Hiring a VA

Atwork

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Aug 6, 2021
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I have got to the point where I could use some help with some repetitive tasks and I would like to hire a virtual assistant.

I have seen people mention online jobs.ph as a good place and wondered if anyone has any experience they could share.

I would like some help with data gathering and copying text into wordpress and adding images etc.

I can write process documents to explain what I need and manage it and this would greatly increase my posting speed.

I am a bit worried about giving someone access to my site etc having not done this before and the stories of scammers...should I be?

Any advice about finding someone good to help and what to look out for or avoid and on boarding etc would be greatly appreciated.
 
Atwork said:
I am a bit worried about giving someone access to my site etc having not done this before and the stories of scammers...should I be?
Click to expand...
Here's the flat out facts of life when it comes to this kind of concern:
  • If you don't do it, you won't scale and make more money.
  • The person you hire doesn't want to be a webmaster. They want to be a VA.
  • They don't want to delay gratification and learn a bunch of stuff and wait to make a lot of money. They want to make little bits of money right now by trading their time.
  • Even if a VA steals your keywords or ideas or whatever, there's very little chance they succeed with that mentality.
  • Even if they do this and get a little traction, you have a great head start. And cheaters rarely prosper because they don't have it in them to work hard. That's why they cheat.
  • Let's say you get a million pageviews a month. You're worried about one VA and not worried about the million eyeballs that all could also steal your ideas?
  • Also, what exactly is a VA going to do with backend access that you're worried about? There's plugins to monitor their activity and there's user levels you can assign so you limit what they can do or see.
You've got zero reasons not to hire help if you need it. Upwork is a decent place to look too.
 
You can give them various kind of privileges in Wordpress such as Contributor in which case, they can only add new posts, not edit old posts. Basically no risk, they won't even see the Admin dashboard outside Add Post.

As for hiring, go post on a bunch of different pages.

I really don't look too much at experience and such, but I screen for intelligence, empathy and conscientiousness.

You want someone who is smart enough to learn quickly and who understands what you're looking for and who is stable, reliable type. You want the opposite of an entrepreneur.

My VA is a stay at home mom from a neighboring country. I hired her because she had experience, but mostly because she was able to put herself in my position and write an application based on that.

Many, if not the majority, of people looking for work are simply not able to put themselves in their employers place.

If you find someone who is able to see themselves from the outside, that is, as you would see them, then you have a winner, because it means they're smart and emphatic.

So yeah, I make quick judgements based on just a few sentences, but I believe this is the best way to about it. I want to see brain power and someone who isn't just in it for the hype.

Which is why someone like a university educated stay at home mom is ideal.

Go find your mommy.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Here's the flat out facts of life when it comes to this kind of concern:
  • If you don't do it, you won't scale and make more money.
  • The person you hire doesn't want to be a webmaster. They want to be a VA.
  • They don't want to delay gratification and learn a bunch of stuff and wait to make a lot of money. They want to make little bits of money right now by trading their time.
  • Even if a VA steals your keywords or ideas or whatever, there's very little chance they succeed with that mentality.
  • Even if they do this and get a little traction, you have a great head start. And cheaters rarely prosper because they don't have it in them to work hard. That's why they cheat.
  • Let's say you get a million pageviews a month. You're worried about one VA and not worried about the million eyeballs that all could also steal your ideas?
  • Also, what exactly is a VA going to do with backend access that you're worried about? There's plugins to monitor their activity and there's user levels you can assign so you limit what they can do or see.
You've got zero reasons not to hire help if you need it. Upwork is a decent place to look too.
Click to expand...
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I wish I had a million page views a month but I will make enough to pay someone to help....but not pay myself!
I know this is the only way to grow as I am the bottleneck.
Hopefully I can get writing help at some point but baby steps for now.
I sound like a baby scared in the corner to hire someone! I suppose I have only ever hired someone to work when someone else is paying and I met them first!
Not used to the faceless nature of this work yet but time to start
 
I'm interested in hiring my first VA too. Mostly for formatting, adding images, clicking publish and updating my Google Sheets.

A tip I picked up from Jon Dykstra is to use a screen recording to record instructions for the VA. Much faster than typing out step by step SOPs.
 
I have hired a lot of freelancer writer to work on my sites and haven't had any problems mostly because I simply give them "Contributor" access in WP. This allows them to upload the articles they write and have them published, without any problems.

As for hiring Filipinos, I have had very good experience hiring them mostly because of their honesty and hard work. Most are also very polite and shy, sometimes to a fault, so take it easy a bit if you need to criticise them.

If you must, encourage them first and say positive things about their work, before you mention the negatives. This has worked very well for me and has even helped turn mediocre workers to excellent workers.

Hope this helps!
 
Same here, contributor role works well but lacks permissions to upload images. So this little code grants them that:

Code: 
//Let Contributor Role to Upload Media
if ( current_user_can('contributor') && !current_user_can('upload_files') )
    add_action('admin_init', 'allow_contributor_uploads');
function allow_contributor_uploads() {
    $contributor = get_role('contributor');
    $contributor->add_cap('upload_files');
}
 
Like @Ryuzaki says, you can't run a business by yourself.

No one is going to still anything, I know I head the same fears but people on these boards are not there to steal a trade. They want to make a quick buck.

I had no luck with onlinejobs.ph, Upwork is my go-to source. Especially for writers and Surfer optimizers.

Hiring and managing is a different skill altogether, it will be awkward at first but if you want to scale up you need to be good with hiring/managing/firing(fun times) people.
 
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