Employer interviews who have hired virtual assistants and shared their experiences of outsourcing.
Interviews
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How Reliable Google Analytics YouTube Tracking For Online Business?
Google Analytics YouTube Tracking is part-18 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.
Follow along to learn from our experience of working with VAs!
Summary:
- Learn the importance of Google Analytics YouTube tracking for outsourcing business.
- Learn how to setup conversion funnels easily with the help of screenshots and virtual assistants.
- Learn the comparison of traffic conversion and surf traffic with the help of Google Analytic
Start of the Interview:
Eric
I’m trying to look at my analytics real quick to see how much of my actual referring comes from YouTube. It’s not super great.
Francis
But also look at the Google Analytics and see how much conversion comes from YouTube in comparison to your surf traffic.
Eric
How do you do that?
Francis
How do you set up the conversion funnels?
Eric
Yeah.
Francis
Okay, I think that’s something I would have to record perhaps on video or ask my virtual assistant to explain real quickly with screenshots. That’s what we can do. In principle, you go on Google Analytics. On the left side, you have goals and you can set up goals. For example, an Aweber sign up.
If you want to track your mail out manager sign ups in SiteBuildIt!, that’s a little bit more complicated but it’s possible.
Eric
See, I was trying to do that for email sign ups and it just never work.
Francis
Which email sign-ups for Aweber or?
Eric
Yes. Aweber.
Francis
You go to the right and then go to User settings. And then you click on the Admin panel at the top.
Eric
Okay.
Francis
You see there on the right, that’s view and then there’s the page and then you say goals. It’s like a flag.
Eric
Is this in your main analytics or is this under admin?
Francis
Ah, let me share the screen again.
Eric
Okay.
Francis
I think it’s fastest.
Eric
Okay, yeah, that’s where I’m at right now.
Francis
Okay. Oh, that’s good. Then you go here on goals.
Eric
Oh, okay. I see.
Francis
And then you can set up; I think the limit is 10 goals or something. You set up a new goal here and destination like a landing page or an event.
There are some options. And then you can verify the goal. For some, you have to put some code, some HTML code, on the landing page.
Eric
I thought that I did all of that. And for some reason it’s still just never… It must just be something technical that I’m just not…
Francis
Yeah. Perhaps just try out the goal again and by subscribing yourself. If it doesn’t work, do something else. Try until it works. But it’s very useful because then you just see how much of your traffic from where converts into which goals.
Eric
Do you do a lot of tracking like that?
Francis
Not lots. I would like to do more but it’s technical and I think Google Analytics is extremely powerful. And I think that’s also something a very analytical virtual assistant can give you lots of advantage in.
Which of your traffic strategies works out best for your conversions to your most wanted responses? Then you can drop everything that doesn’t work and save money. And increase the efforts, for example, you want to split up between podcast traffic and YouTube traffic and your efforts.
And you know that you are paying 2 full-time assistants, just one $300 and one $500. So you know about how much money you put in. And then you track with Google Analytics how much money comes back.
And then you can make a business decision on what strategies to either refine because you do not master the topic yet or which strategy is obviously more powerful than the other.
Eric
Right. I think that where I am right now is I’m doing a lot of split testing with Aweber forms and trying to really increase my conversion there. But I think I’m really lacking with converting the specific traffic from certain sources like that, like you’re saying.
And I think I need to figure out how to do that a little bit better because there was something that I listened to awhile back that talk about how to really increase your opt-ins and the number of people that subscribe to your list and everything like that.
And that’s also what I’m working on, trying to get the optimal number of people to subscribe and really increase the conversion rate that I have with that as far as my email list, you know what I’m saying?
Francis
Yeah, that’s something I do a little bit; also a little bit with my assistant, but if I could pick your brain about that topic another time, perhaps you can bounce a little bit back and forth about the topic how to increase the conversions on whatever topic with the help of a virtual assistant.
Just Getting Started With A Virtual Assistant For Your Online Business?
Getting started with a virtual assistant is part-6 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.
Follow along to learn from our experience on working with VAs!
Summary:
- Getting started with a virtual assistant by knowing his/her weaknesses and strength.
- Turn your virtual assistants’ strength into profit and reinforce training to beat his/her weaknesses.
- Training your newly hired virtual assistant to be effective in his or her new role
Start of the Interview:
Francis
At the beginning, of course you can make an inventory of saying what skills the assistant already has. If they tell you that he has a WordPress site then you know, of course, that he has quite the skills already.
He has internet marketing basics. He knows probably basic HTML, basic CMS usage and so on. But, if he tells you, yeah, he’s a newbie virtual assistant. Then it’s best to just assume he knows Google Search.
Eric
Right.
Francis
Yeah, but it’s free. So, it’s very good for starting out and also for overcoming any of fear of, “Oh it’s weird to record videos to my computer”
But, when you go over that then you change. Instead of recording 10 Jing videos, you just free talk 1 hour. Time flies when I record videos but then you cover everything.
So, I like to record instruction videos as I’m working so I really load my pages in real time. I don’t pause for that.
I don’t edit out this stuff. Because I think if I take half an hour to clean up my recording somehow and my virtual assistant takes one hour longer to fight himself through watching this recording two times then I’m willing to pay for his time more than I’m willing to use my time.
So, for example this research, I would just open a screen recording or a set of screen recording videos and then I would go. And as I do the work and open the link of a new competitor and it’s loading in my internet, I’m just talking about the background of why I’m doing it to give the assistant a bigger picture.
So, there will be waiting times as we work online and that like you just continue talking either about different ideas, different topics and different tasks or about the background of why I’m doing this.
So, this will help the assistant when he’s doing his own research to support his work. For example, he has to use the backlink checker and then you saying sort of on the sidelines, “Yeah but I don’t mind which backlink checker you use. If you find a better one, just use that one.” But your virtual assistant does not know this without you saying that.
Eric
Right, yeah.
Francis
So, don’t say it, he assumes you have to use this back up check link. And then the next day you have an email reading, “Sorry my country is blocked from that service. What should I do?”
Then you say, “Obviously search for an alternative.” But he doesn’t know. He assumes that you want it especially, in this format, because of some reason he doesn’t know.
If you specify you don’t care which backlink checker you just want the result and actually say, “Please go look for better backlink checker and then use the best one.” This gives him the amount of freedom he needs to skip the next obvious question.
And if you tell him, “Okay, do that.” And then he says “Sorry, I didn’t know how to do that. I’m waiting for your response.” And you are angry because he didn’t just give you the result.
If in a passage, you just say, “Okay, please do that. And if this video is not good enough, you are allowed up to 2 hours of free research using YouTube search and whatever to inform yourself about using the software before coming back to me with questions.”
Eric
That’s something that I never thought about was to just give them a couple of free hours to kind of search for a solution. And I think that probably would have helped me to kind of, first of all, give my virtual assistant a little bit more freedom to where they felt that they could do things on their own, as well as the fact that they could possibly have already found a solution before having to come back to me and ask for the solution for me.
Francis
Yeah. And ideally if you do this in the beginning, later on they will find a healthy solution. So unhealthy would be to go into losing your time for ten hours and researching heavily for technical solution when you can explain that to them in 10 minutes.
That’s ineffective. But if they know that, in general, one each topic they are allowed on 20% of research time to make the project as smooth as possible and that you’re happy with that because it takes you time explaining.
After 2 or 3 different projects, they will know. And you don’t need to tell them anytime. We don’t even need to specify the time.
So, for example for such spreadsheet research, the spreadsheets my assistant or, in general, assistants do are awesome. I don’t know why. But, many assistants from India and these countries, they are masters of Excel.
And that spreadsheet looked really… I have found myself several times wondering if they can teach me how to do that. I wanted a lesson on how to make a spreadsheet like my virtual assistant, honestly.
Eric
Yeah. They do great. Mine did too. They do an amazing job at spreadsheet.
Francis
Yeah. But, at the beginning perhaps, they don’t know they are allowed to do that. So perhaps, when you show them you are working spreadsheet as you do it, then you send them the spreadsheet and say, “Okay, fill it.”
And you would sort of be expecting a great spreadsheet with filtering function, colors and layout and formatting. Perhaps, they will not dare to use the time to do that because you did not specify that to them.
So if you tell them, use the spreadsheet form you’re most comfortable with. In some countries, you will be surprised how much more they over deliver.
So, I like to really specify that when they do the research where they are free to have freedom and where they are not free.
Eric
I definitely agree. I definitely agree with that.
Francis
Yeah, yeah. I want to avoid talking at you instead of talking with you so please stop me when I’m just talking and talking.
Eric
No, that’s fine. I’m gaining a lot from what you’re saying, really, because those are some things that I’ve never even really considered myself. So I’m learning a lot just by listening to you talking–definitely.
Francis
That’s great.
Continue reading part 7 – How to measure productivity with virtual assistant communications?
Learn How To Handle A Newbie Full-Time Virtual Assistant
Full-time virtual assistants is part-14 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.
Follow along to learn from our experience on working with VAs!
Click here to read part 13 of this interview – Part-time vs full-time virtual assistants
Summary:
- Learn how to get started with full-time virtual assistants to do general tasks for your online business
- Learn how to avoid wasting time on repetitive question and answer communication with full-time virtual assistants.
- Learn how to train and work effectively with full-time virtual assistants.
Start of the Interview:
Francis
And since my assistant has worked with me for a long period of time, he knows me. And also, can give her feedbacks. So he said okay, he really wrote that. They were chatting and since I can see the screen captures from my main assistant work diary, I saw what they were talking about sometimes.
And you are saying, okay, so first of all Francis is a nice guy and he’s really patient and he will give you great instructions via video. So, that’s what my assistant told the full time candidate.
And then he was explaining the system. How SBI! works, what my sites were all about, and where my goals are at. I didn’t have to do that anymore. So, this saved me a lot of time explaining.
And I knew about this because I am reviewing regularly the screen captures from oDesk. So, that’s I guess a pro for the project based assistants.
Eric
You’re right. And I think that when you’re first hiring your first assistant, I think that you have to kind of hire that person as a General VA, you know.
You don’t want to think that they can do everything. You kind of hire them as okay, check emails, check I don’t know whatever things, doing research, different things like that.
And you hire a person to basically just do general tasks for you. And then as you start to evolve and your business starts to grow then you can kind of be like okay, well now I’m ready to add people to my team.
Then you can promote that person and then they can start like you said doing the hiring and kind of be the middle person between you and the other assistants. And they’re kind of like the team leader and, you know what I’m saying?
Francis
Yes, I believe — I agree and that’s what I’m actually doing.
Eric
Because, I think as business owners when we first start getting into the whole concept of virtual assistants, I don’t think that we understand the idea of building the team. We look at it as, “Oh we’re just hiring individuals and they’re just going to work for me and do specific tasks.”
But, I think if we really want to live the dream of having a virtual assistant or being able to sit on the beach and not do anything, you know what I’m saying?
You have to build a team. You have to create certain rules that you want for that certain project. And then hire people to fill that role rather than just having a bunch of random stuff going on in your business. Does that make sense?
Francis
Yeah, it totally does make sense. And also if the team is synergetic, so working with each other to complement each other. That’s much more efficient than if everyone has sort of the same set of tasks and are not talking to each other. Then a lot of potential stuff can be lost.
Continue reading part 15 – How to outsource tasks with a team of virtual assistants?
Can I Use A Freelance Transcriptionist For Other Administrative Jobs?
Freelance transcriptionist to a full time VA is part-3 of an interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 2 – Transcription service cost comparison
Summary:
- Most of the virtual assistants are task specific and do not provide you complete administrative support
- You can turn your freelance transcriptionist into an Ideal-Helper but for that, you need to provide him proper and paid training
- Find someone with good work ethics, little work experience and who’s ready to invest a lot of time for you.
Start of the Interview:
Stefan:
Actually when I’m going that further to hire a freelance transcriptionist, I would like that person to do everything. Like as you said you say something for example a new article?
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
You talked about that for 30 minutes and at the end of the article, I tell “The article ends” and then the instruction. I tell the assistant in Word form, my instructions.
So, I’ll tell him like, “Please insert that article and back link that”; and, “Please I saw on my website that I need you to do that and that and that also…“ So, basically, I want a full fledge assistant.
From my experience, I haven’t had people that we’re able to deliver that. I found only people that we’re able to do one specific task.
For example, one picture editing or… One article writing or it has to be specific – completely specific. It has to be like a no-brainer. Because being working on your own, a lot of people mess that up.
They don’t understand the instruction very well and that’s my feelings. So, I found it very difficult to find and go outsource some.
Francis:
Okay. So let me share my thoughts on that. I think you have told the reason to your problems itself when you said instructions need to be completely specific. A child should be able to understand it.
And what you wish to have is an assistant, who completely understands your need; who partially fulfills your wishes before you have formulated them. So, he thinks with you. And that is not possible right from the start. So, I assume it’s not possible.
Let me be more precise. Let’s assume you hire a professional virtual assistant from the USA. Someone who already has experience with many tasks and you will need to invest something like, I don’t know, $70 an hour.
That’s a possible price. And for that, you would receive a professional whom you could say:
“Please build a new WordPress blog; design it like this and that; fill three pages of content, interlink them using the latest this and that technology; and then, embed my advertisements using the forms I provide you here.”
That, I think, is sort of the thing you’re looking for.
Stefan:
Yeah. That would be ideal. That would be perfect.
Francis:
Okay. So let’s try for that. Since my website is called Ideal-helper, let’s try to find a way to give you that ideal helper. My site was inspired, sort of, of my assistant whom I have found because, for me, he is the ideal helper.
However to get that there, you have to invest time, patience and, of course money because training your assistant should be an activity that is paid for him.
If you propose to your assistant, “I will train you but you will receive no money”; you take away his time. With his time, he could do other outsourcing work.
Stefan:
That’s not reasonable. Nobody would do that, of course.
Francis:
Okay. So if we agree about that, my general rough plan on finding the ideal assistant is to find someone who has good work ethics possibly with less work experience than more because this will lower the starting price. And who’s ready to invest a lot of time for you. Find someone whom you feel is loyal and starts with very basic, simple tasks.
As you mentioned, picture research. That’s a perfect example. At the beginning, you do all the work yourself. As you do it, you use video instructions to instruct your assistant on how you do the work yourself.
You cannot expect your freelance transcriptionist to do the work perfectly without you giving him perfect instructions. Over time, you can expand the areas of expertise your assistant works for you. So, train your assistant until he is perfect for you with picture research.
Let me give you an example, I am using my assistant for picture research too. First, I asked him to use free pictures from Flickr which were from the Creative Commons domain.
Then I expanded to, “Please insert the attribution links under the Flickr pictures. And on Flickr, write a short comment with the link back to where a post sits the picture for SEO purposes.”
Then I expanded this task to, “Please research stock photos on different stock photo banks based on the content of the article and I would pay for that.” Then I expanded it too, I prepaid an account and my virtual assistant just purchases the pictures as needed.
And now we’re getting into an area which I haven’t put on my work set yet so this is premium content, my assistant found out a way to find stock photos for free.
Let me explain, he found that on the internet from time to time there are promotions from different stock photo banks. There are more Stock Photo banks than iStock photos and Fotolia. There are many more.
Those promotions we’re like coupons for 10 free stock photos. He researched them and gathered them. And then, he added several Stock Photo banks with free credits all the time. So now, I’m not paying for Stock Photos. This is like the ultimate picture researcher.
Stefan:
Yeah. That sounds very good, actually.
Francis:
And, of course, there are more tasks to outsourcing when you have a website than picture research. In a similar way, expand but only after your virtual assistant is doing good work at the simple task you have given him. This will take some time.
I have worked with my virtual assistant for more than 2 years and it took, I guess, half a year until I expanded into many different projects.
Because I understood he was an extremely great guy who understood instructions effectively and proposes solutions from time to time. At the beginning he was rather shy about it.
I encourage my assistant all the time in my video instructions and say something like:
“Hey, if you have any idea to do that better, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”
Or I said even something like, “Hey if you think what I’m doing is crap, if what I’m doing is ineffective, don’t hesitate to tell me. I will not be mad. You can criticize me at all times.”
It took a few months and then he started to do that in a very polite way.
Stefan:
Yeah. I outsourced a job where I wrote off the design and the redrawing of my pictures in my E-book. So he has to redraw or find a way to redraw the pictures for copyright reasons.
And the other thing is to redesign the layout and fix the entire layout and finish it up so that I end up with a ready and completed E-book that I can tell for my website.
Continue reading part 4 – Example job description for an EBook illustrator
Fixed Price vs Hourly Rate, Which One Is More Beneficial And Why?
Fixed price vs hourly rate is part-2 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.
Click here to read part 1– What to Look For In a Virtual Assistant
Summary:
- Sometime providers do not work for exact hours they have committed at the time of hiring, often they work less than that.
- You should check the profile of your contractor to know that how many active jobs he is having at the same time.
- If you have an agreement of 10 hours with a provider and he is continuously failing to meet this limit, then this is a clear breach of the contract.
Start of the Interview:
Francis:
Okay. I have a question to you first. It seems to me that you are paying your worker based on a milestone agreement. In other words, you are paying him on a fixed price schedule. Did you ever employ someone with an hourly pay?
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
What was your experience with fixed price vs hourly rate?
Stefan:
What my experience was when I paid my workers hourly was they still did less often after a while. But to me, it seems like they don’t care if they earn less.
They just work less hours. And if I ask them, “What’s going on? Why are you not even working the 10 hours per week?”
Francis:
Yes.
Stefan:
You just work 4 hours per week. What’s going on? They will just say, “I couldn’t do more.”
Francis:
Didn’t you ever check out the profile of your worker in oDesk and see how many other actual contracts they had going on at the same time? Sometimes people work into several employers at the same time.
Stefan:
Yes.
Francis:
Was this perhaps the reason that they could not work more for you?
Stefan:
Can’t give you a feedback on that, I think, because I don’t know too much about that.
Francis:
Okay. Sometimes this happens and then of course you have to talk about this. And say, “Well if you work for 10 other people, it’s clear you cannot work 10 hours per week for me.”
Did you make an agreement beforehand that they have to work 10 hours a week for you?
Stefan:
When we had a contract for time, yes.
Francis:
Okay then, in my opinion, that’s a breach of the contract. And that in my opinion you can tell them square and fair, “Well, we had an agreement 10 hours per week, you’re not delivering. What would be the next step?”
Stefan:
Leaving the job. That’s my experience. That’s what the workers are doing.
Francis:
Okay. So clearly you have a problem setting up the initial trust.
Stefan:
Because just leaving the job seems easier. It seems like an easy escape, “Oh, there’s a problem. I just flee.” You know?
Continue reading part 3 – Virtual Assistants retention problems
How Do You Fire an Assistant Who is Unfit for the Job?
Fire assistant is part-12 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.Follow along to learn from our experience on working with VAs!
Summary:
- How to not get emotionally involved with your virtual assistant to avoid letting emotions guide your decisions
- Learn how to fire assistants who do not fit the job title nicely without getting too emotionally attached
- Learn when is the right time to fire your virtual assistant
Start of the Interview:
Francis
Because then it gets emotional and then you are not able to, for example, fire that assistant anymore.
Eric
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, you don’t want to go right out at the gate and really just get to know their entire family and take them up for lunch or whatever. Then they’re doing a bad job and then you want to get rid of them and you can’t.
Francis
I really do believe that also you should be open and upfront with your expectations and how you handle failure. This will take a lot of the misery and anxiety hopefully away from the virtual assistant.
So, for example, you are a very well hard-core employer. Perhaps, that’s your style or anyone’s style and you say, “Okay, you can make one mistake and then it’s over.”
I don’t believe that’s very efficient. But, if you are like that and you cannot change then so be it. You will find perhaps someone who’s able to be holding up these standards for some price.
But then your assistant knows how hard and specific he can work before he delivers anything.
For me, the expectation is you can make lots of mistakes as long as we learn from it. It’s okay. And as long as we talk and we don’t stop talking about it, it’s okay. So, I was never abused in this situation that an assistant made too many mistakes because no assistant is really that inefficient. But, it gives them sort of the possibility to really try out a few things.
Eric
Yeah, definitely. Because, I think that you have to really take the time. Like, I know with my VA, I was sort of getting closer upfront and I was noticing some different things that she was lacking on or things that maybe weren’t as up to par as what I expected.
And it may be harder for me to kind of be like, “Okay, let’s re-evaluate our situation.” Well, I was kind of felt like I was obligated to continue to pay her even though it was necessarily something that I should’ve continued to do
Continue reading part 13 – Part-time vs full-time virtual assistants
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