Helping Entrepreneurs Go The Distance In Business… And Life!
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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Las Vegas - I'm Coming... Get Ready!
Number of Days in the Office: 19, Total Number of Employees: 211
This month literally flew by – faster than any other this year, without a doubt. And, if I was to be really honest, I probably worked harder and longer hours this month than I have over the entire year, too. People have even been emailing and tweeting me saying things like ‘Chris, everything okay… You’re very quiet!’ – mainly because I have been 110% focused on hitting this Virtual CEO goal of mine.
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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!
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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Featured on the same page as Steve Jobs and CNBC - Wow!
Location: Home Office – Reading Time: 5mins
Number of Days in the Office: 17, Total Number of Employees: 208
Happy Friday to each and every one of you! Wow. What a month… These monthly reports are always the posts that I enjoy putting together the most. What I do is jot down notes in my Moleskine throughout the month on things that I want to mention, and this month is a real corker!
Because so much took place this month, I am going to make this a bullet-point type of post to make it easier for you all the read and get stuck into. So, here we go:
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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!
Very Small Selection of my Awesome Staff at Our Team Building Event!
Location: Company HQ – Reading Time: 5-6mins Number of Days in the Office: 19, Total Number of Employees: 214 This week has been crazy! In fact, the entire month has been pretty mad! As my quest to become a Full Time Virtual CEO continues, I am making more and more moves to make sure I not only hit the target and achieve the goal, but more importantly, that my company will be in ‘good hands’ on a day-to-day basis when I do ‘disappear’, so to speak! One of the big aspects for me to achieve my goal is in alleviating the stress of daily business management, whilst still focusing on growth. So, this month saw a new hire. Our new Business Development Manager will be taking a lot off my personal plate, in regards to working with prospective clients and our internal marketing team, too. Up until recently this has been ALL ME. As she becomes more comfortable, she will also be strategizing with our existing clients, and helping them grow their accounts with us, too. I am really excited about this hire. …
Helping to Promote a Local Brand of 'I Love Cebu' T-Shirts!
Location: Company HQ – Reading Time: 5-6mins
Number of Days in the Office: 19, Total Number of Employees: 186
So, another month passes, and I am now officially just 7 months away from my target of becoming a Full-Time Virtual CEO. Will I hit it? You bet your ass I will…! I don’t set targets to not hit them, guys…!
Amongst other things this past month, a local company wanted me to help promote their new ‘I Love Cebu’ t-shirt range, via billboards, mall banners and newspaper ad’s (as above!), which I was happy to do – as I whole-heartedly DO love this great little city! The rest of the month wasn’t as busy as past ones, mainly because it wasn’t meant to be. Let me explain…
May 2010 was very much my ‘sit back and see how things are going so far’ month. And that’s exactly what I did. I contemplated. I thought. I planned, and actually re-planned certain parts of the next 7 months ahead of me. And I came to one big conclusion – although I have excellent local management around me (some of the best in the business, I believe), I am going to have to hire a full-time expat to come and work for me here in the Philippines, at my company’s HQ.
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Location: Company HQ – Reading Time: 4mins
Its seems as if there are more and more companies ‘going global’ and merging / reorganizing than ever before right now. A lot of this hustle includes getting virtual staff involved, sometimes for the first time ever in the history of the company. A lot of the staff that will work for companies that are now taking a more virtual approach to doing business may never actually meet face-to-face, or at least not on a regular schedule – unless its via the web.
One question that I’m starting to get asked more and more regularly at the moment is can these virtual staff / teams perform to the same standard of their more ‘local’ counterparts. You know, the more bog-standard office set-up – conference rooms, water cooler, etc..!
One thing that I’ve found in talking with several businesses and entrepreneurs that are already engaging a virtual business set-up in some way, is that they all have one common, and quite surprising point to throw into the mix. They believe that their virtual staff actually have a better collection of skills, both individually and collectively, as a ‘group’, so to speak.
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Chris is a serial entrepreneur and highly regarded as THE authority on the subject of building a profitable personal brand business.