how to communicate with a VA.

Francis:

That is true. The risk is on your end. It’s more on your end and your managing skills are needed so that the money losing risk is little. So my proposition to keep that risk as little as possible is to have a clear daily communication with your assistant.

Then the risk of losing money is very small because if an assistant works 8 hours then the most you can lose is 8 hours of work where he does nothing effective until there’s the next communication exchange.

So when the initial trust has been built and the start of the work has started – hourly paid or fixed price doesn’t matter – you absolutely need daily communication. How you do it, it’s up to you. You can Skype with your assistant. You can have him write daily emails.  

as an effective email communication, I prefer them on bullet point format for easy reading for me. Or, as my assistant does it right now, he makes a daily Google documents presentation with screenshots and bullet points of his questions, updates of what he works on, etc.

This is addition of checking up on your oDesk screenshots what your assistant does, will make sure that he doesn’t work for nothing for long time. 

Stefan:

Yes, that’s true.

Francis:

I agree that this is an additional time investment on your end. But if you don’t do it you, as you say, risks losing hundreds of dollars. 

Stefan:

Yup. But the problem is that it just takes away time. Because imagine I have a new job, let’s say, a design for a flyer. Or a cover or whatever and I don’t have a specific idea of what I want. 

I just want a few proposals from a graphic designer and I’m willing to pay, let’s say, $30 for that or $40. So that could translate into 10 hours of work. Or a fixed price where I have guaranteed something in the hands at the end or I don’t have anything and I don’t have to pay. 

On the other hand, if I let him make some work for 10 hours and he just gives me 15 proposals but they are all crap; I have to pay him. 

Francis:

It’s true.

Stefan:

So it’s guaranteed. And most of the time as I’ve said earlier, in the past I have never had a good result in the first work batch.

Francis:

Okay.

Stefan:

I never experienced that I give him a job, the first milestone, the first assignment and that was completely perfect 100%. That has never happened to me.  

Francis:

That’s also not very unrealistic.

Stefan:

Yes, it’s not. But I want that. I’m not going to pay 10 hours for $40 and not have my cover design done when I could have a fixed price for $40. And I’m only paying that $40 when the job is done. Not before. 

Are you getting my point?      

Francis:

Okay, That is acceptable to me. So in this specific situation where it’s a design job, I have to say I have not much experience doing designer jobs via oDesk.

In my opinion, there are specialized services for graphics design which are much more appropriate for designer jobs than oDesk. 

Stefan:

They’re way more expensive.

Francis:

Yeah, not if you take into account the time training and hiring, etc. The least expensive method to find a basic graphic design which sometimes is surprisingly good quality is to use Fiverr. 

Stefan:

Okay.

Francis:

Do you know this service?

Stefan:

Yeah, I know Fiverr.

Francis:

If you have Fiverr, you can invest $5 to have roughly what you want. And then you can use this in your job description to say, “Okay, I have a basic design which is like that. I want it much better.”