Most of us work online and there is no physical office or internal team to help us with our work. If you look at all the successful people, you will know that they have one thing in common: Assistant.
A good assistant is one who takes care of all your needs like checking your mail, scheduling appointments, and so on. Having an assistant will help you save a lot of time and work, and you can focus on what makes you the best.
The "assistant" model works great when working offline, but in the Internet world, there is an alternative: a virtual assistant.
To get started, let's just get to the basics. A Virtual Assistant, or VA for short, is basically a person who uses a computer for practical work and is not physically present.
A virtual assistant is everything for self-employed and home office. Using Virtual Assistants will remove daily tasks from your schedule and free up time for more productive tasks.
An employee is someone whose services are hired and must be physically present in the employee's office to work.
A virtual assistant violates this rule and allows people to work from the comfort of their own homes in their pajamas. Stacey Bryce should be thanked for introducing this concept to the world.
Stacy Brice has been promoting the concept of the "virtual profession" since 1996. The following year, he promoted the concept of a virtual assistant and founded the first state-owned company to hire a professional virtual assistant, AssistU.
Although I don't have much experience working with Virtual assistants, I do know a friend who publishes and has worked with two Virtual Assistants before.
Everything has a few additional disadvantages to compensate for its advantages. In this way, I will try to list everything related to the virtual assistant profession and clarify the basics of your concept.
Who is a Virtual Assistant?
No offense, but if you still don't understand what VA is, then here it is. VA is an independent professional providing administrative, creative, and technical support to business owners, business people, and other busy professionals.
A VA works from the comfort of its place and is not physically present at work.
A VA is exempt from paying for breaks, lunches, vacations, and other benefits they receive in return.
What can a virtual assistant do for you?
What can VA do? Well, there are endless possibilities for this situation. A VA can act almost like a regular employee and reduce your workload dealing with worldly tasks.
Here are just a few examples of how VA can work for you:
- To update your social media accounts,
- Take your calls and schedule bookings,
- Manage your Emails for answering clients,
- To update the content of your websites,
- Calendar management,
- Booking travel,
- Research on behalf of you,
- Data entry,
- Set up appointments for you,
- Organize your contacts,
- Writing board reports, etc.
It should give you a basic idea of what VA can do for you. The possibilities are endless, what you hire and who matters most.
How do I know if a VA is working or not?
You are not physically present to check if your employee is working on a VA. So how do you know if your VA is running or playing FarmVille all the time?
The advantage that a VA has over an employee here is that the work that proves wrong is that in the end you only pay how many hours of work you pay. You can also pay for the work.
If you are a suspicious soul and cannot trust your employee or VA, it is best to hire a professional who has good experience and can get the job done on time and before the due date.
Although you do not have solid evidence that your VA is working, you can use the tools below to control your VA.
Benefits of hiring a virtual assistant at a local employer
The best thing about working with a VA is that you get immediate support from a highly educated person, even if you only need their services.
The cost of hiring someone similar locally would be almost double that. The obvious advantage is that at the same time reducing your costs, you will not have to compromise on quantity and quality of work.
No time wasted working with VA; In the end, you only pay for the time that the VA spends working on your project or work.
VA can save you two valuable resources: time and money. If you are a business owner, you need to think more about your products/services than your management responsibilities.
This is exactly where VA fills your shoes and can handle your paperwork, bookkeeping, customer service, inbox, managing your schedule, and much more.
Are there issues with working with VA?
Yes, they do. Depending on what you want to achieve, there are some things that can make a big difference for you or not.
- Communication
No matter how advanced the technology, good communication with an employee is not compatible with IM or email classes.
It is more difficult to communicate effectively through email, chat, and phone. You cannot convey the nuances of human emotion through the mail.
- Physical Work
Your VA can't do any physical work for you if you need to complete them immediately. You cannot have a non-native virtual assistant running the package for you on FedEx. Physical tasks may take longer than you realize and your VA cannot help you with these tasks.
This was one of the major flaws that my friend mentioned earlier. He says it would be best for someone to help him with his physical activities, and there is a lack of VA.
- Language Barriers
Just because you hire someone who speaks English doesn't mean they can send you an email. There are different forms of language in different parts of the world and if you need someone to handle the correspondence/writing tasks, you can spend more time proving their writing than you do yourself. need to.
- Security
What about giving access to your personal information to someone you didn't know? This does not mean that remote assistants are not as reliable or even more reliable than the local person.
An easy solution would be to hire a VA from a reputable company with a good reputation.
You may not be able to find a good VA at the same time, but once you find someone who is available to suit your needs, it will help you grow your business.
How much do VA services cost?
VA's prices are wide and vary from one part of the country to another. You can find someone who works at Odesk for only $1/hour to $50/hour.
You can find many VA's in Odesk running between $2/hour to $5/hour. Leading companies in Pakistan can cost you anywhere between $8/hour to $15/hour. If you are looking for someone in the United States, you may find that the limit is more flexible.
You can find VA for $7/hour in those parts of the country where the cost of living is low. A good administrative assistant can cost you between $20/hour to $50/hour.
You can find more information about VA prices at Odesk and VA service providers.
Where to Find a Good Virtual Assistant For Hired?
Websites that help you find your ideal virtual assistant:
- Fiverr
- Guru
- Freelancer
- Codeable (For WordPress related work)
- Upwork
- Craigslist
Some Individual Trusted Companies Offering VA Services:
What are the minimum features that a VA should have?
The qualities that a good VA should have should vary from person to person and therefore it is up to you to decide what you want. But here are some features that are essential for a good VA.
- Good oral English.
- Well-written English.
- Fast learner.
- Active and prepared.
- Organized.
Tools to help you easily work with your VA
A set of tools will guide you through this task quickly. Managing an employee remotely can be a daunting task, even if you are not equipped with the right tools.
Below are some tools you need to work effectively with your VA:
- Zoom or Skype: video conferencing, IM, call.
- Acrobat Connect - share screen and video conferencing.
- Dropbox or Google Drive - file sharing.
- Logging tool at any time
How Can You Become A Virtual Assistant And Generate Money Online?
If you have the spirit of a business person, try to facilitate being employed at home and want to make money on the road, the answer is yes, you can become a VA.
Below are some things that a VA can do, and if you can answer most of the questions in the affirmative, it is good to be a VA.
- Do you want to do research?
- Help to plan an event?
- Receive and return messages?
- Coordinate travel plans?
- Database creation and management?
- Do transcription?
- Do you design websites (at least update website content) or create email promotions?
- Reply to letters and emails?
- To help people remember important dates?
- Write a press release and articles?
Have you ever hired a virtual assistant?
What is your experience so far? Do you have any suggestions for building a better relationship with your VA? Share your thoughts via comments. If you find this article useful, consider sharing it on Reddit, Discord, and Facebook.
What do you think about hiring a virtual assistant/remote employee for a local employee? Share your thoughts and comments below.
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