Outsourced Virtual Assistant Blog Archive

by Francis
(March 02, 2014)

We worked with Denise for 3 weeks. Unfortunately, I have had trouble managing her work because the time tracking of her work did not function as it should have.

This can be due to the time tracking service used (we used hubstaff which worked out for my main assistant, but not so much for Denise). But it can also be due to the personal preferences from your full time assistant.

To prevent this issue, especially for a trial period where you get to know your future full time assistant – here is the proposition from my main VA:

Hire the new assistant, but make sure to start them on a 40 hour contract (not more not less per week) monitored by an outsourcing service that pays only for hours tracked.

Click this link to find just the perfect service for that.

Are there any disadvantages of having a virtual assistant?

by Francis
(March 11, 2014)

I am sure it’s very visible that I am an absolute fan of VAs and the idea of outsourcing. But I got asked by a visitor if there are also not some disadvantages in having a VA.

To be honest, nothing is ever perfect, and outsourcing is not for everyone. One big disadvantage of having a VA is that you have a great deal of responsibility.

If you cannot deal with taking care of a coworker, training him, paying on time and making sure that you can communicate on a regular basis, then you should re-think if outsourcing is for you.

But these challenges can be overcome quite easily, in my opinion.

And the advantages by far outweigh the cons.

Be sure to read on to learn about 7 advantages of having a personal/virtual assistant.

Managing a full time virtual assistant from the Philippines – No start is easy

by Francis
(March 12, 2014)

Working with my full time VA from the Philippines sure has its ups and downs!

Just wanted to let you know that I have published Denise’s very first work update, which is a first-perspective little letter about her impressions during her first week as a VA working on my team.

Even if you didn’t yet start with working with VA’s, I am sure that this look behind the scenes can be quite eye-opening and can increase your horizon as an entrepreneur.

Click here to go directly to her diary entry.

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Escape the Cubicle! Succeed and Earn Money from Home

by Francis
(March 12, 2014)

In my opinion, there are many opportunities in working from home and earning your livelihood on the internet. It does not matter if you are

• a virtual assistant and do freelance work
• or a person working a day job who wants to take responsibility for an additional income.

The difference is only the quality of the information you receive to attempt that dream.

(By the way, the dream is a lot less impossible that your friends and coworkers may want you to believe. But it is not easy and will require an effort from your side.)

But nothing is more frustrating than going down one strategy found on the internet and wasting hours and hours, even years without getting where you want to go.

Many programs promise you riches overnight. Flee them where you can.

Success takes effort, perseverance and the right strategy.

And since you are on this site, you know all about the unfair advantage you can gain if you “super-charge” your own efforts with the support of a trusted, efficient virtual assistant. Right?

If you want to join the revolution of entrepreneurs and online workers that escape “normal” 9-5 jobs… then join the “Work from Home Revolution“!

by Francis
(February 15, 2014)

To bring you even more news, tips and articles about real-life experience of hiring virtual assistants, we invited Denise into our team. She will be starting her trial period for a position as a full time virtual assistant.

Please wish her luck, but to be honest I have a quite good feeling about her work 🙂

She is from the Philippines, and has great English skills. We hired her from a specialized service for full time VAs from the Philippines. Also look out for the diary posts from my VA’s side, because we will be adding the impressions of her work and daily experiences there also.

For me, I am excited to be able to “attack” more ideas and projects, since I have more inspirations than I have time to implement them. Time to close a few open loops and get more projects going.

As a nice side effect, we will be able to enjoy more opinions from the “virtual assistant point of view” with Denise on our team. She already started leaving some comments on some of my blog posts, where she adds insightful details from her point of view.

Some challenges in the first week of setting up the cooperation with this new full time assistant are

• Supervising her work with a specialized screenshot recording software

• Making sure every work day there is a daily update sent to my team

I am sure that if we can overcome these doable challenges, we are able to dive into a multitude of interesting new projects.

And my VA can make sure I don’t only start with these projects, but that I also finish them 🙂

• Read more about outsourcing to Philippines

The importance of daily updates

by Francis
(February 18, 2014)

Denise proves to be a very motivated candidate for working as a full time virtual assistance.

One thing that is very crucial for work supervision are daily updates. The optimum is of course when you have screenshots of the work of your assistance.

That is an aspect that we still have trouble with. But I instructed my assistant to test a few screen recording solutions with Denise.

We will report what worked best.

Reviewing screenshots from your VA to be able to manage them

by Francis
(February 18, 2014)

You need to be able to review the screen of your VA as he or she works. This might feel intimidating at first for the VA.

Your job as an employer is to take that fear and / or uneasiness off your assistant. Build some trust.

However, this information is not optional. In my opinion, it is mandatory to be able to manage the time of your VA effectively.

One example: my VA wrote a preface for an eBook for me. She researched information on how to do that. She poured in considerable amount of time into this task.

Even if the end result is really solid, it could perhaps been achieved with less time.

How? When you, as an employer, review the screenshots of your assistant from time to time, you can simply call them (or send them a voice message) whenever you see something that could be better or different.

This way, your assistant does not continue to use time (for which you are paying) in an effort to do something that you don’t want.

Record the screen from your assistant and you save time.

Don’t do it and you waste time and resources.

When you use oDesk, then there is a free built-in screen recording software for the VA that solves all that for you.

• Click here to learn more about oDesk Team Application

Using Skype or Emails to communicate with your assistant?

by Francis
(February 21, 2014)

When possible, I try to put some time aside to Skype with my new full time VA, Denise.

When you are on the phone, it’s much easier to show you are human and to emphasize what is important to you.

It’s doable with voice recordings, too. But being able to go back and forth, perhaps making a joke to relax your assistant, helps a lot.

Believe me, your assistant will be very nervous when working with you at the beginning. Especially if it’s an assistant that is not very experienced.

So do invest some time into building a healthy working relationship with your assistant in Skype at the beginning.

Note: it is not always easy to Skype with your assistant.

• Bad internet connections,
• the time difference,
• and most importantly the fact that many foreign assistants are self-conscious about their spoken English skills

will make it hard to get them on the phone.

But do try 🙂

The interview extract linked below will teach you more about how to effectively communicate with your VA.

• Learn more about how to set up effective email communication with Your Virtual Assistants

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by Francis
(November 01, 2013)

With the right skill level and training, an assistant is able to provide a tremendous amount of work and results in a short amount of time.

Let’s take an example:

My Virtual Assistant logged 2,5 hours of time today, using the time recording software of a popular outsourcing service.

There, he listed what he managed to do in this amount of time.

1. He researched, downloaded and inserted free stock photos in my content pages
2. He fine-tuned an existing job opening and pre-screened the candidates that applied to this online job offer
3. He transcribed an audio recording of 320 words and sent it via email to the proper recipient
4. He earned credits on a website for online survey answers, which is essentially data entry work

All of that in 2,5 hours. No distractions, no procrastination.

If you can work that fast yourself, and can afford to invest the time to do so, then you don’t need a VA.

But if you can make use of the extra free time, and a virtual assistant is more effective than you, then you should get started with outsourcing.

Read on to find out my preferred outsourcing service.

Your Input Required: How Can We Increase the Readability of our Blog?

by Francis
(November 01, 2013)

Today, I need your help and opinion, so that we can make our blog even better readable for you.

It’ll take less than 2 minutes, tops.

I have published a poll using a survey maker with the help of my VA.

Please click the link above to participate in the poll.

Don’t Get Too Used to Your Assistant Doing Your Stuff

by Francis
(November 28, 2013)

Phew! I just tried to work a bit on re-organizing the design of my sites.

Looks like I lost the habit of working on my sites myself. Why?

My virtual assistant implements my wishes and video instructions so perfectly, that all work gets done overnight.

But as a side effect, the work he does looks effortless.

Figures that his webmaster duties are not as easy as I imagine somehow. That’s what inspired me to remind you all to do the work of your VAs from time to time.

This will keep you on track on how much your assistants are performing for you.

What tasks does my Virtual Assistant usually do on my websites? Just read on…

• Read more about Sitesell Virtual Assistant.

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by Francis
(Sep 16, 2013)

These last days my normal day job keeps me extremely busy. You know this feeling when you barely get to sleep after work and nothing else.

It’s times like these you wish you could escape the job rat race.

And it’s the last call to get yourself great teamwork established with a virtual assistant.

In my case a few video instructions per week are sufficient to keep my assistant going.

And they don’t take long.

Why do this when you are busy?

Life has the tendency to get harder, not easier. In other words, what you are experiencing now might be a relatively relaxed time, if you are not taking steps to build your own future.

Whatever dream you have, take it in your hand today!

• Read more about how to be your own boss

Outsourcing services legally: Mind any Confidentiality Agreement!

by Francis
(October 14, 2012)

When you outsource services to others using your virtual assistants, the other party (your client) should know about you outsourcing the job.

That’s because often, there is a real (or implied) confidentiality agreement (also called non disclosure agreement) between you and your client.

In other words, your client only trusts his information with you. Not with your team of VAs.

So the only solution if you want to avoid hassle like hiding the IP of your VA, and other less-than-moral methods…

You have to be crystal clear about your terms and your assistants working for you.

Breaking any confidentiality agreement will come back bite you (or even lead to serious legal troubles).

Personally, I was a bit naive about this issue in the recent past. Now, I’ll try to set things right.

If I am able to get an agreement of using my VA in a service, then all is good.

If not, then I will have to pass an otherwise very lucrative business opportunity.

But it’s always better to cover your bases first.

—

We dedicated a full page about legal dangers of outsourcing. Be sure to check it out!

Second Interview with my friend and entrepreneur on its way

by Francis
(Sep 16, 2013)

Some time ago I interviewed a German friend called Stefan via Skype. This interview went over an hour and was transcribed, summarized and posted here.

Perhaps it is because he went out to leave the conventional work rhythm and live a four hour work week; fact is his interview is rather popular here on this site.

Now I had a second interview with him! It was even more intense and long and we discussed all facets of training your virtual assistant to be more self motivated.

That is his -and he is not alone- main concern when working with virtual assistants.

Look forward to another great interview. We are still compiling and presenting it from a big transcript file.

If you haven’t, make sure you read the first interview first.

by Francis
(July 17, 2013)

Dropbox notification for 48 GB extra space

I had a very nice surprise to receive 48 GBs of additional free Dropbox space along with a nice email notification from Dropbox.

Granted the additional space is limited to 24 months. So there is a risk of me being tempted to pay for premium service if I get use to those 48 GBs of free space.

But two years from now, that’s a long time into the future.

Why Would You Need 66 GBs of Space for Your Dropbox?

For normal file sharing and storage, their default free space is probably sufficient. But working with a virtual assistant like I do, the many video instruction files really sum up.

Also, all the files from the research and rework from my assistant are saved in the same Dropbox, and that also piles up.

At the moment I can manage just fine with 18 GB of free space that I have received using a trick with Fiverr.

Check out this post if you haven’t done this trick yet.

And don’t forget to earn yourself additional 48 GBs of free space.

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Catching Up Writing the Diary of My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(July 31, 2013)

While some real life troubles are keeping me busy, my virtual assistant takes the opportunity to update his diary which you can find at the end of this post.

In this diary, he writes down exactly the work updates he tells me every day. If you watch them closely, you can see how many different tasks a well-trained virtual assistant is able take care of.

It’s also highly recommended that if you have a virtual assistant, you send him to this diary so that he learns the communication style which will be very useful to you as an employer.

For an employer, saving time while reviewing the work of his virtual assistant is crucial. For an assistant, reporting his daily tasks in an easy to understand format is also very important.

We still have many work updates saved as a draft for review. Still do take the time to check out my virtual assistant’s diary.

by Francis
(30 Apr, 2013)

I hope you haven’t missed our updates. These last days were a little bit hectic and I almost had not enough time to even give my virtual assistant some work instructions.
Luckily, I have previewed this beforehand and prepared some work for him to do.

This is also what you should take away from this blog post. If you have a VA, especially if you have him working for you full-time, you must be sure that you have work for him to do at all times.

If worst comes to worst and works just runs out because your virtual assistant is too effective at what he does; then you can have a few, not too many, E-books ready for him to read.

Invest the money into the training of your VA. The lessons he reads from the E-books can be useful for your business too.

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Would You Give a Virtual Assistant Access to Your Emails?

by Francis
(08 May, 2013)

Some time ago, I discussed the idea of using a personal assistant to pre-screen and order your private email with a good friend.

In my case, it didn’t really work out when I tried out working with and Indian virtual assistant.

That’s because my native language is German and I have a lot of German Emails.

If your native language is English, would you give your virtual assistant access to your emails?

Internet Not Working – My Virtual Assistant Is Missing In Action

by Francis
(14 May, 2013)

Although it happens very rarely, my VA has problems with his internet connectivity.

When I worked in the past with a personal assistant from the Philippines, she had to fight from time to time with power outage issues. Without an internet connection, a virtual assistant can hardly work for you.

How can a VA work if his internet does not work?

If you have worked together with your VA for a long time, there might be a few tasks that are possible to do offline. Such as data analysis, putting data on Excel sheets, writings tasks, and transcription of already downloaded audio recordings – stuff like that.

If you are smart as an employer, you prepare several tasks like these for situations where your VA is cut off of your internet connection for some time.

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My Virtual Assistant Gets a Diary So That You Can Follow Along His Every Move

by Francis
(23 May, 2013)

My virtual assistant takes quite some time every day to update me about his work. He prepares his work updates in the format of a diary for easy reading on my end. Everything is designed so that I can review his work and give feedback to open loops as fast as possible.

Since he is updating me with lots of work from his work day as a virtual assistant, I was sure you would be interested in getting a look behind the scenes.

We are setting up a blogger blog right now. My virtual assistant helps me get some technical issues out of the way. Such as blogging related stuff and sub-domain mapping and stuff like that.

Luckily, I can send my virtual assistant some instructions on how to do that and he can help me implement that. When the diary is done, I’ll let you know.

Stay tuned for seeing exactly what virtual assistant does every day for me and my businesses. And if you want, adapt his ideas and his working steps for your own businesses.

Be sure to let us know if you like or enjoy or, perhaps even dislike seeing my virtual assistant at work.

Bringing Order into the Chaos – A Great Productivity and Organization Tool

by Francis
(May 30, 2013)

I started using simpleology daily. It makes me much more efficient.

Just by doing some training and ordering my to-do list in an intelligent way, I get much more done.

The cool things about simpleology are:

1. Its free,
2. Its browser based,
3. Its effective,
4. It really saves time and gets things done.

I highly recommend it. I am using it regularly to organize my tasks related to my website business as well as to my daily chores.

There are even some mobile versions of it, but I only use it on my desktop computer.

This is one tool you really shouldn’t miss. You can even invite your virtual assistant to also use the tool.

One of the steps to get you more efficient is actually designing some task to delegate. So if you want to implement this tool together with your virtual assistant, it is a great fit.

Is Outsourcing Easy to Do?

by Francis
(31 May, 2013)

When you read websites and blogs of people doing outsourcing, people like me, you can get the impression that it is an extremely easy thing to outsource.

I’ll be honest with you: it’s not always easy.

You have to learn the ropes.

You have to learn how to delegate your stuff to virtual assistants you can trust.

You have to learn how to manage them, interview them, to get them on your team. You also have to learn how to not spend too much money on them, or how to manage them wisely.

In the end this website, Ideal-Helper is geared toward having you learn from my real life experience as they happen.

You don’t need to spend one cent on outsourcing before you haven’t learned everything.

But in the end, learning how to do outsourcing in real life does only come naturally when you do it.

So outsourcing isn’t always easy.

But once you’ve mastered it or even started doing it, you will enjoy the additional free time so much that the little effort of learning tools and trades of outsourcing will seem small to you.

Read more advantages of outsourcing

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