49 Decent Virtual Assistant & Personal Outsourcing Resources

[Editor's Note: In an effort to avoid reinventing the wheel, I've taken this post's introduction partly from an earlier post.  Apologies if you've read the earlier material.]

In 2005, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman injected a bestselling hit, The World is Flat, into the national psyche. The book’s 5th “flatting” factor is outsourcing. Friedman argues that the practice enables companies to componentize manufacturing and service efforts, thus making each component more efficient and cost effective.

In August of 2005, author A.J. Jacobs (author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically) read Friedman’s book and thought to himself, “why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun?” “Why can’t I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century?” “Why can’t I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can’t I outsource my life?” He then goes on to write a notable piece of cultural history for Esquire called My Outsourced Life (notable because it later catches on in a big way). In My Outsourced Life, Jacobs outsources everything from worrying and spousal relations, to email and work related research. It’s an entertaining read and one that I recommend.

Jacobs’s piece was re-published as a section of Tim Ferriss’ Bestselling book, The Four-Hour Work Week. But Ferriss doesn’t stop with Jacobs’ anecdotes, he takes it one stop further by showing readers how to effectively hire a personal assistant for $5 to $15 per hour from places like Croatia, India, Angentina, and the United States.  Ferriss’ outsourcing advice has been the most highlighted aspect of his somewhat controversial book.  And with personal outsourcing being implemented by everyone from soccer moms to busy professionals, companies offering virtual assistance seem to be springing up everywhere.

Getting a remote personal assistant is a huge departure point and marks the moment that you learn how to give orders and be commander instead of the commanded. It is small-scale training wheels for the most critical of [Four-Hour Work Week Skills]: remote management and communication. It’s time to learn to be the boss. It isn’t time-consuming. It’s low-cost and it’s low risk.

-Tim Ferriss

While I don’t fully endorse Ferriss’ commander vs. commanded perspective, I have experienced the benefits of personal outsourcing.  The practice doesn’t just free up more time, it strengthens your entrepreneurial muscle, hones the skill of delegation, and allows you to focus on your strengths.  After just a week of outsourcing, I developed a heightened sensitivity to tasks not requiring my involvement, and subsequently learned to write rule based (if-then) procedures around such delegable tasks.

Whether you’re a college student, a busy professional, or a retiree, YOU can learn to do this.  Here are 49 resources for helping you out along the way!

Guides and Tips for Working with VAs

• TheNewlyRich.com’s 5 Tips for Outsourcing to a Personal Virtual Assistant
• 43 Folders’ Enlightened Outsourcing, Part I: The Psychology
  “Nobody’s going to be working for you out of a sense of deference or duty. It’s capitalism. The people whom you’re going to hire are your equals (no matter where they live or how much you’re paying them,) and so long as you treat them that way, there’s no reason to cringe at fully taking advantage of the labor which they are willingly proffering. Once I recognized and worked to get over this daft hang-up, I was ready to start optimizing.”
• ZenHabits‘ Tips for Working with a Virtual Assistant (and Why You Might Want One)
• Instigator Blog’s 10 Tips for Picking a Great Freelance Vendor

Ethical Issues Associated with Working with VAs

• Negative experiences with Get Friday – Post and comments give some good reasons why VAs don’t work for everyone.
• Telegraph.co.uk’s Offshoring: At Your Beck and Call “Then, out of the blue, something happened that threatened to ruin my virtual love affair: I was hit by a pang of ethical unease about exploiting India’s cheap and oh-so-willing labour. Shashi is a graduate in computer science, after all, and vastly over-qualified. To appease my conscience, I contacted Vivek Kulkarni, a former Indian government official who was responsible until recently for establishing Bangalore as the information-technology and outsourcing centre of the nation. “There are two million graduates coming out of our universities every year. All jobs are welcome,” I was reassured by Kulkarni, who now runs his own thriving business-to-business outsourcing company, brickwork.com. That was good enough for me. And suddenly one virtual employee no longer seemed enough: it was time for me to recruit a small army.”

Outsourcing Facts/History

• Personal Procurement Outsourcing: Top Overseas Websites for International Personal Support Services – “For over 10 years, outsourcing has been the domain of huge multinational corporations like Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Person-to-person outsourcing now enables everyday people to squeeze more tasks into their overcrowded daily schedules… Evalueserve, a global research firm based in India, estimates that the personal outsourcing revenues will accelerate 26% annually from US$250 million in 2006 to surpass US$2 billion by 2015.”

Tips and Tools for VAs

• Ethics exam for Virtual Assistants
• The First Official Wearable Symbol For Successful and Aspiring Virtual Assistants, Their Clients, Family and Friends who support VAs
• Instigator Blog’s – The Pros and Cons of Freelancing
• Freelancers’ Union

Places to Hire Virtual Assistants

• Survey ranking virtual assistant companies – From Tim Ferriss’s blog
• Brickwork India – $15 to $25 an hour. “(As of November 2007) Brickwork has a staff of 160 in Bangalore and uses as many as 150 others as consultants, according to its founder and chief executive, Vivek Kulkarni. Brickwork says that it has had 150 clients in the United States and many more in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong.” – NY Times
• Virtual Assistants DFW
• GetFriday – $15 an hour, plus $10 a month, though rates are lower for those who have monthly plans (a 40-hour-a-month plan costs $360). “(As of November 2007) GetFriday… has a staff of 140 serving about 1,000 clients.” – NY Times
• Zirga – U.S.-based, native English speakers. 35 tasks (which can be completed by staff in 35 minutes or less) for $95/mo; additional tasks can be added for $30 per block of 10.
• AskSunday
• Rearden Commerce – Online tool that is an electronic virtual assistant (not a human) using your calendar and recorded preferences
• Your Man in India – This is a service for people who live outside India, but need errands run within India. Primarily geared toward Indian expats living abroad.
• Executive Solutions Virtual Assistants
• Love Concierge – Plans from $99.95 – $400/mo or a pay-as-you-go plan for $15/mo + $40/hr. They’ll do everything from enhancing your profile photos to writing a love letter to your significant other.
• Corporate Concierge
• Taj Tunes – For $5/per call, send a singing telegram from India
• Tasks EveryDay – $7-10/hr
• Distant Support – Based in the Philippines
• ScriptLance – Programmers
• iFreelance
• Agents of Value – Based in the Philippines
• Workaholics for Hire
• DaVinci Virtual Office Soluations
• Guru
• oDesk
• Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) – Post HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), which are tasks that cannot be done artificially by a computer and therefore need human input. These are usually tasks that can be completed very quickly and pay generally ranges from a few cents to a few dollars.
• Elance
• RentACoder – Hire programmers
• TutorVista – Hire a tutor for your children
• Get a Freelancer
• Do My Stuff
• American Express Platinum Card Concierge
• Craigslist

Places to Find Personal Assistant Jobs

• Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) – Bid on HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), which are tasks that cannot be done artificially by a computer (each task usually takes just a few seconds or minutes) and receive almost immediate payment though your Amazon account.
• Craigslist
• Do My Stuff
• Elance
• Get a Freelancer
• Guru
• Having Things Done – This site isn’t quite up yet, but you can pre-register
• oDesk
• Workaholics for Hire

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Photo by Fire Monkey Fish.