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Beating Writing Block or Recording Audio – What Do You Think is Easier?

by Francis
(May 3rd, 2014)

What's easier: typing of talking?

What’s easier: typing of talking?

For some time, I have not been able to record audio recording for transcription. Luckily, my transcription assistant from the Philippines is still up and available for doing these tasks.

If you find an assistant for transcription, make sure to keep communicating with your assistant so that you are able to submit files for transcription whenever it fits your schedule.

In my opinion, transcription is the most affordable and, at the same time, most effective investment in outsourcing. All other tasks, worst case scenario, if you don’t have the funds you can do them yourself.

Of course, you can also write yourself. But for me personally, writing and overcoming writing block are the hardest tasks of all. It is much easier to find myself in a talkative mood where I’m able to share my thoughts freely than finding myself in a productive writing mood.

One page I have been holding off to write forever, for example, was my introduction page for the BlockBuilder2 conversion service. My virtual assistant and I are offering to SBI website owners a specific service.

This page was written when I was really motivated and sat down for half an hour or an hour to type. My virtual assistant took care of cleaning it up and making the page more presentable than a rough draft.

On the other hand, recording my thoughts freely is in my opinion:

    1. very honest, transparent and authentic

 

  • easy, fun and does not take a lot of time.

What’s your opinion? Is it easy reading thoughts directly from my head written down on paper, so to speak? Or is the quality of transcribed files so different from what is typed with a keyboard that is not enjoyable to read anymore at all?

Even then, I believe using as transcription files as a basis and then a virtual assistant who acts as an editor to clean up is much more efficient if your business strategy is to build content, for example, than sitting down and writing everything on your own.

This sort of outsourced content writing is still very authentic. It is all you. Or, in the case of you reading, it’s me (this post is a transcribed recording).

This content production is nothing low quality, copied together from the internet and it’s not another person’s voice. It’s literally your own voice you put to paper.

And that’s the big difference between outsourcing your content writing by simply handing off your writing to someone else, who then has just take care of it, instead of handing the technical part of:

    • writing

 

  • Typing;

 

 

  • Typesetting;

 

 

  • Illustrating;

 

 

  • Inserting content into your content management system and so on.

 

It is simply more easy and fun!

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No Real Solution for Virtual Assistants from outside of the US Who Want to Earn Money Using Mechanical Turk

by Francis
(April 30, 2014)

Team members holding puzzle pieces

One of the most popular pages on this website is one where I explain step by step how employers from outside of the US can use Mechanical Turk.

NOTE: This article relates only to employers who want to spend money to hire other Mechanical Turkers to do gigs for them. The article does not relate to assistants who are looking to earn money on the Mechanical Turk while being based outside of the US.

Since I receive many contact requests via our Contact form or our Facebook page. I want to get the word out there via this blog post that we haven’t found a solution or a workaround for virtual assistants looking to use Mechanical Turk.

Application decline reply form Mechanical Turk

I actually did a trial study with my virtual assistant and ask him to try his best to get accepted on this platform. Essentially, it failed. Here is the Email my virtual assistant received from Mechanical Turk when he tried to open an account from Pakistan.

For all assistants looking for earning money possibilities on the internet, Mechanical Turk is not one of them if you’re not based on the US. At least not from the amount of information I have at my proposal right now. Until we have figured out a better solution, I’ll ask you to post follow up questions into the comments.

Comments for No Real Solution for Virtual Assistants From Outside Of the US Who Want To Earn Money Using Mechanical Turk

May 14, 2014 What would help you most?
by: FrancisA visitor asked me to create an account for him and even proposed to pay me for it.

Do you need an account – specifically – on Mechanical Turk that badly…?

Even if you would tell me that you’d pay me for an account, I do not know a way to provide you one (yet). And if I did, that would be a trick that could only work so far until MT figures it out and you lose your open payments…

Tell you what – would you be interested in my team researching an alternative crowd sourcing platform for earning money that can be used worldwide?

I could make an article about that subject.

What other idea/support could we give you if you simply could not find a way to use MT for working online?

Please help us help you, and leave a comment with your suggestion below.

 

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SBI To WordPress Conversion Service and How to Treat Content 2.0 Pages

by Francis
(April 30, 2014)

xsbi-to-wordpress-conversion-service-and-how-to-treat-content-20-pages-21772865.jpg.pagespeed.ic.TGP5XEL0zp

The conversion of my client’s SBI site to WordPress goes fairly well. The requirements of my client are to make the conversion as simple as possible in order to save time and money.

The downsides of this are, of course, that some of the formats from the SBI sites gets lost in this as well as some of the elements on that page. But the client and I are in constant communication so that everything goes exactly how he wishes it to be.

One problem that we have discovered early is how to convert Content 2.0 pages. Content 2.0 pages are connected to their invitations and their tier pages using SBI’s proprietary Content 2.0 system. When converting to WordPress, these functions do not work anymore obviously.

We have two possibilities.

  • Don’t convert any Content 2.0 submission and lose them all.
  • Convert Content 2.0 submissions and, in some cases, drastically increase the time of conversion.
  • Convert only the highest traffic Content 2.0 submissions.

My client chose 1 because he had clear ideas what to do with the content from the Content 2.0 submissions and how to re-purpose all of that. My choice would have been 3.

If my client would have shared his Google Analytics stats or the login data for SBI! with us, as is the case for Blockbuilder2 conversion for example; then we could easily have found out the top 10% traffic bringing submissions and converted them similarly to normal pages.

For linking back and forth from Content 2.0 and inviting tier page, we could simply have created some custom made links back and forth, keeping out all the commenting system and links to non-existing invitations.
If you have a site with many submissions by visitors and are hesitant to convert your site, you are probably right. Perhaps, SBI is the system to stay at. Personally, I love the platform and I will stay here as long as business is functioning right.

But if you have made the final decision to migrate to WordPress with your SBI site then don’t let yourself be held back by a big number of Content 2.0 submissions. They can be converted and being treated like real pages. It is possible to just select those that are bringing the most amount of traffic and then only convert those. That’s probably the best 80-20 effectiveness you can use.

In any case, if you are interested in a quote on estimation for a possible conversion from your site; if you have thoroughly reviewed the pros and cons of such a conversion, feel free to contact us.

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Filling Your Schedules with Hiring a Full Time Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(April 24, 2014)

As you know, we have hired Denise, a full time virtual assistant from the Philippines into our team. She is still in the last week of her first training month. But from the first weeks of working with her already, we were able to learn many lessons that I hope are useful for you if you ever consider hiring a virtual assistant full time.

Managing a Full-Time VA Takes Time

If your assistant is really working 8 hours a day for you, you have to reserve some time on your own schedule to answer questions as much as possible especially in the beginning. My guess is that you need at least 1 hour a day to record into screen recordings to explain what you want and what you don’t want. And, at least, one Skype or phone call a week to get to know your full-time VA better and answer questions in real time.

Believe me, it makes the difference.

If you communicate only via email, it’s very probable that many misunderstandings stay what they are – misunderstandings. A real time phone call or Skype call can clean up many issues.

If your virtual assistant is too shy for a Skype call, and this can happen if you hire from the Philippines; a real time chat via Google Chat is just as effective. Well, perhaps, a little less effective but it still works.

Leveraging a Project Based Virtual Assistant on Your Full Time VA

If you already have worked with a virtual assistant that knows you and that has worked on project based work for you; you can use that to your advantage.

What do I mean?

Let’s say, you have outsourced the project to a virtual assistant with whom you have worked for 2 months. He has invested 10 hours a week working with you. He is not a full time assistant, at least not for you. But this assistant knows you and he knows how you work. Either re-hire him if you like working with him or if you’re still working with him, just expand his tasks to help manage your full time assistant.

What can your project based assistant help with?

You can take your full time assistant by the hand especially at the beginning and explain how you like your communication done best – via email, via updates, which format, which frequency. Your project based virtual assistant who already knows you can take that time off your hands by explaining what he has learned works best with you to your new member of the team.

In other words, outsource part of your managing from your virtual assistant. At least that is what I do and it helps me really a lot.

Reviewing the Work of a Growing Team Takes More Time

Although it’s great fun to see my team working by tracking their screenshots via different sites that track their activity; it does take time to record feedback videos to both of them.

What I’m doing now and I can propose to you, if you are working with several assistants at once, is to record one video in which you talk to both assistants about their updates and screenshots. And then ask them to figure it out which task in the video are meant for one assistant and which for the other.

Ideally, of course in the video, you clarify which assistant should take care of which part of the work. But for you as an employer, this way you only take the time for one video – let’s say, half an hour a day – and your assistants figure out the rest between them.

More Content into the Virtual Assistant Diary

Please expect growing amounts of content and behind the scenes insider information in our diary from my virtual assistant. I will totally submit what Denise has written as her diary updates to me and publish them on the diary. So that you can understand how the cooperation with a full time assistant can be especially at the beginning.

I’m not holding back. There have been challenges. But I think many challenges can be overcome. I can even imaging doing an interview with my assistant, transcribing it and posting it on this site.

I think it can be quite charming if you think about hiring someone full time. Please let me know what you think about this in the comments.

Comments for Filling Your Schedules with Hiring a Full Time Virtual Assistant

Sep 08, 2014 Audio/Video-Mails plus Skype Chat
by: Jomvie Does it sound like a pro and con? You got a VA but the content can’t be accommodated.On the other hand, the idea of Skype/Google chat is a great way of clearing out misunderstandings on written instructions.A combination of audio/video-mails and chat is also a good way of filling in the gaps.

In my opinion, audio/video-mails is best recommended to those who are inclined in outsourcing business.

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Trouble with Internet Connection for my Filippino VA

Trouble with Internet Connection for my Filippino VA

by Francis
(April 10, 2014)

internet-connectivity-outageIn the last few weeks, my assistant Denise was not able to do as much tasks as she planned to do. The reason: a bad internet connection.

The problem of a slow or disrupted connection is quite common with VA’s from the Philippines, and one of the few disadvantages. Reasons can be numerous, but extreme weather situations are often behind the bad internet speed.

I am interested in solving this problem as much as possible, or at least show up alternatives.

How to make sure your VA from the Philippines has little internet problems

The first step is to screen for internet connectivity speed right at the interview. That’s something I actually did with Denise.

denises-internet-speed-test-result
The next idea is to set up some tasks that your VA can do in shorter downtime moments. Examples are

  • studying training materials like e-book´s
  • writing up their daily report emails offline but in more detail
  • Working on online content downloaded locally

And then: implementing the workload done offline after the connection comes back.

What to do if this does not work?

If we cannot figure out the solution to the internet connection, then the cooperation with the VA is in trouble. Without internet, we won’t get far.

Here are some ideas that I still want to try out:

  1. Look for a backup internet connection (with an USB surfing stick) from another internet provider
  2. Finding out how much a faster connection might cost and considering sponsoring an upgrade for my assistant
  3. Using an internet cafe if the connection problems are happening only rarely
  4. Testing the connection with another computer, and if the computer is at fault, setting it up again from scratch.

I’ll also ask my VA for her opinion and ideas about this subject!

Negotiating Screen Recording when Hiring a New VA

by Francis
(April 14, 2014)

Due to time restraints, I outsourced the interview process for hiring new staff to my main VA. During an interview with a new candidate, he ran into an issue. The candidate did not want to use screen recording software for tracking her productivity and work output.

That was a shame since all other requirements (writing skills, English knowledge, as well as the salary she wanted) was “in the bag” during the interview. Only at the end of the interview my assistant mentioned that we need her to use screen capturing software to track her work. That was when she became hesitant and reluctant in the discussion.

By the way, her desired salary was $300 per month for full time work. She is from the Philippines.

My VA carried out the interview with Skype using only chat. It was very visible when she was hesitant, as she took up to 5 min to respond to some questions.

skype-conversation-2345

Interviewing VA candidates with Skype

  • Pro: Would we have skyped with audio, the candidate can’t draw out her answer so easily.
  • Contra: On the other hand, many VAs from the Philippines feel shy talking live on Skype.

It’s inefficient for your business progress when you “lose” many else very capable candidates due to this.

7 Lessons Learned for Interviewing Virtual Assistants from the Philippines

by Francis
(April 26, 2014)

350xNxtwo-persons-taking-a-job-interview.jpg.pagespeed.ic.6DO93GJhOWAfter trying to hire a full time VA from the Philippines from a specialized service, there are 7 lessons you should keep in mind to optimize the interviewing process.

  1. Get help by a project-based Virtual Assistant to be able to keep up with the interviewing process. The hiring manager should boil down the suitable candidates to e.g. a top 3 selection.
  2. Use Skype for interviewing your VA candidates. If the candidate does not want to use skype for calls, then you should consider saving yourself the time for the interview (the communication will be more difficult throughout your working relationship).
  3. Search for multiple candidates first, then do your interviews in batch to find a suitable candidate.
  4. Save time in each interview by preparing your questions beforehand. For multiple interviews, you save time when you don’t need to type all out.
  5. Clarify your budget and the virtual assistant’s salary expectation early in the interview.
  6. Important: insist on the use of screen recording software and daily updates in your first interview. This will also filter out some candidates.
  7. Be friendly in the interviewing process. Take the time for a joke or two. Your candidates are super-nervous. Don’t weed out good ones by being rude or unnecessarily blunt.

New Service Experience: Converting an SBI Site to WordPress with the Help of My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(April 29, 2014)

sbi-to-wordpress-conversion-bannerA client of mine whom I have helped to convert his site from BlockBuilder1 to BlockBuilder2 with the help of my virtual assistant; contacted me recently to help with converting his site from SBI to WordPress.

The task is doable. But if you do the conversion yourself, it does take quite some time. There’s also quite a bit of technical knowledge necessary to set up the first steps before doing the nitty-gritty of what a virtual assistant actually can help with.

The client and I Skyped for over an hour about the subject of this conversion while I took notes. With the knowledge of WordPress my virtual assistant already has, it is a very doable task to support the conversion to WordPress with the work force of my virtual assistant.

In any case, if you are wondering if you should migrate your SBI site to WordPress yourself or if you could speed up this daunting task by hiring a virtual assistant; feel free to contact us.

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6 Facts that Will Make You Wonder Why You Aren’t Working from Home

by Francis
(working from my desk at home)

You need to work for your living, right? So do I. But sometimes I wonder if it really needs to be “the cubicle” from your mid-20 to your retirement. There must be something else, a small voice in my head is pondering all the time.

Then I came across an inspiring article that was hitting the nail on its head, so to speak.

Meeting with my old school friends strengthened my interest in building my independence online

Yesterday, I was invited to a 30th birthday party of a close friend of mine whom I know since school times. Many people I didn’t know then were there, some with children, most with their partners.

As I was mingling and having interesting discussions with them, these topics kept coming up:

  • What is your work?
  • Does it make you happy?
  • Is there anything better out there?

 

A few people had found their dream jobs – one of them was a co-pilot, but the down side was that he had to travel often and sometimes at night.

Many people were exchanging stories of themselves or others that have encountered psychic roadblocks at the beginning of their careers. Stress, mobbing, overhours, burnout.

It becomes so common that it scares me, to be honest.

No wonder I’m thinking there must be an alternative out there, right?

There are many “work-from-home” type info-products out there that don’t work or trick you of your money

young girl working from home

Obviously, I won’t link to any bad examples. But you know these pages where your gut feeling is telling you: they are only after my money.

That’s why I strongly recommend that you do your homework before jumping on any train to get started with working from home. That applies both for virtual assistants as for you, their potential employer.

Whatever program you choose, be sure to follow through with it without getting side-tracked by any other program along the way.

For me, the biggest distraction is to “switch to wordpress”. Of course, there are many advantages with using this platform, advanced designs being the most obvious. But I’m convinced that high quality information is more useful to you, the reader, than just a shiny look.

(Upgrading the looks on my site is still on my to do list, though. And on another sidenote, there is one product I would recommend to you when you use wordpress to build your business – the right way.)

My take on the six advantages on working from home

Be sure to read the article first. Then, see if any of my thoughts to it ring any bell with you…

More time with your family

I don’t have kids yet. But I can only imagine how much less time I would have if I had to take care of work, my online biz, and the needs of a family.

Do you agree that your family should come first? But what will you have to sacrifice if you “have to go to work” everyday and put your family first? Will you be able to spend as much time with your friends and doing your hobbies…?

Since family comes first, why not think about how to minimize the amount of time you spend in your cubicle. Or how to escape the 9-5 for good?

Less time lost commuting to work

calculator with money and notepad

I live in Munich, a big city. Commuting in less than 30 min only works if you live real close to your work place. My workplace is remote, and I relocated myself to find the sweet spot between still being connected to the city and having the shortest commute possible. It takes 30 min, every day, in the morning and evening.

And that’s the shortest I can do!

    • What would you be able to do with 1 hour more every day…? (I commute about 8.5 days per year!)

 

  • What would you like to do with 8 extra holidays per year…?

 

Saving money

I spend about 2000$ on gas over a work year. Not to mention repairs, the environment and the risk of getting into an accident.
Nope, I don’t see how I can discourage myself from the charm of working at home. 😉

Have you calculated how much time and money the trips from and to work alone are stealing you?

A sense of freedom

happy businessman - dancing with joy

To be honest, I feel a bit differently than in the article. When you are free to work without supervision, you need discipline and order. I’m more of a creative-chaos type of person. So some structure and regularity would be beneficial.

But what strikes a bell much more than “freedom” is… peace.

  • Are you being yelled at by your boss?
  • Do your co-workers peer-pressure you into overwork or keeping the breaks short?
  • Or do you have to sell stuff to customers that are less-than-nice to you?

 

Increased health

With all the free time gained I could spend more time buying sweets and watching TV…
Erm, I mean – yes! Doing sports would be great!!

Seriously, if you would go for a walk every day, you would feel more fantastic than if you are stuck in a traffic jam during rush hour for the same amount of time. That’s a no-brainer. (Until then, try to shift your working hours earlier and leave earlier, so that you at least escape the 9-5 traffic!)

Moving to a tropical island and live and work there

I’m not even sharing my super-secret plan of living on an island and lying on the beach all day. Because it’s super secret.
But perhaps you can imagine another dream place to live in if you were free to choose where you live. (And if it’s only to save taxes, or being closer to your family!)

Your thoughts on working from home

A virtual assistant will probably enjoy a few of the advantages mentioned in this article already. Many VAs from the Philippines I have interviewed or worked with make it an absolute priority to take care of their family when working from home.

What is compelling to you when you think a bit more wildly after having read all of this…? Please feel free to comment below. And if you know someone that should definitely change their outlook before stress gets the better of them, please point them here.