What do you task/how do you manage your VA?

[Tubbies]

Anyone willing to share what they have their VA do and how they manage them?

I've been developing my online business(es) for a little over a year. I've attempted to hire VAs to help automate things but it never seems to work out. Most of the VAs I've found on Upwork and they've all delivered late, sub-par work.

As SEO work can be, the workload for my VA tends to be sporadic. I have them setup a bunch of sites or write a bunch of content, then wait.... As such, the hours can range from 5-10 hours a week. I've gotten the impression from some that 5-10 hours a week is more of a distraction than anything.

I'm intersted in learning about how others find, hire and mange their VAs. Without sharing any proprietary details into your own business, mind sharing some details and how you go about managing them over the long term? Any perspectives from smaller shops with part-time workloads would be much appreciated.

 

[payal23j]

Give them target while doing the job. Like in one hour this work going to complete.. as per your knowledge that you can do that job within 50-55 mins.
Simple and keep asking update from them and tell them when they will be online they msg you and before closing the work update you.

 

[SellOnlineee]

@Tubbies I am a VA and most of the work I am allotted is pre-determined.
We give it a try and adjust the time-per-task accordingly.

 

[payal23j]

Same here. I am VA too but I know what's the TAT and how to do task.

@Tubbies I am a VA and most of the work I am allotted is pre-determined.
We give it a try and adjust the time-per-task accordingly.

@Tubbies I am a VA and most of the work I am allotted is pre-determined.
We give it a try and adjust the time-per-task accordingly.

 

[simno]

Are you looking to hire someone? I think it's a wrong section

 

[MisterF]

It's difficult to gauge these type of answers.

I did a trial on Odesk services 4 years back, I hired 5 different VAs, gave them all the same instructions for seo work that needed doing, each had a site to work on. These 5 sites were all the same keywords targetted, same size sites, different themes, different domains ( obviously ) but all the same TLDs.

Basically there was an hour a day work for each, for 4 weeks.
1 site rankings improved, other 4 - 3 dropped, 1 did nothing.

What I found was if I said to them- Find and manually post on at least 5 PR6+ blogs, 2would do 5 of these, 1 guy used to do 8 and 2 did less than 5.
I also found out during this trial, 1 of these people was actually getting a friend to do the work


I'd suggest you do a time and motion type study, so you know how quickly it takes to do task A, task B, task C etc.

It's like most things if you are paying by the hour, some people work hard to get the job done, others drag their feet and try to milk you.

I have done it where I had 3 sites all the same theme, same page numbers etc, same articles, I wanted a newer theme installing and setting up.
I had 8 or 9 people apply for the job, ranging from $3 and hour to $21 an hour, with people saying it would take them 30 minutes, while another quoted me 6 hours.

There are some great VAs out there, but for every 1 there are probably 49 crappy ones.

 

[Xalion]

The thing with VA's.. 99 out of 100 don't give a fuck.

 

[Tubbies]

Give them target while doing the job. Like in one hour this work going to complete.. as per your knowledge that you can do that job within 50-55 mins.
Simple and keep asking update from them and tell them when they will be online they msg you and before closing the work update you.

Good point on the updates. Do you find timezones an issue? My TZ (Alaska) is a pain to overlap with certain countries.

@Tubbies I am a VA and most of the work I am allotted is pre-determined.
We give it a try and adjust the time-per-task accordingly.

Are you suggesting I purchase you're services? If so, PM me.

Are you looking to hire someone? I think it's a wrong section

Yea - I was afraid of that. I'm not outwardly looking to hire someone with this post but this section, as it focused on freelancers and VAs, seemed most appropriate. Where would you suggest I put a post like this next time?

time and motion type study

Never heard this term before but I've tried this before. I always find it difficult to gauge how much slower another person will do a task I find simple. How detailed do you get with your instructions? Are we talking button clicks or should I assume a VA, who's versed in SEO, knows how to create a blog by clicking A, B, C. I realize it will vary but I found myself at times spending more time writing instructions than actually getting any work done.

 

[Dopp]

If nothing else works out, there are services that offer decent quality VAs. They are a little expensive, but you get the results. I've used one such service for getting some non-seo work done.

 

[payal23j]

@Tubbies For the time zone give them work before sleeping and ask for the update when you wake up. Simple.

If you still looking for VA then I can help you too.