most effective use of your time.

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Outsourcing for $2 an hour is morally wrong!

by Francis
(May 02, 2013)

A portrait of a young beautiful woman having am idea over white background

To be honest, I cannot say that I agree completely with everything that is written here. The lower wage @$2/hr that may typically be quoted for outsourcing to Asian countries is over-rated.

Believe it or not, there are constellations where such a pay is indeed ethical or at least in my opinion.

In some countries, college students that would like to gain a few additional dollars would be excited about earning $2/hour. It will literally be a multiple of what they would be able to earn elsewhere.

Also, working online is often by far not as difficult as labor work, for example. Of course, if you live in a western country like Europe or the US, $2 an hour will and should feel weird.

But there are very different place on this planet… Different cultures and different economies. Of course, paying someone $2 an hour in a 3rd world country will not change the economy of that country for the better.

However, consider this situation:

  • Someone in the US, who is not a high earner, puts aside a $100 a month and pays someone to work for him.

This might be a win-win situation for both of them.

The person from the US with a low capital would not have enough money to hire a professional assistant from the US. The college student from a third world country can find a comfortable way to gain additional money to support his family and his studies.

As he supports his studies, he will have greater chance to be successful when he gets out there and gets a real job. In my opinion a situation like that would be a win-win-win.

Therefore I feel it’s too easy to just say:

“OMG! $2 an hour. How bad is it that?!”

I’d love to hear your opinion and have a lively discussion.

Comments for Outsourcing for $2 an hour is morally wrong!

Aug 28, 2014 one employer is not enough
by: Jomvie

This is the most decent offer for those who are outsourcing their jobs.

Once upon a time, the dollar reached to a very decent amount in Philippine money. And since our economy is bouncing up again for the past few years, so 2 dollars (for me) is not equally right for us dollar earner.

Hard work is not well compensated with this kind of amount, leaving no option for online workers, but to look for another freelance job or project based job. It’s better than sticking to one employer.

And a person who is technically knowledgeable can profit a lot from working online, but if you’re not the techie guy~~you’ll just rely on 2 dollars an hour writing some posts and do some data entry stuff.
Sep 03, 2014 Lower wages are often accepted by VAs to build their profiles
by: Francis

Although for the popular outsourcing service odesk the minimum wage will be increased to 3$/hour soon, until now it has been possible to hire people for down to 0,5$/hour (!)

Although that rate was extremely underpaying people living no-matter-where, there were still applicants taking these jobs.

Why?

They were promised good feedback for “easy work”. Abusive employers will always be able to find such workarounds.

As an employer, I would not want to hire anyone who accepts such heavily underpaid rates. It just shows me how desperate these applicants must be.

And for my business, I don’t need a desperate VA, but an excellent one.

Although there can be some “motivation” behind extremely poor conditions, I strongly believe that it’s the wrong way to go on expanding your business.

About working for more than one employer: that’s always acceptable as long as you are upfront about it to both your employers. Else you will just be tired from working two jobs and, worst-case scenario, end up without either of both jobs in the end.
Oct 06, 2014 Pay scale
by: Robert westhoff

One of the most important variables is the pay levels in the country that the VA is living. If we are starting to pay double to tripple the local rates, we seriously mess up their economies. I pay just a little more. They are happy to have a job, and are happy to have a fair wage relative to their location.

Oct 09, 2014 Economy Status
by: Jomvie

Hi Robert,

Yes, you have a point. But, in my opinion, a double or triple pay is applicable to freelancers. And, for us as monthly dollar earners who rely on one employer will be greatly affected if our economy will go down south.

So, if we can’t have two or three employers at one time, a fixed monthly payment will surely be just fine. Like a monthly payment in peso (our local money). Before, we used to have a dollar exchange rate at 50 pesos, but now it’s struggling to go up in 45 pesos. It’s joggling from 42 to 43. And we are greatly affected from time to time.

Thanks for your contribution by the way, I would like to hear more from you =)
Feb 20, 2015 VAs Will Prefer a Payment in US Dollars
by: Francis

If the local currency is very much changing, like you say the pesos is, then you will probably want be paid in US dollars ideally.

With the US dollar, you have a better chance to know what the value of your money is. And even if your local currency goes down, you still receive the full value for your work.

What I did when I hired Jomvie, is that I asked him which format and with which services he would prefer to be paid. Especially if it doesn’t change anything on the side of the employer, if you are an employer, give your virtual assistant this benefit that he can choose in which currency and with which format and payment service he wants to be paid.

For you, it’s perhaps only learning to use one more payment service. For your virtual assistant, it can make a lot of difference especially if their currency is changing a lot.

To Robert, I want to say that I do not think that paying one or two virtual assistants, in any country, higher wages will have a big impact on their economy. On the other hand, it is probably good business sense not to overpay your virtual assistant if it cuts into your budget.

Try to find a middle ground between a more than solid payment for your virtual assistant and a profitable return of investment for your business.