Most small business owners look out for assistance on their niche area of business. But they are wary of using skilled professionals as their virtual assistants for the fear that , they might have to engage them for a fairly large duration of time ( 100 – 200 hrs ). However, this may be true for some virtual staffing agencies, it definitely does not hold true for most of the independent service providers, aka independent virtual assistants.
Being independent providers, virtual assistants are flexible with their time. Depending on the need of the project, a genuine virtual assistant would provide you an estimate of number of hours required to complete the said project, and also provide you with the projection of “pay per project” cost. Given the choices, it should not be difficult for you to decide the method that suits best for the project , and the urgency of its completion.
Unlike any other business, this too has a catch. This is. . . you need to be completely upfront with the requirements of the project. Make a complete list of requirement and the projected results that you wish to attain from a virtual assistant. Include maximum details that will allow the virtual assistant to work on the project without having to get back to you every other day during the course of its execution. And last but not the least, try to avoid last minute inclusions to the task list by saying, “Can you do this one more thing, and this, and this”. While most Virtual Assistants would comply, it is still a bad business practice.
As a small business owner, I understand how much your business means to you. You have invested more than just money to see it thrive and flourish. Similarly virtual assistants are skilled people who have invested in their time and skill so as to provide services over the internet. Unlike other professionals, Virtual Assistants also have working and non-working hours. We do take our weekends off but we also take our work more seriously, because, the success of your project reflects our success in executing them for you.