Outsourced My Life

I’ve been following the adventures of a guy named Jed who has embarked on full implementation of the principles listed in the Four Hour Work Week.  His blog, The Newly Rich, has some great examples of what did and didn’t work during his experiments outsourcing to a virtual assistant.

He originally took the same path as a LOT of people who just finished reading the 4HWW and started out with GetFriday and a few alternatives.  He ended up with a stateside college student and has been having good success.   I’m especially excited that Jed started a new post series called Outsourced Wednesdays where he’ll post a weekly sample of a project he’s outsourced along with the responses from his virtual assistant.   

Honestly, I wish more “buyers” would blog about their outsourcing experiences.  It is fun and educational to read detailed examples of correspondence between buyers and providers.

Jed has even started up a new company called Having Things Done.  He’s even listed out some of the philosophies behind Having Things Done where he addresses many of the hurtles and problems people have been experiencing with other VA services.

I’ve been really happy with my experiences outsourcing with oDesk so far.  Their system of tracking hours and providing me with visibility into what my providers are doing is wonderful!

In the past 5 months I’ve posted about 6 different “jobs”.  Each have been hourly based and while each were instigated by a specific need / project, they all had potential for longer term relationships.

Well, this changed.  I had a VERY specific project that I don’t anticipate, at least not immediately, the need to employ someone long term or on an hourly bases.   I needed a shopping cart created for one of my sites.  Nothing fancy, just osCommerce installed with a few modifications and plugins.   I’ve installed OSC a few times myself, but I’ve never really dove into modifying it or hiring anyone to do so.  I didn’t want to pay someone hourly for something I had no idea how long would take.

Three (well actually two) options presented themselves:

RentACoder - Used them many times in the past for project based work.  While I’ve had great success with them in the past, their system isn’t the most user friendly and payment to providers isn’t super straightforward.  Their system is based on a per project system and they have a bunch of tools and policies in place to make sure a buyer gets what they were promised.

oDesk - As mentioned above, I love their hourly platform but I haven’t tried their project based option.  Payment for hourly projects is super easy and straightforward.  Their per project system seems to still be in its infancy and seems to be lacking some of the tools / policies that RAC has developed over more years of experience

eLance - Well, I signed up a few months ago, posted a project, wasn’t terribly excited about the responses I received.  Their UI looks really clean, but there wasn’t really anything that was there to pull me away from RAC or oDesk.

In the end I went with oDesk.  Posting projects is pretty straight forward and I’m assuming that payment will be just as easy as they have been with hourly providers.   I’ve already received about 25 project bids and have chosen a programmer.  I’ll keep you posted with how things progress.

My questions for you:

Do you prefer hourly or project based pricing models?  When and why?

As you may know I’ve struggled finding constant work for my VA.   I’ve got a few brothers that are in varied businesses and we often help one another out with advice and projects.   I’ve offered up my VA to do basic level tasks (research, data entry, etc.) for them whenever they need it.

Well, one of my brothers finally took me up on the offer.   He needs to locate the company info (CEO name, company contact info, etc.) for about 100 companies.   In almost all cases the info is available on the websites… we just need someone to visit the sites and compile the information.   What a perfect project for my service provider!  I asked him if he had a budget for the project and he said that as long as I provide him with samples of the work as we progress then he’s fine with whatever it takes to get the job done.

I asked my brother to send me a layout of what he wanted in an excel sheet along with a row already filled out as an example.  I took the sheet, refined it (based on my experiences so far communicating with outsourcing providers) and added as much detail on how to proceed.

The bad news… my provider is out on a scheduled vacation so I’ll need to wait a while until she’s back to begin work.  Fortunately the task isn’t super time sensitive, but I’m pretty impatient about the opportunity to give my brother a taste of person to person outsourcing.

Has anybody else outsourced their assistants to someone else?  If so, did you do it:

1. Indirectly like I’m doing - Basically my brother knows I’m outsourcing and is providing almost all the info, I’m just lightly managing and sending the project along
2. Directly - For example:   VA, meet my brother… brother, meet my VA.

There are a plethora of blog entries and forum posts that reference poor experiences with the companies mentioned in “The World Is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman and “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss .  Specifically, Brickwork India, YMII, & GetFriday.com.  Many people have expressed their displeasure with the quality of work and lack of communication.   Many hypothesize that this is due to the huge influx of demand to these two companies and their inability to handle the growth.  Some say it is just the nature of outsourcing to India and other countries.

In my post, What Is A Virtual Assistant? I received a few great comments.  Two questions (in my interpretation of the comments) have been raised:

1. Can a provider who charges only $4.00 an hour really provide quality work?
2. Is it even possible to find “good” providers under $15.00 an hour?

I personally can’t definitievely answer the first question because I’m still new to outsourcing, but if the taste I’ve had so far is an indication, then I believe the answer is yes.

The second question is the one I want to focus on.   Tim Ferriss makes it sound like it is pretty easy to find someone for $4.00 per hour.   I’ll say this, it is difficult to find quality providers at this rate, but I believe it is possible.   A few points brought up in the comments mentioned above say that many of the outsourcing service firms have raised their rates.  That may be true, but there are plenty of companies that still have rates around $6 - $8 an hour if you are willing to commit to 40 hours a week.

Okay, $6 - $8 an hour is great, but it isn’t $4.00 an hour.  What if the die hard worshipper of “Four Hour Work Week” is absolutely determined to find a Virtual Assistant (yes, I’m going to keep using this term until there is a widely adopted alternative to VA) that is $4.00 an hour?

As I mentioned before I’ve found a great virtual assistant success using oDesk.  I may have been lucky, but I found a very inexpensive provider that has really helped me get a bunch of stuff done.  What if this provider decided to break up with me and end our relationship?  Would I be able to replace her with another similarly skilled and inexpensive virtual assistant?

Well, as a test I did a search on oDesk for administrative support providers that had at least 50 hours of oDesk experience and had a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.  This returned 20 providers that matched this criteria.  Not a ton of results, but the search proves there are experienced providers with good reviews who are available for work.  If I expand my search a bit by increasing the rate to under $6.00 an hour and at least one hour of oDesk experience then I get 103 virtual assistants who want to work for me!

For reference I thought I’d post some information about the VA I’ve been using who is under $4.00 per hour:

• Education: Bachelors in Biotechnology and a Masters in Business Administration
• Worked for a large bank in India doing data entry & customer support
• Top rating on tests for English and Telephone etiquete

Keep in mind I’m not expecting providers in the $4 - $8 per hour range to be Jack / Jane of all trades or tbe able to do everything I’d expect from a US based $30 per hour VA.  With that said, I think there is a huge market for admin assistants to do things like:

• Data entry
• Internet Research
• Email filtering / first tier support
• Other general admin assistant tasks
• Basically any task you’d give to a college intern

What do you think?  Are $4.00 an hour person-to-person virtual assistants a viable option for small to medium sized businesses?

On my Virtual Assistant Break Up? post I’ve received some very excellent comments.   In fact one theme has emerged and I’d like to devote a new thread specific to this important subject.

The issue is this:   There are different opinions of what the term “Virtual Assistant” does and will eventually mean.   I use the term very generically, basically anyone that is providing services to me that is remote and not an employee (the term employee can even be wildly interpreted).   Others see the term “Virtual Assistant” to be more specific, to be used only for people with the proper credentials.

In internet years the term is pretty old, but with books like “The World Is Flat” and “Four Hour Work Week” pumping up attention to the concept it has become more difficult to pin down an exact definition.   It will be interesting to see how the VA industry develops.  I’d love to have all of the people that commented on the Virtual Assistant Break Up thread to reply to this post with their thoughts on the following:

As the profession / industry develops and becomes more regulated and governed what do you think will happen with the term Virtual Assistant?

Do you think that:

1)  The term “Virtual Assistant” will become generic and new terms or co-terms will be used to differentiate certified providers from those that simply have a computer and an Internet connection.
2)  The term “Virtual Assistant” will become the identifier of certified / licenced professionals and other terms will be used to refer to people that, based on some of the comments above, should not be classified as “Virtual Assistants”

I believe that regardless of the certification and terminology used there will always be demand for low wage, lessor skilled providers.  For now I think 99% of the world is calling these people “virtual assistants” and it will be a long time, if ever, that the term “Virtual Assistant” only applies to certified providers with 5 years of personal assistant, office manager experience.

To those of you that consider yourselves associated with the traditional Virtual Assistant industry, what would you suggest we call these people that work remotely and independently at hourly rates but have never worked as a PA / office manager and are not certified or licenced?

One of my blogs needed a few simple changes to the WordPress theme.  The theme was already in excellent form but I wanted some basic modifications.  I’m by no means a theme designer, but I’ve hacked enough themes to know approximately how long the project would take… maybe 3 - 5 hours of work max for someone with a decent background with WordPress theme design and no more than 10 hours for someone with only a little experience.

In my previous postings on oDesk for designers and virtual assistants I had become acquainted with a few companies that manage a plethora of providers with diverse skill sets.   Each company said they would provide me with contact info for designers with WordPress experience.  After a few back and forth emails with the providers I decided to zip up the theme and email it to them along with the list the 3 simple changes I needed made.  Two different individual quoted me for outrageous amounts of time.  One guy said 40 hours and another, get this, said it would take him 3 weeks of full time work!!!

I sent each of them emails saying, “I believe there is a miscommunication here.  Do you understand this project is for edits to an EXISTING theme… not the design of a new theme from scratch?  This project shouldn’t take over 5 hours to complete.”

… I didn’t hear back from either of them.

So, I’m either totally off my rocker and am confused at how tricky it is to move a column in a WordPress theme, or I’m experiencing the problem many buyers seen in this space:   Providers come into hourly based systems (like oDesk) and quote really low hourly rates.  Unfortunately they end up taking extremely longer to complete the task and the total cost of project ends up way higher than it should have been.

So, is this happening because providers are intentionally taking advantage of the hourly system or because some low rate providers just don’t know what they are doing and therefore the project takes exponentially longer?

In my frantic search to find examples of work that I can outsource I found some fantastic outsourcing articles:

• Outsourcing, a case study
• 10 Reasons Why I Won’t Outsource and the follow up

Four Hour Work Week:

• The Newly Rich - a family’s account of how they live the 4HWW.  I read every post and had to refrain from commenting on each one!
• Four Hour Work Week Success Video

You hopefully read about my virtual assistant love… well, we’re at a weird point in our relationship.  I just receive the following from my beloved outsourced VA:

“Hope you are fine.I would like to know whether you have any work for me. I may be troubling you, but sorry to say that i am without any work and wasting time.  I have not taken any other buyer because i was engaged with your projects.  But now i am sitting idle and hours are wasted without any earnings. If you think, you cannot provide me with projects everyday, can i take other assignments and reduce the time i work with your project?  But if i take another buyer, i may not be able to commit many hours/day if anything urgent come up, though i will try to find time for your work if anything urgent come up from your side. Sorry if i sound harsh.But since last week i am sitting idle without much work wasting time”

NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo……..

I went through all 5 Stages of Grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) in about 58 seconds.    When I got to acceptance I realized she was right, I had been so busy with so much other stuff I hadn’t given her enough projects to keep her busy.  I needed to act fast to find a solution so I wouldn’t loose her.   Back to bargaining!!!

My proposal to her:

I did some more thinking and I’d like to propose something to you:  Would it be possible to reserve you one day a week for 4 hours of guaranteed work?   Here is what I propose:

1. You choose a day of the week that you can always provide me with 4 hours of work.
2. I will try to always have things for you to do.
3. If I don’t have work for you to do, you can spend those 4 hours doing anything you want and you can still bill me for the time!
4. You can still work with other buyers the rest of the time you have available.

Basically I am trying to find a way to keep her engaged with me until I had some solid work for her, but at the same time I wanted to be compelled to find work for her.   The thought of paying someone even if they didn’t work will hopefully be enough to keep me focused on finding important stuff for her to do.

So, to you my reader… help me discover work for my virtual assistant.   Breaking up is hard to do!!!

 
In my previous post I mentioned how my virtual assistant is doing a great job with the diversity of projects I’ve given her.  In fact here is what she wrote me:

“I am happy to work for you for the fact i really enjoy the work rather than the pay. When we had chatted once i have stated this clearly i hope…. But to be true, i long for your projects because they are so interesting (i am not flattering sir) and give me enjoyment and satisfaction…”

What a great email to receive… I gave her a 17% raise! 

One frustration is I’ve given her all the projects I had been storing up just for a Virtual Assistant.  I’m running our of things for her to do.

It’s time to step things up!

One of the things that is a HUGE time suck is managing emails from my community forums.  I decided I needed to have her monitor all the support requests from 2 of my forums.  I have taught her how to reset passwords (80% of the emails) and to reply to a plethora of other request.   I also have her delete the auto responders, spam, etc. from the account.  She will also take care of the spam blocking emails from places like Excite that require a person to visit a link and verify the email came from a person.  If there are requests she can’t answer I have her move them into an escalated folder for my attention.

I’m hoping this will keep her busy and will free me up.

Oh, one important footnote / suggestion:  I’ve been compiling all my instructions I send to her in one Word document.  Heaven forbid that if I ever loose her I’ll hopefully be able to shorten the learning curve substantially for the next person.

Things have been going Great with my oDesk virtual assistant.  She’s been great at completing all the projects I’ve given her.   Here is a list of the projects she’s worked on:

• Compile a list of potential sponsors for one of my community sites and rank them based on criteria such as “Are they advertising on Google?”   “Do they have a forum / community section of their site?” etc.  Organize all the information including contact pages, phone numbers, etc.
• Copy all the content (80 pages), page by page, from one of my static sites into WordPress
• Compile a list of content submissions from my community and rank them based on my criteria
• Search my forum for information on a topic and collect all the content into a page with links back to the post so I could quickly write a content page from the information.
• Take the very static pages (180) from a site I purchased and remove the static head / foot information and insert a php header and footer.
• For a new forum I had her do a Google search for key terms and look for popular forums in my niche.  I had her review and compile a list of the forum categories and sort by popularity.  This really helped me determine which categories to setup on my new forum.

I’m so happy I found this provider!  While I feel I’m just scratching the surface on what I can do with outsourcing I’ve got the feeling that if I can duplicate this with all the other diverse skill areas of my life then I’ll be in a super productive spot!