Your content writing team.
I like your approach. I think it will work well with someone new to article writing (e.g. a fresh graduate), by offering training and equipment.
But once trained, some may say it's a matter of time before they see what the market rates are and go to where the grass is greener.
If you find a good one, don't let them go as they're worth their weight in gold and offer good incentives!
Ouch, that's not good. $6000 a month would put Su as the most wealthy person in her area - by some considerable distance. Her 1 bed apartment costs her $180 per month, she could become a super landlord and sublet a couple of floors of her building if she earned $1500.
Anything over $30,000 per annum and I'd just employ a local graduate and site him or her in my office, no point going to Malaysia or Polynesia if you are paying over $2000 per month - that's European rates. I could hire an English student straight out of a decent local university for less than that (cash in hand...ahem)
For the couple of years I've used here I've never been late paying, and have sometimes given her an extra $50-$100 if she has worked particularly hard in a month (i.e when I make changes and she needs to research new topics etc)
$6500 - $7000 direct to her account put her in the top 10% of earners, and the work is regular. She gets 2 days off a week and rarely works more than 8.5 hours a day. The PC is basic and most of the functionality is on a server.
If you go through an agency, well so I've heard, some pay the actual worker only 50-60% of the amount the client pays. So you might see a VA for $800 - $1000 per month on Odesk or one of those "refer a VA" services - and in fact they get LESS than $500 of that themselves and are expected to work for multiple clients and have little or no job security and are required to train themselves (or get ditched by clients quickly).
Su has been paid regularly for years, has her holidays, weekends and bonuses. She gets her 13th month in full and retraining - updated equipment is all part of the deal.
She has candidly asked me several times if I have work for others who want it, but I don't have the time to train new workers and cannot spare Su for the 30 days it would need to do it properly. At least not yet, but maybe next year that will change and I might up to 3 VA's at some point as I expand from my current 6 big websites to maybe 15 or 20. Several had nice PR increases 48 hours ago and Google seems to love really big websites with millions of unique words of content, so that's what I'm feeding it. Getting a new website past the million unique word point takes some time, essp if you want a couple of hundred videos and maybe 2000 images in that, but with 3 VA's rather than one I should be able to push a site out every month to that point
I think the perception in Malaysia is that my side of the fence IS the greener grass compared with working in sweat shop environments with no job security and "the man" taking a 50% cut of the clients payments.
But there is always the possibility of getting staff poached. When I was a project planner "back in the day" I got poached myself more than once. (Wish I'd never left Bosch though - well not to work for the other jokers I worked for - glad I'm self employed now of course)
Scritty
