Expert Business Growth, Virtual Staffing & Personal Branding
This guest post by Stu Lustman is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!
I’m Stu Lustman and I virtualize some but very little of my business so far.
Disclaimer: I am trying to virtualize more than I do now. Also, I may bring up technical topics but I am not a techie. My business is in commercial finance.
Unlike many who jump into the lifestyle design concept, I already have a business that I enjoy doing that I am trying to virtualize and location independent-ize for myself.
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This guest post by Adrian Swinscoe is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!
Many of you will be familiar with the concept of karma. According to karma theory, every action has a consequence and good acts will have positive results and bad acts will produce negative results. In more common terms, karma is explained by various sayings like:
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Have you ever delegated to your virtual team, but been frustrated with the finished result? It just wasn’t what you were expecting, and you didn’t feel that your VA really understood what you were trying to get at. Well, you’re not alone, this happens to a majority of entrepreneurs starting out in virtual delegation, and can often lead to them giving up entirely and going back to the old reliable — themselves!
I am going to share with you now the “Top 3 Surefire Ways” to delegate effectively, quickly and easily to your virtual team so you can get your tasks and projects back right – first time, every time….
This is a Guest Post by Jonny Gibaud, founder of Emergency Food Storage.
So it is guest post month of Virtual Business Lifestyle and so fittingly I have written a quest post. I know, I am very much on the ball.
For those that have never heard of me, My names is Jonny and I am a traveling entrepreneur who gets my kicks from travelling and living and running businesses in different countries.
In this post we will look at three of my recent “office” environments from which I have been expanding one of my companies EFS Ltd, and take a quick gander at some experiences, “Definately Do’s” and “Definately Don’ts” that will hopefully help you in your own Virtual Business adventures. And so our little story begins in sunny England.
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This guest post by Jaime Tardy is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!
I only work 20 hours per week. Recently, I thought a virtual assistant could push my business forward faster. I coach local entrepreneurs but wanted to branch out online. I wanted to find a virtual assistant that was computer savvy and could help me grow my audience online. I hired my first Virtual Assistant this past May.
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PLEASE NOTE: This post was originally published in September 2010. Since then the ‘work from home’ industry in the Philippines has, and will continue to develop immensely over. I’ve therefore decided to update this post regularly, so that no matter when you visit, it’s always up to date!
One thing is for sure – if you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys!
Since launching Virtual Staff Finder back in 2010, we’ve received thousands of questions on the subject of working with virtual assistants – particularly from the Philippines. Everything from hiring and training them, right the way down to working with your VA on a day to day basis, and how to keep them motivated.
However, the number one question we hear more than anything else is “How much do I pay my Filipino Virtual Assistant…?”.
So, to answer this question in a concise, yet highly knowledgable way – based on years of experience – and the fact that myself and my VSF Team are based here in the Philippines, all year round, this post has been put together as a general guide to doing just that – paying your Virtual Assistant based in the Philippines.
Please bear in mind these salary guidelines are for home-based Virtual Assistant’s from the Philippines, working from their homes, for you directly. If you don’t want to work with virtual staff directly, nor train them, motivate them or even speak to them – then I suggest looking into a more professional outsourcing set-up.
So, here you go a guideline on the four main types of Virtual Assistant’s, what you can expect them to be able to do, task wise, and what you should be looking to pay them for both full-time, and part-time positions. Hope this clears a few things up for everyone.
There are also other types of virtual workers available from the Philippines, such as video editors, audio editors, graphic designers and the like, however, based on us working with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the time we’ve been in business at Virtual Staff Finder, we’ve found this set of four to be the most sought-after.
Please note: After a full signup audit in November 2013, we realized that 72% of our clients are looking for General VAs (GVA), and therefore now only focus on this one role at Virtual Staff Finder.
For the longest time, Paypal has been the standard for paying your staff in the Philippines… and it remains that way. It’s super easy for your staff to get their hands on their money, and a whiz for you to set-up – just be cool and pay the fees!
Ultimately, its down to you, as the virtual boss to decide what you are happy paying for your virtual staff. However, to be able to attract, hire and keep great staff working for you virtually by outsourcing to the Philippines, you also have to be very aware that the industry has, and continues to change immensely. The people are becoming more and more experienced, and more and more in-demand.
They know this, and therefore it is no longer possible (in our eyes, anyway) to get a General VA for $250 a month. Not if you want them to do a great job for you, anyway!
The following are current average full-time salary guidelines that you can follow, keeping in mind that there are less experienced workers willing to work for less, and more experienced workers that will want to see much bigger numbers – its all relevant:
I’ve seen more people recently asking for additional types of virtual staff on a regular basis over the last year or so. They are as follows, and again – all rates are approximate and based upon market conditions and experience levels, obviously:
* Part-time rates would obviously be 50% of full-time rates.
Now, again, these are just guidelines. For example, 5-6 years ago, you could get a full-time General Virtual Assistant from the Philippines to work for you for that $250 I mentioned earlier. But, times change, and the home-based virtual staffing world is changing, too.
If you have any more questions on this subject feel free to comment below, or for more in-depth answers and advice, just reach out to the fantastic Virtual Staff Finder team directly.
My desk at the Live2Sell Group HQ – Yes, the one I want to give away!
Location: Home Office – Reading Time: 6mins
Number of Days in the Office: 13, Total Number of Employees: 213
So, here we go with another monthly round-up as I get closer and closer to approaching my end of year goal, and becoming that (hopefully) full-time Virtual CEO. First up, I spent considerably less time in the office this past month, which is great. This wasn’t actually down to me making sure I did this, however, it simply ‘just happened’ as I have been focusing on different projects and have been working more from home to stay focused throughout the ‘creative’ stage on things.
The biggest part of August was the launch my of Virtual Staff Finder service. For a full run-down on the service and its features, you can visit the seperate website, or read my full launch post here on the blog.
We were, frankly, blown away with the response and I have been up to my eyeballs in consultation calls over the last couple of weeks. As we launched the service to the VBL subscriber list only we expected a certain number of people to sign-up, but saw a lot more sign-up’s than we anticipated. So far, so good… with over 20 virtual assistants already deployed to entrepreneurs around the world, through the service.
Although this is not 100% ‘passive’ income, it is to a certain degree. Meaning, nothing actually takes place until someone sign’s up and pays for the service. At that point, myself and my team work on things. I must say, I have enjoyed coming back from dinner and from being out on the weekend, to see emails from Paypal…!
Other going-on’s this month included:
We also surpassed our target of 1,000 RSS subscribers here at the blog, too (at the time of writing this report we are around 1,020, I believe). Thanks to all the subscribers and if you haven’t added us to your reader yet, please do so, to make sure you never miss an update on the blog. Be sure to also join us on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, too.
Another point to mention is that our iTunes Podcast has grown from strength to strength, and has been featured very predominantly throughout the last month in the ‘Noteworthy’ section of the Business listing consistently. You’ll see in the above image that we’re featured along with Pat Flynn’s great new podcast, too.
So, a pretty strong month. Thanks to everyone for their continued support on these reports. They won’t last forever, in terms of the current format anyway, and I do enjoy reading the feedback from you all, very much so. See you on the next post!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umUTmnnYQUM
Location: Company HQ – Reading / Viewing Time: 4mins
Personal Outsourcing isn’t anything new. However, the best selling book, the 4-Hour Work-week certainly helped push it into the limelight in more recent years. Savvy entrepreneurs from all around the world now ‘know’ what outsourcing is all about and more and more are getting turned onto it with every passing month.
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Location: Home Office – Reading Time: 5mins
If you’re already a subscriber of the Virtual Business Lifestyle blog you’ll know that I’ve regularly talked about virtual assistants and how I use them to help run, support and grow my business. Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of a brand new service called Virtual Staff Finder.
In a nutshell, the service was put together to bridge the outsourcing gap between entrepreneurs that want a hard working, experienced home-based VA, but one that is selected and ‘checked out’ in a more professional way, with the entrepreneur doing pretty much nothing in the process, accept making the final ‘hire’ decision.
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Ever since Tim Ferriss wrote and published The 4 Hour Work-Week, there has been hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial lifestyle fanatics looking to creating what Tim calls, their ‘muse’. Some have succeeded, some have failed – terribly. I wanted to write this quick post to be able to point out some simple things you can utilize virtual assistants for, when kick-starting your muse creation empire!
It doesn’t really matter what kind of muse you’re creating for yourself to be able to create passive income streams and capture that 4 Hour Work-Week dream. It can be an eBook, it can be an eCourse, it can be a software download, it can be a membership site—it seriously doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that you’re making the move; you’re taking the step to be able to become more of a passive income generating entrepreneur. Will it lead you to a 4 Hour Work Week lifestyle? Maybe. Maybe it won’t. But the most important thing is that you’re taking that first step to be able to try and create your muse, get it up online and get people spending money on it.
So when it comes to utilizing virtual staff to be able to create that muse and get it out there, there are a number of different ways you can utilize the support they bring to the online business-building table.
The first thing to do straight off the bat is competition research and keyword analysis. And a virtual assistant can do that for you very, very effectively. I have people working for me full-time here in the facility, checking this stuff out for me, as I write this post – but, you can do it with anybody anywhere in the world.
Once that research is done and you’ve figured you want to give it a go, it’s time to register your domain name. If you struggle on this, brainstorm with the people around you to come up with ideas for that all-important domain name. I have credited my wife, Ercille, on many occasions and in many interviews to naming the blog you’re reading right now! Obviously, you’re going to want to make sure it’s related to the product that you’re going to be creating and selling in some way shape or form.
Your domain name registration and coming up with ideas can also be done with, or by your virtual assistant as well. Once that goes into effect you’ve got to develop your online portal, or your blog. You can do that yourself but it’s going to take a long, long time to customize, for instance a WordPress theme. I tried it myself on my first blog or two. I did achieve it, but it took forever (especially as I am a bit of a perfectionist!) and I’m just too busy for that kind of stuff nowadays.
Get anybody with PHP and/or WordPress knowledge and experience and it’s a slam dunk all the way. Virtual assistants are perfect for this type of stuff – plus, if you don’t want to hire a full-time developer, just pay them for the project itself.
Graphic design. Now this is obviously not just for your online side of things, but offline, too. Like laying out and designing an eBook, or producing a video, 3D graphics that you are going to be using in the video side of the product that you might be putting out, etc. You can also look at hiring a virtual staff member to be able to handle the editing of your videos as well – both for the short and long-term.
Something else that you can really utilize virtual staff for is networking. Networking online through Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace—although it’s not talked about nowadays – that sort of stuff is perfect for a virtual assistant, because a lot of it can be put on autopilot. It is, however, very time consuming, so don’t waste your time on Twitter all day long!
Bottom line here is that as long as you’ve given your virtual assistant good directions, they can do almost all of your online networking for you, saving you a boatload of time, so you can focus on other money-making tasks!
One of the other big things you can use virtual assistants for to great, great effect – and this is something I’m a big fan of – is online research. Get them to research the living daylights out of any kind of business model that you might be thinking about pursuing, someone you might want to JV with, or a website you want to review, etc.
So, there are a few different ways to utilize a virtual assistant to create your muse, just as Tim Ferriss has done. If you have had success in working with VA’s to help you do this type of stuff online, please share your experiences below – share the wealth, guys – it’s good karma!
Chris is a serial entrepreneur and highly regarded as THE authority on the subject of building a profitable personal brand business.