Experiences with oDesk

by Francis
(October 11, 2012)

If you get started using oDesk, in order to hire VAs or other providers, you’ll soon be tempted to hire more than one person. It’s a smart business move:

You can find out who is the best fit for your business and you can get much more work done.

However, don’t forget that managing multiple people takes time too and a considerable amount of time, if you do it well.

Here is how I work around it in times of time pressure:

I have my one main virtual assistant. He is responsible for many different tasks and I have heavily trained him. I discussed with him if he would be up for managing other virtual assistants for me.

I gave him instructions about how to handle my other team members and enabled his account to get the rights as a Hiring Manager.

This is possible on oDesk. You can, if you trust your long time virtual assistant enough, give him the rights to hire, fire, employ and manage other people.

This is outsourcing on steroids.

Here is where the real power kicks in. My virtual assistant not only closely manages and stays in contact with two additional VAs.

He also gives me feedback about their work and evenly distributes the workload to both of those co-workers. This way, I can get a lot of stuff done in extremely short amount of time.

Especially if you’re pressed for results right now, this is a good tactic to use.

Finding out who’s the perfect fit for your business takes time.

And if you first have to screen through several co-workers one by one, you might not get all the work done that you need to.

My main advice, my main take home message from this whole website is:

Get yourself one trustworthy main virtual assistant.

Train him in the way you have been trained so that in the case of need, he can “replace you” accordingly.

Would you rather do all the managing and e-mail writing yourself?

How much trust do you need to build with your main virtual assistant before you can trust him with your account and with the privileges of hiring people?

In essence, how long does it take before you trust your virtual assistant with your credit card?

Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Comments for How I Manage Multiple Virtual Assistants Over oDesk

by Francis
(I’m actually writing this myself for a change. No voice mail transcription for me today!)

I’m happy every time I see that my VA focusses hard on the work I give to him. Today, he has worked 5 hours without a (notable) break.

Without his hard work, which has been going on for over a year now – or has it been 2 years? – the fast progress of ideal-helper and my other outsourced projects would not have been possible.

I’m writing this post for two reasons:

1. To say thank you to my virtual assistant.
2. To do some writing myself for a change, since I normally use voicemail transcription in most cases to create my content.
3. And to make a sort of “positive rant”.

Yes I know, that’s 3 reasons. Bite me. 😛

Perhaps this is just me being unable to focus for that long.

Perhaps it is a difference in culture, with the eastern countries being more disciplined than the sometimes spoiled west.

I really don’t want to make this a personal issue here. All I know is that I am easily distracted and easy to procrastinate.

Why else would I have a section about being productive online on this site 😉

(Be sure to check it out!)

It IS true that I have worked with dozens of different oDesk providers in my time. And it takes a bit of screening, fine-tuning and training to find an assistant as helpful as mine.

Still, this is possible for anyone. And that is one of the main reasons I built this site.

If anyone visits my site (hey there, buddy, be sure to leave a note at the bottom!), reads what I have to share here, and goes and gets himself a dedicated helper as good as mine – then this site has served its purpose.

Unfortunately, many won’t. And you’ll miss out. Because it’s too “weird”. Or not mainstream enough. Or you don’t know yet what to do with a VA.

(Saving tons of time, anyone?!)

But I can’t force you, of course. 😉

And this is not what this post is all about. I just wanted to acknowledge what I saw in today’s Work Diary in oDesk. And that it is by far not the first time I saw this high productivity.

This is not the first time this happened. As my virtual assistant discussed in this recent blog post, I (his employer) should not overestimate his productivity.

I say he is just modest.

So here is a big “thank you” for today’s hard work 🙂

Comments for My Virtual Assistant works extremely focussed – This alone is priceless

by Francis
(October 06, 2012)

oDesk makes its money by charging 10% to all the transactions in addition to the cost of the work for the employer. So you might ask yourself the question: Can the employer pay you without using the time tracker in oDesk?

In principle, he could. However, this is against the terms of service of oDesk. If they know you are doing this, they can close the account of the employer or the contractor without any further notice.

Also from the one case I know it really happened, it is a permanent ban from the oDesk’s services. You will never ever be able to join the service again.

Is that worth it? I doubt it.

Sure the employer would economize a small amount of money when they would not use the oDesk tracking system. However, using the time tracker in oDesk has other advantages.

The screenshots from the work of the assistants are very useful not only for supervision but also for feedback for the quality of work. This alone is well worth the additional cost of oDesk.

To answer the question, an employer could but he shouldn’t.

Comments for Can an Employer Pay Me Without Using the Time Tracker in oDesk?

by Virtual Assistant
(September 11, 2012)

Today I am going to showcase a very interesting case study. Perhaps most of the readers of this website already know that Francis (Owner of this website and also my Employer) uses screen recording software for providing me work instructions.

Video instructions work way better than the written instructions and now I hardly receive any email instructions from him. After quite a time working together, we both have devised such an automated system so that we don’t have to inform both of us with every little work update which saves a lot of time for both parties.

Today, he shared a video in which he showed me some parts of my work diary on a specific day where I continuously worked around seven hours with two short five minutes breaks.

I was also very surprised to see my productivity because normally I don’t work for such a long period at one sitting. So I reviewed my work diary to investigate about the case.

When I reviewed my work diary, I came to know that apparently it was not showing in my work diary but actually I did take two breaks for 25 minutes each.

If you look at my work diary, you’ll probably not notice unless you pay a close attention to it. Look into the highlighted part of the above work diary, you’ll get to know that I took a 25 minute interval.

How?

Every screenshot of the work diary represents 10 minutes and usually if you stop the tracking time at 6:50pm or at a similar rounded time and the team room application just captures and records this screenshot with a 1 minute activity.

For all oDesk Employers:

If you closely review the work diary of your workers, you’ll get to know that whenever he or she stops working on 3:50pm, 8:20 or likewise, a screenshot for 1 minute activity added to his work diary.

So my advice to all employers is not to consider this type of screenshots from your provider’s work diary. Also do not measure your virtual worker’s productivity from the first and last screenshot of his work diary.

But Still I admit that Francis’ observation was not wrong, because I actually worked for a long and unusual period. There are several reasons why I worked for such a long period.

• Perhaps it was Monday and usually a worker is more productive and motivated on Monday toward the work.
• I have had a scheduled vacation starting from the next week perhaps that was the reason why I wanted to work more and clear backlog as much as I can.

Comments for An Interesting Case Study about My oDesk Work Diary

by Francis
(August 08, 2012)

One year ago, I changed flats and I moved. I wasn’t sure which color I would paint my walls in.

The tapestry which was there before was a bright green and not so comfortable to live in. But I had no ideas about how to theme a room and which colors would be good.

So of course, I turned to my personal assistant Kristine (she is from the Philippines and we were working together at that time) and I asked her if she can give me advice about room decoration.

So here is what she did:

She did a very quick internet research and pointed out different colors and themes for a room. Well, this was inspiring enough – but she also wrote an article about different colors.

I don’t know how much of it was researched from the internet and how much she wrote by herself, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing what mattered is that I had great advice about:

• which colors to choose
• what colors represent a warm theme
• which colors are cool
• which colors make the room look bigger or smaller.

All very basic stuff and for some of you people it might be common sense, but for me it was new and I didn’t have to think about it. That’s the most important thing.

So this is a useful job a personal assistant could have done.

Any questions?

Are you thinking about which colors could be used for what room or do you need tips for gardening or anything that you are not an expert in?

Anything could be solved by some good internet research by your personal assistant?

While you stretch your legs out on the balcony and enjoy the sun, your personal assistant is your faithful helper in the shadows. In the evening, you get an email with all the research so that you can take the best decision for your personal life.

This is just one small example of what a well-trained personal assistant can do for you, but I think it was pretty illustrating one.

It’s clear that you don’t need to hire a separate person only for this task, but if you have a personal assistant already ready for your questions then even smallest questions, uncertainties and ideas can be discussed with a person of your trust. A personal assistant.

by Francis
(July 23, 2009)

Here is the 2nd job I ever outsourced in my life. I still was very cautious about the whole outsourcing process and I did not want to risk anything financially or my time. So I thought of a very small project that I could outsource to oDesk.

At that time, the minimal budget that was possible for a fixed price job was as low as $1. So I went for it.

(Now in 2012 oDesk has raised the minimal price for a fixed price project to $5. But at that time in 2009, it was really cheap to experiment.)

There was a song that was really stuck in my head. I loved to hear it up and down all day long. I was thinking: “what if someone could research for me several variations of the same song? Specifically, several electronic remix variations.”

Let’s take a look at my job description:

I know that I could have done this research myself. Perhaps it would have taken an hour or two for the same results, but I was curious about the outsourcing process and I was a little bit short on time.

So, I posted a job to the category “Design & Multimedia” and hoped that someone interesting in multimedia and music would pick the job up.

If I would do the same job today, I would have placed it into “Administrative Support”, “Web Research” or a similar category. It is a very simple job and many providers who do data entry jobs could have done it.

Design and Multimedia typically has more people who are better paid and therefore do not take a second look at my job opening for $1.

Still, I got two replies within a few minutes, perhaps an hour. The two applicants were called “Ronald” and “Nevelyn”.

I went and hired Nevelyn because I liked her application better. She seemed a nice person. It’s only now that I realized that my very first virtual assistant for a mini task has been from the Philippines.

I had some very specific ideas about the results I wanted to get. I wanted original and special versions of the same song “Heaven”. You can have a look at my job description if ever you thought about hiring someone to do a similar job for you.

Perhaps you have a whole list of favorite songs that you want to get every song variation on YouTube that you can get your hands on?

When I got my results, I was so happy that I was encouraged to continue outsourcing.

If it was so easy to make my life more fun and easy for the nominal amount of 1 small dollar, then I was hooked. I got at least twenty variations of the song which was five more than I asked for. So this provider even over delivered on what was asked for her.

Although some songs were live recordings on YouTube and their quality was not so good to listen to, there were still enough songs that would quench my thirst for this special song for a long time.

Look forward to the next outsourcing case study, where I will show you what else I did on oDesk!

If you liked the idea of outsourcing from this case study, I’d really love it if you would leave me a comment here.

And even if you find it silly that I had outsourced a small task as this, let me know!

There are many tasks that can be outsourced. This was a very very small one.

Comments for Case Study: Outsourcing Music Research. I Liked a Song and I Wanted More of It