The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? 158 Comments

Written by Tim Ferriss Topics: 4-Hour Case Studies, Outsourcing Life

So good I had to show it to you again.

This past Tuesday, I was part of a segment on the CBS Early Show on personal outsourcing called “Average Joes, Janes Outsourcing Tasks.” Check out the video, one of the best I’ve seen on the topic, here. It includes case studies.

Two of my favorite articles on personal outsourcing — one from The Wall Street Journal and the other from the NY Times — compare different tasks and common problems.

I’ve outsourced everything from hardcore business functions to personal chores, emptying my inbox, and even online dating (see my “extreme outsourcing” article for the last).

One big question still remains for most:

Where the hell should I go to get started?

All personal outsourcing companies are not created equal…

Some only do research, while others do actual work, and still others screw up everything you give them. I haven’t seen a good ranking of customer satisfaction for different services, hence the following survey for readers here, who have more experience than most in personal outsourcing.

If you have used any of the following services and been satisfied, please vote for them here (multiple services is fine). There are dozens of new upstarts, so I only included those I’ve used or heard good things about. If you have other recommendations or questions, please leave them in — you guessed it! — the comments. If you haven’t used personal outsourcing yet, what’s holding you back?

The competitors are:

Elance
American Express Platinum Concierge
Ask Sunday
ODesk
Get Friday (Your Man in India)
Do My Stuff
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Craigslist
Workaholics for Hire
Brickwork India
iFreelance
Scriptlance
Guru
Agents of Value

Tell us about your experiences (or reservations) below — ideally focusing on what has worked so others can duplicate it — and don’t forget to vote here for your favorites!

Results will be posted next Friday. [Update: Here are the results]

Posted on December 6th, 2007

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158 Comments

Dosk — December 6th, 2007, 4:43 am

I used Elance for the design of my current blog/soon-to-be-sales site. Overall I was pleased with the quality of the work but it took way longer than expected because the designers I used were so burdened with other projects. The timezone/language differences did not help either. I recommend you read all the feedback, especially negative comments, very carefully on Elance and be very upfront about expectations.
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James Lee — December 6th, 2007, 6:19 am

I have been a user of Ask Sunday for about 2 months now and have been pretty impressed with their service. I started by using the short/small task request based part for restaurant reservations, flight status updates, making doctors appointments, etc. – basically low-value stuff. Recently, I have started using their Sunday Projects service for a market research study I am doing for work and have been pretty impressed with the output. Their Sunday Projects division is based in the Philippines and their English skills are better than what I have come across in India.
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thom singer — December 6th, 2007, 7:44 am

Great piece on outsourcing from CBS. I am still figuring out if I can outsource stuff without causing me to worry about how it is being done. That is a tough call from someone who is used to doing it all himself, but I do see the benefits you preach!
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Rolf F. Katzenberger — December 6th, 2007, 8:12 am

I’ve tried individual companies as well as marketplaces and I have to say that marketplaces (like elance.com or guru.com) beat individual companies every time.

The main benefit for me was that I could insist on having it “my way” in terms of working style (e.g., amount and frequency of mutual feedback), secure payment mode and overall formality. E.g., individual companies mostly tried to impose their contract templates and feedback cycles on me – I would have saved neither effort nor money had I given in, thus reaping no benefits at all from outsourcing (or personal / virtual assistants).

Whether it’s an individual company or a marketplace: the biggest problem is always to establish trust. Haven’t found a solution yet, except maybe prototype projects and the like.
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Robert Bethge — December 6th, 2007, 9:32 am

I’ve used both AskSunday and Amex Platinum service, and continue to use both happily. Amex was great for projects that required a Concierge service (get me concert tickets, find me a doctor in a foreign city) wheras I use AskSunday for anything where I would like someone to call around a few places and essentially act as my ‘personal assistant’. The combination is great. I trust Amex to make qualitative and time urgent decisions, and use AskSunday for tasks that are mundane, but require time.
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Michael | Family Hack — December 6th, 2007, 10:16 am

I’ve worked with several overseas contractors and have found the key to success is to make sure the words I’m using are simple and have no double meaning. In other words, I avoid using a lot common business language like “get underway” and “bottom line”.

You might be tempted to say “I would like to start with the following task.”

By starting with the word “I”, you are directing the communication to yourself instead of the assistant. Also, the word “would” may be hard to decipher for an intermediate English speaker. “Can you” or “I want you to” is safer.

Also, the word “following” can mean “after”, “behind the leader” or “second”. So, your opening line could be read a few different ways. Such as:

“I like to begin with the second task” ”
“I want to start the task later”.
“I would like to start the task after the leader”.

A clearer statement might be: “Can you do this task?”

So, if you want them to buy you a new shirt. Don’t say “find me a shirt” or “get me a shirt”. Be clear…”buy me a shirt”

It can be frustrating at first, but after a while, I’ve become accustomed to writing like a 5 year old.

Best,
Michael
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Patricia — December 6th, 2007, 10:52 am

I originally heard about Ask Sunday on a segment on the Today Show. I thought the price was reasonable to give it a try mundane tasks that I never seem to get around to, such as doctor appointments, reservations, and my personnel favorites waiting on hold and then patching me in and wake up calls with the weather forecast.
Recently, I started my own business, and have used Sunday Projects to help me out. This is perfect for someone like me who is still working their day job and trying to get another career off the ground. I can hire someone for a set amount of hours to do competitive research analysis for me at a low cost allowing me to really focus on the core business. I know as my own business grows there will be more work that I will be able to outsource to Sunday allowing my own margins to be that much larger.
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Jose Castro — December 6th, 2007, 10:56 am

Nice Post!!! I think this a great way for people to duplicate what is working for others. It seems so essential to copy those whom have done well. Something I have also done for myself is hire a personal assistant to do my laundry and grocery shopping. I only do this once a week, but those crucial eight hours are now spent reading and doing other activities.

Look forward to all the great posts!

Jose Castro-Frenzel
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Randy Muirhead — December 6th, 2007, 11:43 am

Tim,
Great post. Though you placed sites that we could go if we needed to outsource something; where would you go if you wanted to become a resource to be used by someone?

###

Hi Randy,

Many of these site — like http://www.elance.com — are for both providers and those looking for services. Hope that helps!

Tim
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Brad Costanzo — December 6th, 2007, 12:36 pm

Tim,
Two days after I read your book I met the founder of a virtual staffing agency and knew I had to take the plunge and hire a VA. I was unsure exactly how I would use a VA but the consultation and matchup I received couldn’t have been better. I use a domestic VA with this company by the way. So far my experience has been first rate and I highly recommend them.
The website is http://www.worldwideofficesupport.com
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Alfa — December 6th, 2007, 12:38 pm

I’ve always enjoyed using oDesk over other marketplaces because the service buyers that I work with are often good in sending out instructions and the pay is not so ridiculously low as other freelance marketplaces’ service buyers pay.
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Rebecca — December 6th, 2007, 12:45 pm

Am following the directions in 4HWW, developing an idea, writing content, etc. Went to elance to find a Web design and development firm. Selected a company in India. So far so good. We’ll go from idea to reality for a very small investment.

That’s the good news. Oh, and the design is beautiful. I love to look at it. It makes me happy (worth what I paid already).

The bad news is: you wrote about having to be crystal clear in your communication. I’ve found it’s not just that… you have to be crystal clear, repeat yourself and very nearly bully to get the work done *well*. I’d taken to numbering every thought, item request, etc. in my emails and still many action items were overlooked or ignored. Then I requested for them to not do that (and numbered that, too)!

This guy gets a lot of work and rave reviews on elance, too, so I don’t think he’s a hack.

I think maybe he acts bigger than his company actually is- or they just skimp on design services, I can’t tell which. It took a long time and some extremely direct communication to get someone who could design… the first iterations were clearly whipped up by tech guys who knew programming but were not designers.

It’s an adventure I’m enjoying. The URL will follow when we go live!

I don’t think I’ll outsource much else right away. Takes too long to communicate — the other things I need done now I can do myself faster. Thanks!
Rebecca
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Alex — December 6th, 2007, 1:54 pm

I’ve used AskSunday for a couple of months now and happy with the level and breadth of service they provide. As a small business owner its pretty easy to communicate with their reps to take care of small task like reservations, messenger deliveries, product research, etc. They provide a lot of “bang for the buck” at $30/month. I’ve also used Get Friday and have had a harder time reaching these representatives as well communicating with them. I think what really separates the two services is the training that AskSunday puts into their reps and the neat technology interface they use to store relevant information. I’m planning on testing out their Sunday Projects for some research for my company.
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Kevin — December 6th, 2007, 3:07 pm

I recently came across a web site for a virtual assistant firm that specializes in helping people with their online dating. It’s called Love Concierge. They do other personal assistant activities too. I’m thinking about trying it out and was wondering if anyone else had ever tried it. The web site is http://www.datingvirtualassistant.com
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Lorna Tedder — December 6th, 2007, 3:17 pm

Outsourcing has really uppped my productivity–when done right. I started outsourcing 2 years ago with mediocre to great results at elance and small companies.

Database/data collection:
First VA came highly recommended –botched concurrent jobs I gave her, badly, and was months late after being paid in advance. The celebrity friends who recommended her couldn’t understand my upset when they rec’d superior work on the same kind of projects…but we discovered she wanted to impress them and would take their “whenever you get to it work” over my high priority work. This was for simple data collection that she never would put into the format she’d agreed to. I canx’d a third project because she ran too late and hired a local assistant to finish it within a few days, so it cost me twice, plus the lost time. Lesson learned: stick to VAs where there’s an objective ratings system and never pay in advance, even when your celebrity friend says they’re the best ever. Still kicking myself for that one.

File Transcription: (My Secret Weapon)
My best productivity tool is dictating books and courses on my digital recorder and uploading the audio files to a VA I hire via elance. Best service ever? I dictated 30 files in 14 days while commuting to my day job, then I sent the files to my VA on Friday evening and had a 300-page text document ready for me to make final edits on 48 hours later…for a few hundred dollars. Audio file transcription with other VAs (the first one was already booked) has been crappy quality that required me to re-work everything myself because their spelling skills were not as represented, in spite of great ratings from others.

Research: Mediocre job from a very earnest male VA in India with great credentials and price. In spite of what I thought was good upfront communication, he didn’t understand the subtleties, regardless of what we’d agreed to. Cultural differences made a huge difference in this project. Good job from a VA in Argentina who wrote to ask me what she could do to make it better. I gave her three larger projects that were absolutely perfect–she took my concerns from the first job to heart.

Coordination of projects/research/data collection/email contacts: Very good job from an inexperienced VA who wanted the opportunity to prove what she could do and build her resume. She definitely, in hindsight, underestimated the hours required but refunded some of the money because she considered the experience so valuable to her.

I’ve tried to outsource some book formatting projects through elance but rec’d incredibly high estimates that included all sorts of things I specifically said don’t do. Hard time getting people to listen to instructions on this one instead of trying to force-fit me into their idea of what I should do. Ended up outsourcing this one to a local assistant who did 15 such projects for the estimate of 1 such project from elance.

Editing: Very professional VAs with individual companies. 80% of these have been superb, with the 20% requiring me to reaccomplish the work personally because they made such a mess of it. Without the good ones, I wouldn’t have finished the projects for another year.

So my VAs have been hit or miss, but when one hits, it’s a force multiplier for my productivity!
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Jordan — December 6th, 2007, 4:09 pm

I used GF for about a year. Started out great, but the quality steadily diminshed. They recently assigned me to a new VA who could barely speak English, and explaining things to her plus her errors required much much more of my time than it saved.

Switched to a brand new startup copmany called Zirga.com.

Their service has been absolutely spectacular (not to mention slightly cheaper than outsourcing to Bangalore!).

Highly recommended–you might add this service to your list above.

Jordan
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Karl — December 6th, 2007, 4:22 pm

I have had very positive experiences with Elance. The marketplace approach finds specialists for each particular project, which has some advantages over a firm one ALWAYS goes to – that go-to firm will probably say yes to projects they are not qulified to do. The listing process is very easy, and they seem to have a good pool of talent. So, Elance 1

I had very negative experiences with Get Friday. I tried to use them first (having read the 4HWW) and they seemed to be a victim of their popularity – slow to respond, corporate BS in the way the communicated, bad communication between team members, unqualified people assigned to tasks, lost emails, you name it. TERRIBLE.

I should mention I have had good results with OnAssist – they are a Philippines-based firm that’s been quite responsive and goal-oriented. Worth considering.

Best,

Karl
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Karl — December 6th, 2007, 4:26 pm

A follow-up thought – I’m thinking about ‘meta-outsourcing’ – now that I’m comfortable with the process / skill of defining-and-assigning outsourced projects, the time to post them and manage them is itself an outsourceable task. The trick will be to find a very high-level VA who can translate verbal / quick email project descriptions into formal bid requests, and then manage the growing team of VAs. Finding that high-level assistant will be a bit of a challenge, I think.

- Karl
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- Glenn — October 14th, 2011, 11:34 am
  
  Karl, that is a BRILLIANT idea! The thought of wading through a sea of misunderstanding has been one of the things that has made me hesitant about using a VA. But “meta-outsourcing”…! PLEASE let me know if you have any luck finding a high-level VA who can do this, and where you find him/her.
  Reply
Mike Carroll — December 6th, 2007, 4:48 pm

Tim, read the book twice already and love it. I remember reading (pg 56) you said you found your dream car the Aston Martin DB9 on ebay.. Did you purchase this car or were you just browsing?

Anyhow was curious if you did purchase it how you like it as it is also one of my favorite cars and I set that as my first major goal for october 08′ on the dreamline.

As a fellow MMA enthusiast, excessive notetaker and master of systems and automation I feel we were cut from the same thread and keep up the good work!

Mike C.

###

Hi Mike,

I’ve driven the DB9, and it’s amazing, but I don’t own one. Now, if someone offered me a Tesla Roadster…

All the best,

Tim
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Nathan Whitehead — December 6th, 2007, 6:45 pm

I’ve used Elance for getting art work done (book illustrations). It worked great.

I think the real trick is knowing exactly what you want and being able to write it down in simple English. If you can do that, the task will almost certainly work being outsourced. If you don’t know exactly what you want, you are going to have problems. If you’ve read Tim’s book you can see that he knows exactly what he wants and writes clearly and simply; he also has phenomenal success with outsourcing. That’s not a coincidence.
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Chris — December 6th, 2007, 7:17 pm

I have recently read Tim’s book and now want to start my first (ad)venture. Is there any way to get some feedback from Tim on what I want to do and how I am proposing to do it?

###

Hi Chris,

Sorry! I’m not doing any one-on-one consulting at the moment. My apologies, but it just isn’t scalable. The reader-only forums on the main 4HWW site are a good place to get feedback.

Good luck and pura vida,

Tim
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Jose Castro — December 6th, 2007, 9:14 pm

Message is for Chris,

There is a lot of material out there with Tim in it, including several youtube recordings. I have found these to be helpful, but what I think one of the main points Tim has repeated a lot is to micro test. This seems to be a great method to see how things work. It keeps the project relatively inexpensive and if is not, then you would not have wasted too much time on the idea/project. At times people become “married” to their ideas as is often the case with people and their stocks. Sometimes, it is best to let luck on an idea and work on another. Moreover, scan Tim’s site carefully there are a lot of hidden gems(sites with awesome and useful info) . I hope this was helpful, oh another key, read the books Tim has referred. Richard Branson offers some savvy advice in his book, Losing My Virginity.

Take care and wish you the best in your venture!!

Jose Castro-Frenzel
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Jose Castro — December 6th, 2007, 9:16 pm

Nathan,

Great observation, it is true. It is better to keep it simple and to the point. If you don’t do this you make get mixed results. Like Tim says, save the $10 words.

Best

Jose
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Victory Darwin — December 6th, 2007, 9:58 pm

RECOMMENDED:

Gavin Allinson’s OutsourceSuccess.com (he is a hardcore 4hww guy too) (India workers, Gavin’s in UK)

Voncore.net (higher prices but very highly trained – Phillipines workers, CEO works from NJ, USA

VERY SERIOUSLY BAD:

Two companies owned by Richard East of OMS3
TrafficAssistants.com and Bwiredin.com
they “specialize” in helping internet marketers.

if you click my name and check out the SCAMS group you will see posts from people who have used the services including myself. They are not quite a fraud operation, just not delivering anything close to what they claim. They wasted tens of hours of my personal time trying to get them to do things right or do things at all. full of excuses, hours inflated, work not done at all. etc

V.
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Rich B — December 6th, 2007, 11:01 pm

Great, thanks for the links Tim, really interesting.

Looks like personal outsourcing is really taking off, like the WSJ article says “we’re just coming out of the early adopter phase”.

I haven’t used personal outsourcing yet. What’s been holding me back? I’m currently time rich but cash poor. I should be the one doing the work!

Rich
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Joseph R. Jones — December 7th, 2007, 2:07 am

I’ve been using GetFriday for about 6 months now, and I have to say I haven’t been thrilled with the service.

I experemented pretty extensively at first, and have had luck only with very simple, repetitive tasks. Anything complex has been too much of a hassle.

I’m an experienced manager– I’ve been managing people professionally for over a decade. However, the language barrier combined with the vagueries of written communication can be a challenge. I’ve gotten to a point where I can generally break down a task into very simple chunks and describe it effectively in an email such that the task will be completed as expected, but doing so often takes so long that it’s not worth doing– I’ve lost so much of my own time that too much of the outsourcing value is lost.

I’ve had 3 different assistants with GetFriday, and the experience has been similar.

What I’d really like to do is find a sharp, tech-savvy high school kid locally, and pay him $10 or so an hour. This would have the added benefit of allowing me to outsource tasks that require proximity. We’ll see how that goes– I plan to try it in ’08.
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Robert L. — December 7th, 2007, 7:27 am

I have also had issues with Get Friday. My impression is that they have expanded too fast to maintain their quality of work. I’m working with elance and shopping for a new company for repetitive tasks.
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Friday Smackdown | SolidSmack.com — December 7th, 2007, 9:03 am

[...] Windows Alt Codes – comes with a link to a handy pdf and some great tips in the comments section. Outsourcing your life – I’ve seen this video a few times, but just had to show you. Tim also provides a nice list [...]
Sunil S. — December 7th, 2007, 10:09 am

Hi Tim, the book has been lifechanging, and this topic is a great one for me as I’ve been trying to put some of what I’ve learned into play.

Since you outsource everything, how do you manage the risk of giving out your identity/financial information? Are there things that you specifically put into your contracts that you can share or any tips?

###

Hi Sunil,

For one thing, I only give out credit cards and not debit cards. I also never give out SSN or security question answers. I’ve never had a problem.

Hope that helps!

Tim
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Gloria — December 7th, 2007, 11:50 am

I hired TasksEveryday three months ago. I originally contacted GetFriday but they failed to contact me in the time frame they said they would and then after making two follow up calls – both representatives I spoke with said they couldn’t find my request in their system, took my information again, and still failed to follow up – I moved on. These exchanges with GetFriday took place over a three and a half week period.

TasksEveryday has proven to be a reliable and professional service. I was required to purchase a block of hours and an assistant was assigned to me during hours that matched my work day; Mon – Fri, 10am to 2pm. I send my tasks daily as sending them in advance caused confusion even with prioritization on my part. If there isn’t any work I am charged for the time anyway.

Though generally pleased with the service I found that communication and task assignment have to be simple, clear, and direct – without any qualifying information (which runs the risk of not really understanding the assignment). The number one advantage to having a virtual assistant was being able to divest myself of the little things. The number one disadvantage to the arrangement with TasksEveryDay is having to make sure there’s always something to do (a problem I had when a live person worked in my office, too).

The greatest lesson I learned from the experience is that while having someone make reservations, order flowers, find gifts, etc is great, my needs at the moment are more specific to supporting my projects as they come into my office.

Anyway, back to the drawing board to formulate a clearer needs assessment and identify who can best deliver results at a reasonable rate.
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Nate — December 7th, 2007, 3:49 pm

Tim and/or others,

Is there a Mandarin Chinese (simplified or traditional) version of Elance for translation, VA, product procurement, web design etc…?

Any ideas?

Thanks to all and a great blog!
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- heather — December 15th, 2010, 2:18 am
  
  Hi Nathan,
  
  Did you ever end up finding an answer to this question? I’m looking for a bilingual VA to answer product support emails in Chinese.
  
  Thanks1
  Reply
Priscilla Kim — December 8th, 2007, 1:23 am

I vote for Elance.
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Hethir — December 9th, 2007, 12:55 am

This article is in good timing. I decided I needed to start learning how to outsource, so I put up a small project on Elance (fixing a little design error on my site). I found a man from India that was very dedicated to my project. I was nervous, but he did a great job.

I think the thing I need to learn more is how to be very specific with what I need done and to give up doing everything myself.
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Eden — December 9th, 2007, 7:42 pm

Ditto Jordan on Zirga. They’ve just started, so you’re forgiven for not including them.

But, oh-my-god, it is sooo much easier to deal with a smart US person (they’re in Colorado) than someone overseas. It seems like they’ve worked out a system that still allows it to be reasonably priced.

After some miserable experiences with the various overseas providers and US “concierge” services, I was ready to try one of those $50-$75/hr work-at-home-mom ex-executive-assistant VAs, who might actually be able to get something done.

Enter Zirga. Completely, totally, awesome experience. I was shopping for prices on a printer, and got this reply, which I was totally not expecting:

“Spoke with XXXXXXX, who quoted me $5700, I informed them of YYYYYYY’s price, and they agreed to match the $4950 shipped but also give you a 2 year warranty and 2 sets of ink.

Left another message for ZZZZZZZ.”

Not to mention they’ve been extremely effective at sorting out billing confusion with Sprint, DirecTV, you name it. I just type up a paragraph, hit send, it comes back a couple hours later as resolved. Beautiful.

You can also check off when you need something to be done, and they’re pretty good at “this needs to be done within the next hour” stuff.

(Oh, they can also do *much* more complex, ongoing things if you like, at $25/hr.)
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Damaris - ArtOfLife.com — December 10th, 2007, 9:07 am

I’ve used elance only once so far and had been thrilled to get help finding a company who can replicate some of my wall sculptures. My provider was a woman from PA who had done something similar for her own creative ideas. Perfect, I thought. But after a month of work and getting REALLY close to actually finding something that would work, she had to abandon the project and elance altogether due to health reason, the fee was waved. I hope she will get medical assitance and get better. I’m back to square one and will re-post my project today.

Meanwhile, tried to check out getfriday.com but got only an error there: There is a problem with this website’s security certificate. Hmmmm….

I’m very motivated to test out some other sources. Outsourcing is not a luxury, it’s a must for anyone whose capacities go beyond doing every single detail without room or time to grow. Thanks for making that so clear!

Blessings,
Damaris
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Jason — December 10th, 2007, 5:08 pm

WOW! I was reading through the comments as I wait for the results to be posted and came across some good information. Per Jordan and per Eden I decided to check out Zirga.com and all I can say is that they are amazing!!! They gave me 3 tasks to test the service and the work that they did was phenomenal! I’ll definitely be using their services exclusivly.
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HalW — December 10th, 2007, 5:42 pm

I haven’t tried them yet but there is a push by some to use rural US sources for low(er) cost outsourcing. http://www.ruralsource.com/ – they’re in Arkansas . . .
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Living PLush — December 10th, 2007, 7:24 pm

That video is wrong on so many levels… LOL
Funny.

I am new to the 4 Hour Work Week World and am halfway through the book and am now searching through the website.

Must say… 5 Stars… Kudos Kudos Kudos…
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Erin Blaskie — December 10th, 2007, 8:58 pm

I recommend myself!

Okay, I know that’s shameless self promotion but hey – it doesn’t hurt!

My company is Business Services, ETC and we give business owners freedom by managing the BS, etc. Seriously – it’s what we’re good at!

We have a team of six and we do anything and everything you could ever think of outsourcing. Our rates aren’t as low as $10/hour but we work really quick so your dollar is stretched really far.

We’re based out of Canada and I’ve owned my business for over three years now. We have a combined total of over 30 years of experience and we love what we do.

Check us out… http://www.bsetc.ca.

Thanks Tim for asking for resources and letting me shamelessly self promote mine!

Erin Blaskie
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Taylor — December 11th, 2007, 11:03 pm

Hi Tim,
Why was getafreelancer.com not included on the voting list. I have used them for over a year with great success. Also thanks alot for your book, it has really been a big help…

Cheers from Canada.
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Alexander Kohl, Passionate Management — December 11th, 2007, 11:10 pm

I have outsourced writing on both Elance.com and GetAFreelancer.com (which is well worth adding to your list).

My expectations were not really fulfilled. Even though the writers researched the topics I gave them, they had no real experience in them. And that showed in the outcomes.

Now I try to build more long-term relationships with the people I outsource to, make them part of my team, make them understand the bigger picture. That seems to work better.

Alexander
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Mark T. Anderson — December 12th, 2007, 12:00 am

The other side of the coin: I am a full time freelancer (graphic designer & Illustrator) and have eight years experience with Elance and Guru (formerly Creative Moonlighter) and am just getting started on Do My Stuff and ifreelance. I have several national accounts and fill in “betweeners” by cherry picking projects on line. I’ve had both good and bad experiences dealing with buyers on both Elance and Guru, but by and large most have been good. I’ve seen first hand the evolution of the online marketplace. Buyers ARE looking for the very best prices for producing their projects which has intensified the competitive nature of the online marketplace (good for buyers… bad for providers). I’m all for a competitive market, but service providers willing to create artwork for pennies has led to unrealistic expectations of what it takes to produce quality artwork. I can not (and honestly don’t try to) compete with lowest prices bid per project. There is always some one willing to complete the task at hand for less. I’m awarded less jobs, but those I do accept are quality projects.

I like Elance and Guru because they have the best representation of my portfolio (buers HAVE to see what you can do). Anyone wanting to start an online marketplace should start there. Thumbnails just don’t cut it. Feedback follows a close second as I always look to see a buyer’s past dealings before accepting a project. Both Elance and Guru have excellent feedback systems and they both only charge a minimal fee on money collected. It’s a good thing that they haven’t realized that a gallery will take 50% of sales from an artist. They both charge providers a yearly subscription fee which complaining about would likely fall on deaf ears. Elance has just changed their subscription policy so the jury is still out on them. Most buyers pay with credit cards and I use direct deposit into my business account which takes 3-5 days. I despise PayPal!

I personally like the quantity and variety of projects on Guru better than Elance and I think that the communication process between buyer and provider is a little more open on Guru. They both navigate well through all processes. Guru is definitely better in contacting them directly pertaining to issues and questions. You can still speak to an individual!

Kind regards,
Mark
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Jason — December 12th, 2007, 11:07 am

I have been using Gavin at Outsource Success (http://www.OutsourceSuccess.com). Sadly this has not free’d up much time yet but it has allowed me to take on more paying clients. So I’ll be debt free a lot sooner!

Also use Rentacoder and IFreelance for Technical and Web work.

Will be spending some quiet time over christmas finding more work for these guys to do.

Thanks Tim, Got your book last christmas so only right I give you an update!
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Dave Schmitz — December 12th, 2007, 4:11 pm

Tim,

Finished listening to your book 4 weeks ago and immediately as fate would have it Gavin at http://www.outsourcesuccess.com came into my business. I wear many hats as a physical therapist, personal fitness coach, and also have a successful online retail fitness business

I am a 44 y/o father of 3 and am commited to working towards the 4 hr work week.

Gavin and his band of VA’s will be the key to this transformation becoming reality.

Your wisdom and carefree approach to using VA anywhere in the world (presently Raj is in London as is Gavin) has inspired me to go anywhere I need to get the help I need.

Your book is hands down the best thing I have read. I have recently ordered 2 copies to give to friends for xmas. Something else I never did before.

Scared to take teh leap.. http://www.outsourcesuccess.com.. Ask for gavin.. and let him know Dave from Wisconsin suggest you contact him.

He is the real deal.

Dave
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Marty — December 13th, 2007, 5:50 am

I have had the same experience as Rebecca with Elance

“I’ve found it’s not just that… you have to be crystal clear, repeat yourself and very nearly bully to get the work done *well*. I’d taken to numbering every thought, item request, etc. in my emails and still many action items were overlooked or ignored. Then I requested for them to not do that (and numbered that, too)!”
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Henry Zahn — December 13th, 2007, 11:56 pm

I’ve had a lot a difficulty in the whole outsourcing my life thing. I had tried GF and AskSunday and though they handled really, and I mean REALLY, easy tasks, anything that took any initiative or independent thought at all was done very poorly. I was depressed at how much and how often I had to clarify things with either agency.

After reading through the comments on this post I decided to try zirga.com and so far I’ve been really impressed. They get tasks handled in a timely and professional manner that needs very little communication other than the original request (which I prefer to enter through their web interface or email, though they do have a request phone #).

I highly recommend zirga.com to anyone and everyone!!!!

###

Hi Henry,

Thanks for the comment. Strangely, the people at GetFriday contacted me and said that they have no record of you as a customer. If this is comment spam for Zirga, I would kindly ask you not to repeat. I’ve seen a few from them that I deleted before they were published. If GF is mistaken and you were a customer, please respond back with which dates.

Sorry for the hassle, but I have to take potential comment spam seriously. Thanks!

Tim
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Alex Poole — December 14th, 2007, 5:39 pm

Hi Tim,

Half way through your book and loving it.

Since I started using http://www.outsourcesuccess.com I have been able to free up so much more of my time.

For a while I was trying to learn and do everything myself from web design to blog posting and internet research.

I was initially skeptical about outsourcing and had heard some horror stories from some clients (much like Marty above).

Then randomly I got back in contact with Gavin whom I had known since 1993 (for a general catch up as we had lost contact for nearly 10 years…power of the internet hey!).

Call it fate or what ever you want he was there with the answer when I needed it the most.

His team of VA’s and web designers are incredibly compotent and speak flawless English.

I think I probably even told Dave above about him as we are both in a mentorship programme together. Good people are sometimes hard to find but well worth it when you do find them.

Looking forward to finishing the book over the festive period (I’ve really taken your advice to hart and make sure I read fiction before I sleep, really helps to turn the brain off).

Alex
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dan — December 18th, 2007, 12:05 am

WTF? What about Rentacoder.com? I personally use them, and they are cheaper than most(especially eLance), and they go way out of their way to make sure everyone on each side is legit. They have great dispute resolution(which I’ve never had a problem with), escrow holding, and a peer review system that is a step above eBay(no spiteful feedback!). I have used Scriptlance, and its just full of scammers and people that can’t speak english and dont understand what you want done. eLance, would rank number 2, but they usually are over priced. For example why would I pay $20 hr for decent 3d work, or $13-15/hr for ho hum 3d work when I could hire a fresh college grad locally for $17-20/hr have them to talk to face to face. Not all eLance is like that, but a very high majority of it makes me say hire someone you can work with face to face. But rather than go that route I use rentacoder. Avoid Scriptlance at all costs!
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Henry Zahn — December 18th, 2007, 4:17 pm

Hi Tim,

I don’t know why GF would deny that I was a customer. I had only been a client for a few weeks, 3 at the most, during the month of October, but they should still have some kind of record. Odd that they would contact you and deny it. Sorry to hear that you’ve been receiving spam comments. Feel free to email me directly.

-Henry
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Eric Cimrhanzel — December 18th, 2007, 5:20 pm

Wow. I almost thought that Gavin was virtually unknown, that somehow I had discovered some hidden gem no one else knew about.

After the comments from fellow fitness professionals I see that’s clearly not the case.

I’m in a couple of different mentoring program for fitness professionals and heard that Gavin was highly recommended by several different people, which sold me.

Gavin’s really easy to work with and get a hold of, and while his assistants don’t always have perfect English they are friendly and easy to communicate with if you have a little patience.

I haven’t tried anyone else.
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John Ramseier — December 19th, 2007, 2:26 pm

wondering if anyone has used http://www.taskseveryday.com they look to be similar to getfriday.com, but not sure about their level of support. any feedback would help thanks, John
Reply
Derek Herzog — December 21st, 2007, 9:54 am

Tim’s free video is in post-production, Brickwork is three weeks behind due to the xmas holiday (what is the Hindustan word for christmas?)…

Somehow you manage to provide nothing and INCREDIBLE value at the same time and make sure you are getting paid for it every step of the way.

I wonder how many people miss exactly how embodied in this very site the principles you teach are. You, sir, are a freaking genius. Well played.
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Sherlin — December 25th, 2007, 5:33 am

Hello John, i have been working with http://www.taskseveryday.com for the last 6 month and its working very well. I have a full time assistant who works for me 10-6 EST M – F and she helps me with the little things that take up most of my time. I am a dentist here in NY. My VA manages my appointments, confirms visits with my clients, researches internet for various topics that interest me, does some data entry work and other personal tasks.

Overall its working well looking at the value for money and the output. I pay only $6.98 an hour including cost of phone calls!
It took me a bit of getting used to when i started but now i exactly know how to put instructions in a simple format for the VA to understand. You have to keep in mind the cultural difference that exists and that means keeping all instructions very clear. Trust me it works well!
Reply
12 Filtering Tips for Better Information in Half the Time | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss — December 28th, 2007, 1:13 am

[...] For others, it’s a matter of letting the Robert Scobles or Techmemes find the gems… or finding a virtual assistant who creates personalized executive summaries each [...]
Victory Darwin web 2.0 entrepreneur genius — January 14th, 2008, 4:47 pm

hey Gavin, one more positive comment about you and you might be a victim of your own success and have all reference to you deleted! haha!

with that said, let’s try and see what happens:

Gavin gave me this idea which has really helped me manage all the VA I hire (mostly from rentacoder)

…do a CAMTASIA video (video of your computer screen) of you doing the computer task. Add voice commentary. give them the video and say do it. If they have questions you can improve the video for future. This is only useful for computer tasks, but somewhat also for other things I imagine. Anyway, saves retraining people. I also like to add the webcam pic-in-pic of me telling them the instructions so they can see my scary face as I tell them the consequences of what will happen if they screw up!

that’s my 2 cents
(total 4cents including my earlier post)
cheers!
V.
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Steve — January 16th, 2008, 5:31 pm

I found that using Guru worked well. (before I came across this book) I posted a project to elance and guru and found more people bidding on my project from guru. I was initially pretty nervous and didn’t really feel comfortable in “assessing” the right person and so I let the bid stay up until I found the person I felt most comfortable with. I will have to say that I have been pretty impressed with the work (complex computer coding) However, I too have had some setbacks with outsourcing. Time is of the essence and you will never know how swamped with other projects the person you are hiring will be. (ASK THIS UP FRONT…don’t assume it with the schedule they give to you to complete your task) Even though the contract I struck with the individual was pretty straight forward and had definite time deadlines, I found them slipping and never had a grasp on his time. I allowed that to happen because I felt that the project was bid not on an hourly schedule but on a project completed task. (this method is both good and bad). I agree with Tim F. in that it should be short milestones that can be tracked frequently. Short being 2 to 3 days otherwise the project will run off track. I have also found that on a pay per completed task project, the person(s)/company can come back and say that they heavily under estimated the work even though it was clearly stated in the contract and about ¾ the way through you might find yourself renegotiating the contract over again because your bent over a barrel and almost finished and they know it.

Tips I find useful

Tim F. said it best, get multiple people working on your project. Life happens and working with one person is going to be painful when life does occur.

If you are stupid like me and only got one person then here are my tips for that…

Ask how many projects they currently have going and figure out what it would take any normal person to do what they are doing and then fit your stuff in. (that’s going to be your time frame)

Have definite small milestones that will be checked frequently

Be firm in your choices and direction of your project/ accept feedback but ultimately its your project and your time.

In very specialized areas of expertise… I would suggest that you go to a pay per hour, get estimates and hold them close as possible to the deadlines and estimates to not let the project go on and on …

I don’t have any idea what you do once you get to the renegotiation stage. Otherwise feel free to be a hostage of your own design (like I did) unless some people have advice on here how to get the project finished and not piss off the person in the meantime .. (yes guru does have conflict and contract resolution in case this goes south …but it will either make it almost impossible to get the job done or future work done working within specialized areas that only a few people know how to do!!!)
Reply
John — January 17th, 2008, 11:41 am

Has anyone used BPOVIA.COM as a virtual assistant? If so, how did it work out?
thanks,
John
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The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss — January 21st, 2008, 9:41 pm

[...] Find a virtual assistant. See “The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant?” and “Extreme Personal Outsourcing” for tips and [...]
Reality Me » Too much overhead — January 23rd, 2008, 6:48 am

[...] into the wee hours of the night. I wonder if I shouldn’t outsource my life. Tim Ferriss has outsourced everything including dating. Comments after [...]
Franck Silvestre — January 28th, 2008, 3:20 pm

I am not like everybody here because I like to find my VA in forums I frequente.

I had both good and bad results. Everytime I hire someone, I try to get 2 or 3 people, give them the same task and then, I choose the best.

Like you said, you need several weeks before you can find out who is “the best” for the job.
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Sarah Lewis — January 28th, 2008, 11:56 pm

I discovered oDesk through this post, and started using it the same day. Now, almost two months later, I’m working with more than 10 providers and working on a book about oDesk. I guess you could say I’m sold on it.

The aspects I like best are the hourly rates (so I know what I’m paying for, and also because it works well for long-term projects) and their profile and testing system. I can get a very good idea of who I’m hiring without a lot of risk on my part.
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Stefan — February 3rd, 2008, 6:43 am

I know, God speaks English. Unfortunately the most of what I could outsource involves either Spanish or German. I would be greatful if anybody could point me to some services using one or both of these languages.

###

LOL… c’mon now, Stefan, I never said that! There are tons of virtual assistants in both Central and South America, as well as in Poland and other countries with plenty of German speakers. I’d give http://www.elance.com a shot and I’m sure you’d find good examples.

Good luck und viel Spass y que te diviertas!

Tim
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ArbitraGeo — February 9th, 2008, 7:56 pm

Great example of Geographic arbitrage! The point you make about all outsourcing not being equal is oh so painfully true!
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Dan — February 17th, 2008, 6:17 pm

What is the best VA for personal outsourcing? Basically handling the trivial tasks in life. Give me some reccommendations please!!
Thanks!
DAN
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Kenn — February 21st, 2008, 1:49 am

I have had a very positive experience with guru.com. I have hired three different contractors for specific technical and design tasks with great success. One Indian firm I hired through guru was very slow, but did good work. I also hired a guy in Atlanta, GA to do some Linux troubleshooting and he was amazing!

Now I need a virtual assistant, and am in the process of signing up with getfriday.com, fingers crossed. Glad to know there are other outsourcing options if gf doesn’t work out. Thanks for all the comments!
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Kristen — February 28th, 2008, 12:51 pm

Thanks for this article – it gave me courage to try it, and I’m really seeing life in a whole new way now! I decided to compare DoMyStuff.com and iFreelance.com for projects at home and virtual projects, respectively. iFreelance.com is a real service. I got, like, 84 bids for my first project, and they sent me notices every day with bar graphs showing how the bidding was going. There are so many talented people out there ready to help us! I thought choosing was going to be the hard part, but there was one person who seemed to have read and understood my needs most thoroughly.

I got some enthusiastic bids on DoMyStuff.com, but no email updates from them until last week, when they told me they had “delisted” my task for one of five reasons (4 of them pertaining to something inappropriate being posted, 1 being that the job was listed elsewhere. Which it wasn’t.) The job I posted was “Update My Look.” I had 4 stylists ready to come over and help me go through my closets — whee! Now I can’t contact them, either, since there is no contact info on their profiles. I wrote back to protest and never heard a thing.

So, to use the excellent ratings and review system iFreelance uses, I’d give iFreelance a ’10′ for communication and competence, and DoMyStuff a charitable ’5′. If they hadn’t dumped/judged me like that, I might have been half as impressed as with iFreelance.
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Embrace Technology Or Die | ChipHunnicutt.com — March 4th, 2008, 6:20 pm

[...] By taking advantage of traditionally company-provided services such as the company website, uploading to the local multiple listing service (MLS), yard sign and newspaper ad (yup, some still do this), agents can reduce their expenses without sacrificing exposure for the client. Spending time networking and expanding your contact is time better spent and will give you more options for e-distributing your listing announcements. As business builds, your next step will be taking on a Virtual Assistant…… [...]
Stephen Simes — March 10th, 2008, 3:04 pm

Hi,

I tried to use Brickworks. The initial contact was good, . So I sent a brief and asked for details so I could pay . Now it is seven days later. I have sent three emails to the rep and cced the biz dev dept and still no reply.
Hello, is anyone there!!
Shame because I have spent time in India and have a great affection for Bangalore.
I think I have to take the hint
Stephen

###

Hi Stephen,

I’ll be commenting on this soon. It’s a shame that they’ve been so overwhelmed by growth and dropped the ball.

Tim
Reply
Kim — March 11th, 2008, 8:54 pm

I’m a big fan of the book and now a big fan of outsourcing. I have to say, though, that my experience has been patchy.

I started out with Brickwork India. Not only did they blow every single deadline, they completely ignored key instructions and e-mailed 700 people they were not to contact. Not good. They are also expanding so fast that “my” VA was replaced three times in a month due to that expansion. I cannot recommend them. They may be one of the biggest, but definitely not the best.

I’m now using Elance and am very happy. I provide really detailed briefs, examples of what I want done (when possible), and pay very close attention to the negative comments. I also tend not to work with organisations who a) aren’t prepared to show samples of their work; or b) have a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes in their bids, as I think that is a red flag for a language barrier.

Sometimes jobs are a little patchy, but mostly they are very good.
Reply
GetFriday and the Cost of Success: Exclusive Letter from the CEO - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss — March 12th, 2008, 8:17 pm

[...] from new users who were frustrated with waiting lists, response time issues, and mistakes. New personal outsourcing services popped up to fill the demand, and the niche industry of personal outsourcing is now big [...]
Reality Me » I’m considering outsourcing — March 13th, 2008, 12:37 pm

[...] outsourcing since I read about A.J. Jacobs outsourcing his life. I know I can do some of that! Read more. Comments after [...]
Shirley Bongbong — March 20th, 2008, 4:11 am

Outsourcing is more on how the instruction is being given and how the instruction is being understood. But somehow it also deals with expectations and making allowances for those who cope up shortly. The secret is to deal with one and immerse him to your flow of operations or assignments then he will be perfect as you progress.
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Dan Noyes — April 14th, 2008, 6:00 pm

These comments have been almost as helpful as the 4HWW. Great stuff. Like many who have commented before me I have a long-term commitment to outsourcing my life and as much of my business as possible. I’ve been outsourcing components of my BPO for over five years and with pretty good success, but 4HWW revealed a whole new area I needed to explore.

I made a financial commitment to a trial with Brickwork, GetFriday, and another firm in South Asia. During this trial I would assign identical tasks to different companies so I could compare their work quality. This was vital because it quickly revealed the talent servicing my account. Also it provided me the opportunity to see how the companies functioned. Brickwork was helpful and I had a great VA, but she told me that she was leaving the company due to health, family, and other issues. At GetFriday, my VA was also great, but she suffered a severe illness and was unable to walk. It was tragic, but more tragic was the way the companies handled these transitions. The quality of work from Brickwork and GetFriday was ok, but the company infrastructure was unacceptable. Our account manager at GetFriday shared that they have a problem with keeping really talented employees for the long-term due to the skill level these positions tend to attract. If someone is really good, they will most likely find a position elsewhere. The other VA firm in South Asia was fantastic from the start and continues to improve each month.

For personal VA work, I use AskSunday (great company and fantastic work product) and RedButler. I find that each has their own strength and weakness.

To conclude, using a VA also helps you learn alot about yourself, where you are weak, and where you need to improve your processes. The trial was the best way to go and really helped me to streamline my entire operation. You really learn alot about yourself in the process. In the end, I found for myself that for the level of admin and client support I needed a US based VA who I found through IVAA. The VA I found is fantastic and has actually become an invaluable part of my company. What is really cool is that she now will outsource on my behalf to lesser qualified VA’s I have on contract when she is focused on more vital tasks aligned with my business goals. I’ve learned over time that there is no way that I could have ever outsourced to India some of the higher level tasks I was trying to send to BW or GF. My suggestion is don’t focus on the cost savings at the expense of quality work. In the long-run you’ll pay anyways.
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Kim Hughes — April 19th, 2008, 6:01 am

Hi Tim,

A client of mine recommened your book “The 4-Hour Workweek” to me about 2 weeks ago. The first thing I did was come to your website to learn more about you and what your book is all about.

Then I stumbled across this post on your blog. Outsourcing your business and personal life to a virtual assistant is common today because of the Internet . I have successfully owned my own company as a virtual assistant for close to 10 years. It is amazing to see what all a virtual assistant can do for those that want more time whether it is in their personal life or business like.

You might want to add a couple of respectable virtual assistant organizations to your list.

1. http://www.IREAA.com – International Real Estate Assistant Association
2. http://www.IVAA.com – International Virtual Assistant Association

Someone looking to outsource to a virtual assistant can submit an RFP and then sit back and wait for the proposals to come in. Then they can review all the proposals and find the virtual assistant that suits their needs.

Look forward to seeing these two organzations add to the list above.
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Vreni — April 26th, 2008, 8:23 pm

I have an idea for a fitness/physiotherapy product, and was thinking of outsourcing the drawings and prototype after reading 4hWW, but was wondering whether non-disclosure agreements are necessary when using these outsourcing companies, or how best to proceed while still protecting my idea.

I’m not really sure going through the expense and time of getting a patent is worth it for such a simple idea. If in the end I licence the product, and the company I’ve licenced the idea to decides to patent my idea, that’s fine, but in the mean time … I was going to go onto the Elance site and describe what I needed, but thought that maybe that was a bit risky. I’m I being overly paranoid??

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can provide!
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Chris Ross — June 6th, 2008, 11:31 am

Here is a quick summary of my recent outsourcing experiences with 4 companies mentioned above.

1. Zerga.com – I tried their 3 free tasks. Task 1 – To simply book a sports massage for me. Time 1 hour with a 1 hour limit. That was almost 24hours ago – no response. The second was to call Bell Canada to change the Name associated with my land line in the Phone Book – I pass on all necessary info and hoped to save time on the phone – Time 24 hours. Well – it’s been 23 hours and no response.

2. OnAssit – signed up for 5 hours and actually paid them via PayPal. A nice girls named Karen confirmed I would be contacted by a VA Project Manager the next day but to submit a task via the website. I submitted a task to ‘clean up’ a pretty poorly layed out workflow diagram. I was clear with instructions but also indicated I was available for a call to clarify. I payed via PayPal – almost 24 hours later – no response – the task remains in Pending mode and the ‘Live Chat’ has been no responsive ALL DAY although they claim to be available EST. Also on the SUBMIT task page – the footer on the website changes to an outsouced company in the US with different website. Seems shady – can’t there just be an organized, secure company that does the job they say the do?

3. oDesk – Submitted a project to help us reformat and copy edit our corporate documents. 2 hours later I have a qualified gentleman from Egypt who I am interviewing for the project. So far – so good.

4. Elance – Posted a project to ghost write for our retailmarketingblog.com. In 10 hours I have two very good options at a great price.

My conclusion is that the VA companies above are not very good, in particular at customer service and my hunch is that I will spend more time tracking them, then I would completing the task myself.

Elance and oDesk seem to be the best choice if you can segment and break down your outsourced tasks into isolated projects.

I hope this helps. I have just read the book and really wanted this VA idea to work but I am suspect of the actual value.

I have all communications and screenshots of my postings and my intentions are to share and collaborate and help others trying to outsource tasks.

Best thoughts,

Chris
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Peter — July 10th, 2008, 9:14 pm

Hi,
I have been using the service of Writer4me.com for the last 3 months and I have found them good and trustworthy. They are mainly into writing, and they are supposedly the world’s most popular writer-hire service. I have been using their ‘Blogger Buddy’ scheme to get one blog post written by them daily and it has been smooth. Writer4me.com has announced they are launching their virtual assistant division; so I am waiting to try that out. The best points about this unit is they respond very swiftly and their quality is up to the mark. They have a high range and a low range – I have only used their low cost range; so I cannot comment about their high cost range (hire a bestseller writer). They announce new schemes every month and sometimes you may wish you signed up later to get the new & better deal – this is the only drawback if it can be called a drawback I found with them. It is run by a guy who has worked with BBC.

I have not tried Elance or any of the others. I have however heard a lot about Elance and may be trying it some day.

Peter
Reply
Mark — September 19th, 2008, 10:11 am

Thank you Tim, I use an virtual assistant from VPA Direct. He is simply, ‘the best’. I save time and money comparatively. Sam is an excellent researcher and a informative. I suggested my folks and colleagues to subscribe. May be, few looking at this may do it too. Cool people and cool job done!!!!!
Reply
Michael — October 6th, 2008, 6:17 pm

I’ve been using scriptlance.com for over 2.5 years now and it’s awesome!
Other sites are great too, just make sure you choose people with excellent reviews only
Reply
b-side — October 22nd, 2008, 8:18 pm

Hey Everyone,

Its been great reading your comments on our experiences. I’m looking for an outsourced web research person and considering BOPVIA and Elance.

Has anyone out there got any recommendation?

Love to hear about your experiences.

Cheers, B
Reply
Jason Hights — November 3rd, 2008, 1:39 pm

I just used Taskus.com to enter all of my Facebook contacts into my Address
Book. Their promotional offer of $5 per hour is just ridiculous.
Reply
James — November 4th, 2008, 2:14 am

You should try BPOVIA, which was named as Finalists for the “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. BPOVIA is the first and ONLY virtual assistant service provider to ever be nominated for this prestigious award.

Yahoo covered this story here at http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20081029/bs_prweb/prweb1537424
Reply
Julie — November 4th, 2008, 7:00 pm

I’m surprised Elance won. That said I have a hard time delegating anything.
Reply
Frustrations with Webmastering :Bluenoser’s Blog — November 5th, 2008, 7:50 pm

[...] I would like to pay someone in batches to update all of my sites and then fix any bugs for me. Is this something that anyone [...]
Mickipedia » Blog Archive » The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? — November 11th, 2008, 12:00 am

[...] The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? – Tim Ferris provides a list of resources for virtual assistants. I'm considering this… If you have personal experience, let me know in the comments. [...]
Outsourcing Guru — January 22nd, 2009, 2:24 am

Great comments! It’s amazing to know that a lot of people are now using personal outsourcing. Also try some outsourcing companies which people think are only servicing to big companies but are actually offering freelance work as well specially if you are looking for flexible and low-cost solution.
Reply
Virtueller Assistent — February 8th, 2009, 9:35 am

Hi there,

thanks for the great post!

Should there there be anybody looking for German Speaking Virtual Assistants, please make sure to check out fernarbeit.net. It’s one of the few places where you will be able to find German VA’s. You will also find a lot of infos on example projects etc.
Reply
Andy — February 13th, 2009, 1:05 pm

I like the idea of outsourcing but the monthly charges have so far put me off. I shall try Amex concierge out as a test, but the comments make elance appear the best way forward in the long term.

Has anyone outsourced finding their muse?
Reply
Rick Falls — March 1st, 2009, 9:05 am

Thanks for the post Tim. Love the book.

It’s probably a little trickier when your married with a family,
but maybe needed even more!

I wish I had begun outsourcing 2 years ago instead of learning
all the things I don’t even care to know but needed to have happen.

My difficulty has been in clarifying what I needed and then
communicating that to a VA.

Sometimes we don’t even know what we don’t know.

Micro testing is something I need to do more of, to test the
service and people, again good advice thanks.

I’d like to find a VA that’s actually willing to use a VA (maybe a lower priced one) to perform the lower level tasks needed. They’d (VA’s) would be smart to do this, it would make them seem like they understand my bottom line a little better and make them more useful and cost effective.

I think paying 15 or 20 bucks an hour to have someone do insignificant 6 dollar an hour tasks and treat them the same as the 20 dollar an hour tasks is causing some reluctance for potential VA Clients. Me included.

Granted we need help to build out our dream lifestyles but it’s got to fit from the beginning. VA’s would be smart to start clarifying entry level packages better, and offer a short consult to get a meeting of the minds.

What the heck I guess we’re all still pioneers at it.

Awesome book, and intriguing and controversial title. Good for you.

Thanks, Rick
Reply
- Tim Ferriss — March 1st, 2009, 2:52 pm
  
  Rick wrote:
  
  “I think paying 15 or 20 bucks an hour to have someone do insignificant 6 dollar an hour tasks and treat them the same as the 20 dollar an hour tasks is causing some reluctance for potential VA Clients. Me included.”
  
  Rick, this is true and exactly why I have my exec assistant delegate lower-end tasks to sub-VAs. This is quite common and she bills time for herself and her sub-VAs on separate lines in invoices.
  
  Good luck!
  
  Tim
  Reply
Jay — April 21st, 2009, 9:02 am

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/more_amer…
Reply
Nikki Romero — May 5th, 2009, 1:10 am

Great post! I got a lot of insights from the post and comments.

The Philippines is a great place for outsourcing because we were colonized by Americans for almost half a century and lived under their influence. Much of our education is based on the American model (with some Spanish influence) and this is why we are the most “Americanized” nation among Asian countries. In truth, I’m not too thrilled about being colonized by several countries, but that’s history for us … fortunately making the Philippines the outsourcing country of choice.

Thanks for allowing me to shamelessly promote my country!
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Nacho — May 6th, 2009, 3:39 am

wow, I find this really helpful. thanks!!
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Mark — July 6th, 2009, 11:01 pm

I tried Brickwork to do some simple web info searching for me. They took ages to get back and quoted a rediculous sum of money saying it would take 30 hours to do. I gave up waiting and did it myself in 2 hours. Looking for a better organisation will try Elance next.
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Calandra — July 21st, 2009, 8:28 pm

Very nice video. Where do they come up with this stuff.
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G. Lewis — August 21st, 2009, 5:25 pm

I paid money to DoMyStuff.com so I could Bid on a Task. My account with DoMyStuff.com show $0.00, but my Visa card account show posted payment to DoMyStuff.com. The telephone number on their website doesn’t work. They do not respond to my emails. There is no customer service.

As it is, it is annoying as DoMyStuff.com claims to be a valid company. The bottom line is, I’m out of money from my Visa card and no service from DoMyStuff.com.
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- Tim Ferriss — August 22nd, 2009, 2:15 am
  
  Hi G.,
  
  I’m very sorry to hear this. Sounds like a bad company to do business with. I hope to have some alternatives soon…
  
  All the best,
  
  Tim
  Reply
Derek Peruo — August 29th, 2009, 9:23 am

I was recently hired as a consultant for a local sales firm and now have a whole slew of tiny, detail-oriented tasks that need to be completed on a regular basis. These tasks accumulate very quickly and can kill my productivity if I’m not careful.

I’ve been a follower of Tim Ferriss and the 4HWW for many years and I understand the value of my time and how focusing on the correct 20% of all my efforts will lead to 80% of all my desired outcomes. So I would like to delegate many of these small, repetitive tasks to an assistant — virtual or otherwise.

My main concern right now is budget. I must be very specific with how my money is spent and I wouldn’t want to invest a large amount of cash into a project that produces no result.

So how might you micro-test assistants and other VA services on a budget of, say, $100 or less?

Keep up the good work everyone!
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- Tim Ferriss — September 3rd, 2009, 12:53 am
  
  Hi Derek,
  
  Here’s a new one I’m using that’s worth a shot: http://www.samasource.org Also, http://www.asksunday.com
  
  Best,
  
  Tim
  Reply
Pouya — September 25th, 2009, 2:58 am

Tim,

In your experience, which outsourcing option has the most professional web developers that are good with both design and code?

I have been using Brickwork India for a web development project and have been very disappointed with the results. Even with extremely specific instructions (using simple language) in outline format and annotated screen shots of what I needed done, their work product has been unacceptable.
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- Tim Ferriss — September 25th, 2009, 5:48 pm
  
  I’ve heard rentacoder.com has some good talent. Good luck!
  
  Tim
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Gary — October 10th, 2009, 10:03 am

To what extent do you trust VAs with personal or sensitive information? We are a SaaS startup looking to outsource the development and management of secure web applicatinos. We would like to find a VA to be our highly-skilled, high-level Project Manager with extensive experience in developing secure, multi-user applications. This person would design/document the architecture, and sub out some of the site-design and lower-level coding.
Is it easy to find high-quality talent for this, and which company(s) would be the best for this?
With ALL of our assets digital, controlled by people who are not under US law, what is my recourse if something goes wrong with the program, and I can no longer get a hold of someone? Can I trust that they are not keeping copies of our applications, and using them in some way?
Will these VA providers typically adapt to my time zone, or will we be working opposite each other?
Is there a lot of turnover in this industry? If I start working with someone, developing a relationship, training them to take on an application as “their baby”, is it likely that they will be around for a while, or is there a high turnover rate. Any tips on finding a “keeper” that will be around for a long time?
I am excited to delve in. We are in the education space, and need to keep our applications at a low cost to teachers/schools. Tapping the vast supply of talent overseas seems to be a viable way to accomplish this, if setup and maintained properly. Anyone have some light to shed on this? Thank you!
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Wendy — October 12th, 2009, 9:19 pm

I’m a single american female teaching music in Pakistan. The bane of my existence is lesson planning and after reading this, realize I’m in the perfect place/situation to outsource most, if not all, of my mundane, time-consuming tasks

Long term I want to get out of the classroom and be more of a consultant. Interests include creating/researching material for education on the links btwn ADHD/exercise/nutrition.

What I need: someone to…
1) initially work with me to lay out a curriculum framework – I work really well having someone to bounce ideas off of and it keeps me focused – then create and update lessons based on that
2) research and condense info, putting it into developing books/curriculum/programs/materials useful for education – basically get my ideas out of my head and into action
3) look after personal, daily stuff, including finding the best places to shop, researching products I want to buy (new smartphone?)
4) find me a date(s) – here, internationally – location doesn’t necessarily matter.

The plus is I get paid in US $ but live on rupees. Now I just want to take advantage of it.
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Chris Anastasio — December 1st, 2009, 9:18 am

I’ve been using GetFriday since Aug 2009. While I agree that there are barriers that must be overcome with respect to task clarity and word choice, I’ve been extremely pleased with the results. Given the feedback I’ve read on here regarding GetFriday, I would attribute my experience to my individual lead assistant, Shaanthini. She has been an outstanding resource, executing/orchestrating primarily research-based tasks as well as a few others with great results. If you’re willing to try GetFriday, I advise you to ask directly for Shaanthini to be your assistant.

Note to Tim: very simply, your book has changed my outlook on and approach to life. Can’t thank you enough.

Chris Anastasio
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Martha — December 29th, 2009, 11:39 am

Recently I have hired a virtual assistant to help me out in my research. And I paid for such a low price. My VA provided me a quality output of their work and I’m really satisfied with it.
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Alex Sedgwick — January 10th, 2010, 9:36 am

I recently came across this website, I haven’t yet read the book but I thought I would share some of my experiences. I heard about getting a VA from a friend of mine at work and thought it might be for me but didn’t really have a roadmap so I signed up for several services, AskSunday, GetFriday, and Red Butler. I tested all three by sending them the same request (since it was around the holidays I needed gift ideas for my little sister). The responses were very interesting.

Red Butler came back to me first, but there was absolutely no personal contact so I got a list but I am not sure that the ideas were what I was looking for. Of course there was no one to contact directly for follow up. Ask Sunday took the longest to respond and in many respects I found the service confusing. I was given some personal attention but the contacts always just seemed to come from a different person.

Both services were blown out of the water by GetFriday. Even though it was only two days before Christmas I got a personal email from a Team Leader who set me up with a Personal Asst. almost immeadiately. My experience has been wonderful. In larger part I think it has to do with my PA Udaiya who has been extremely helpful, very responsive and easy to work with. I’ve managed teams abroad before and in my experience you have to be very specific about the goals and deliverables, Udaiya and the GF team has really impressed me with their ability to handle open ended tasks that required judgment calls.

Most importantly I feel like I have a personal connection with my PA which has made me more comfortable sending them more work. I am not sure about some of the other experiences people mention above with GF, but I can’t recommend GF and Udaiya specifically enough.
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Alexander Sedgwick — January 11th, 2010, 10:31 am

I should clarify in my last sentence “but I can’t recommend GF and Udaiya specifically, highly enough.”
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Jan — January 12th, 2010, 3:59 pm

I was reading through the log and saw that Udaiya from Get Friday was mentioned. Udaiya also works with our team and as my PA. Udaiya is GREAT — she softly keeps me on track and gets our tasks done quickly and correctly. I love having her as part of my team. She and her supervisor go out of their way to assist. Could go on and on — but if this is the vote — GF // Udaiya gets our vote….hands down.
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Kaja Marie — January 18th, 2010, 9:07 am

Issue: Language.

Thank you for a good post and a good book. I want to try out a VA, but a part from a few tasks, most of mye work needs to be done in Norwegian. Do anyone know of VA companies with mulitilingual skills?

There’s always the option of hiring someone in Norway, but that would be ridiculously expensive, and I wouldn’t get the benefit of the time difference.
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Phil Hope — January 26th, 2010, 2:02 pm

Great Post! I’ve tried Asksunday and it really was awful! Ive also tried getfriday…didnt like them at ALL. Finally last Month I started working with this new company called Uassist.me they are kinda new I guess but so far the experience has been terrific! First their english is excellent! no weird accents, I was asigned a personalized phone line and my assistant works for me all day. Im really surprised! (BTW I got 1 week for free to start with them) You should definetely try them! (www.uassist.me)
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James — February 12th, 2010, 9:50 am

I have signed up to locate a VA with odesk for the last week. I have 10 offers for my price listed in the process of interviewing a couple works. This will be my first time hiring a VA and not sure how to keep track of their work. Somebody needs to sell a program for this service on the hiring process. Thanks for your information i will add you to my favorites.
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Noah — April 1st, 2010, 6:26 pm

I’ve tried them all, hands down, Red Butler is the way to go. I’m with Alex on this. All of their assistants are in the States so, there’s nothing lost in translation. These guys do corporate service for Shell, Deloitte & the other big boys. Great service, try to get Tyler or Chris for your dedicated rep.

http://www.RedButler.com
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Fred Kreutzberger — April 3rd, 2010, 5:59 pm

I’ve also tried uassist.me and so far so good. My assistant speaks perfect english, spanish and FRENCH! c’mon for $650 I feel im robbing them! Another interesting thing is that the company doesnt track time! they charge a flat fee for a “part-time” but full time available PA.
I have my own line and always speak to the same assistant.
So far Im really impressed, I hope it stays that way!
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Bart — April 13th, 2010, 5:20 am

Can someone give some tips for finding Spanish speaking VAs? Tim recomended eLance in a comment above, but it seems to have only Spanish translation, but not VA (you can´t even search for “español”, it can´t handle the ñ). There are a great many on the web, but which one(s) to trust?
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Fred Kreutzberger — April 16th, 2010, 3:37 pm

Hey Bart, the company Im using (see above post) is Uassist.ME they speak perfect English and Spanish. Im based in Miami so its a GREAT help for me.
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Greg — April 21st, 2010, 6:09 pm

Thanks Tim, for bringing light on the world of outsourcing, and providing a resource that shows just how extreem you can take it. Love your book, experiments, videos with Kevin, etc.

Your mention your VA, Kenda (sp?), whom you trust with your correspondance, and who subs out lower level tasks for you, in a video.

My question to you (if ur listening), or anyone who has been down this road, is: Where did/do you look for a resource (like Kenda), who can take over your inbox, communicate with important contacts, manage projects and other VAs, etc.?

Are sites like assistantmatch.com, where VAs are screened and background checked worth the cost, or are there other resources to find someone good? I currently have a VA from Brickwork. Part of the spec involved taking over my inbox, however my VA speaks in canned phrases that repeat, so i dont think they’ll be handling my inbox. Anyone had success with giving your inbox over to a VA from Brickwork, or am I barking up the wrong tree for an executive assistant?

Any comments or suggestions from anyone who has done this would be much appreciated!
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stephen — April 22nd, 2010, 9:27 am

I’ve used elance effectively many times. Tried the ask sunday trial and they failed MISERABLY in every one of the 4 simple trial tasks I gave them. Also tried odesk, and got terrible results from individual providers with missed deadlines. if you’re serious about getting anything done and dont want to bang your head off a wall until it bleeds, try elsewhere ..
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Olivier Beaujean — May 16th, 2010, 2:05 am

Hello everyone, has anyone good tips for French and/or Dutch speaking VA providers?
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Tracy Shorrock — June 10th, 2010, 2:31 pm

Hi,

As some of the comments have queried where one finds a virtual assistant, I thought I’d add a link to a post I wrote on The Freelancealot Herald blog back in 2008 about hiring virtual assistants. Here’s the link: http://www.freelancealot.co.uk/Herald/2008/05/finding-your-virtual-assistant-%E2%80%94-it%E2%80%99s-not-rocket-science/

The piece discusses the benefits of finding a virtual assistant on your own compared to that of using an online service such as eLance.

Although some parts are biased towards finding a VA in the UK, the post may be of help to some readers here.

I would also like to make the point that hiring a virtual assistant in the UK is a vialble option for individuals and small businesses in the US and Canada — indeed, we are currently working with an attorney’s office in the States.

Cheers,

Tracy Shorrock
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Lynda — July 8th, 2010, 7:40 pm

So I am reading the book for the second time but need something answered now
I am having a heck of a time writing a GOOD adword for Google… keep getting the “rarely used” line… so I was wondering with all this outsourcing stuff whether there was a company out there that would write the ads for me?
Any suggestions would be helpful… as google help sucks!
Thanks,
Lynda
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C. Vincent Plummer — August 14th, 2010, 1:36 am

Hey Tim,

Just finished reading your book… also, been watching you and Kevin Rose’s Randoms – I guess I’m oddly becoming a superfan.

Preface: I am fascinated with the idea of virtual assistants in India. So much so, that I started talking about it to all of my friends. Now, I’m more entrepreneurial than them… but we’re still a pretty liberal bunch.

Question: What do you typically say when people assault the ethics behind hiring foreign virtual assistants? (i.e. it being financially exploitative in nature and destructive of local economies)

Peace,
Vincent
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- Tim Ferriss — August 17th, 2010, 12:18 am
  
  Thx for the comment! Have them read “Banker to the Poor” or look at http://www.samasource.org. The idea that it destroys local economies is not founded on fact. Also, $10 can buy a week of groceries in many parts of India, and if I’m paying them $5/hour, that is a fantastic purchasing-power wage. Can most people in the US buy a week’s worth of food for two hours’ work? Not likely. Hope that helps…
  
  Tim
  Reply
Scott Barlow — August 17th, 2010, 6:57 pm

Tim/ group:

Which company would you recommend as an appointment setting/ Cold caller VA for financial service delivery?

Thanks,
SB
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Sebastien — October 1st, 2010, 1:22 pm

I want to share with you my experience with Virtual Assistance. I own a travel agency in South Florida, and started oursourcing a couple of years ago thanks to what I read on Tim’s book.
Getfriday was my first experience we lasted like 2 months. They changed my assistant 3 times! the first two because they quit or were fired and the last one because i requested a change… their service was so dissapointing that I cannot even begin to describe the amount of time and money I lost trying to make it worrk.
Next, I tried AskSunday, since it had a lot of media exposure (TIME, CNN, etc.) this was by far the biggest dissapointment, not only they are expensive (up to $15/hr) they take FOREVER to do the tasks, even if I mark them URGENT… I really was about to giveup on the whole VA deal… but a friend of mine recommended [see URL] and Oh-My-God! what a change!!! I am really amazed! their service is great.. well for starters they DO speak english!!! and spanish (which is great since I live in SFL) I really really reccomend them!!!
If you need more feedback or tips let me know! I think I have been through a LOT! to finally finding the near-perfect assistant!
Best,
S
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- Dan — November 3rd, 2010, 2:21 am
  
  Hi Sebastien – what was the company, as the link does not show on your comment?
  Reply
Javier — October 2nd, 2010, 11:36 am

Sebastian, thanks for the round up. The Wall Street Journal also did a great review of several of the big guys out there, here’s the link – http://bit.ly/c9JVlC

I’ve tried several too, but keep running into the same problems with companies that operate overseas. I’m now using Red Butler and have their VIP membership so I get a dedicated rep which has been great.

Good luck.

JF
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Ryan — October 14th, 2010, 1:14 pm

Sebastian: What was the company that worked?
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Wendy — October 20th, 2010, 6:48 pm

We are and ecommerce retail company looking for a consultant to help us identify the best outsourcing company for our needs in the following areas?
1-Accounting Dept (accounts payable and receivables)
2-Warehouse Dept (pick, pack and ship) inventory control
3-Customer Service
4-Sales
5-Operations
Any assistance would be appreciated.
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- Roshni — October 26th, 2010, 6:08 am
  
  Hey Wendy,
  I have been in the Outsourcing Business for a while and have managed everything from VAs to Coding, to training VAs and now am into full time Talent Hunt for Quality Outsourcing Resources.
  Being from a country that is perhaps the largest back-office in the Flat World today, I feel that finding the right resource is VERY important. With the ease in access to communication and Internet resources, just about anyone can be a outsourcing resource/agent and claim that he or she can get a thing done. The results are more often than not below par.
  The need is to align with a suitable resource/agency that can get you the right resource, at the right price point and in the right time frame. I can assist you with the same if you need help. Get in touch with me on the website mentioned and lets see how we can get you the right resource.
  All the best and lets hope you get a good team up and running fast.
  Reply
J.Kool — November 8th, 2010, 8:45 am

Hi Tim, great book, working on a muse now, but need some VA’s to do the obvious. Problem is, i need them to be able to operate in Hong Kong (e.g. they must be able to communicate in Cantonese, English and preferable Mandrin). Unfortunately I have not found any agency that can fulfill this yet. Any idea’s.

Thanks

Jeroen
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Mike Behnken — December 3rd, 2010, 3:22 am

I use elance. Have tried guru but had better results with elance. I have also tried contacting random small website owners to possibly get some help but Elance is always easy. The quality of work I have gotten from elance has been sub-par but it is my fault because I hired them, right?
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Sebastien — January 12th, 2011, 8:05 am

Their service is called Uassist.me.

I have a dedicated assistant that helps me a lot with my things, since I need a lot of things done in French (just like the user J.Cool does), since I’m French myself.

Other companies, located in India or Pakistan haven’t been able to fulfill that requirement, unfortunately… And other companies located in Côte d’Ivoire or Réunion work mostly in French – and I need great English too. So I highly recommend that company, it has been a good fit for me at least.

Cheers.
S
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Sam — February 2nd, 2011, 5:02 pm

Javier, thanks for the recommendation. I’ve tried out just about all of the virtual assistant companies and “red butler” has been top notch. Couldn’t find a promotional code for anyone, but they have a bunch of codes come out on their twitter page – http://twitter.com/redbutler
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Markus — March 9th, 2011, 7:52 am

I’m currently trying AskSunday, so far I’m not satisfied. I need more time for clarifications and reminders than I would need for the tasks. I don’t feel any initiative from from DA and I think he sometimes uses Google translate for texts he posts into Skype.
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- Sammy — October 13th, 2011, 10:46 am
  
  I think they keep changing call centers, so the staff is losing their touch. The quality just isn’t there and I can’t afford to have anyone make mistakes, I’d rather just do it myself.
  
  Try out a few American assistant companies out there. Most of them charge hourly, but you can find a few like Red Butler that are by tasks. I’ve read a few threads about them and just signed up, so far so good.
  Reply
Brian Riddle — March 16th, 2011, 10:59 am

I love the idea of membership based services but I don’t always want to have to pay a monthly fee or sign-up fees for concierge services/virtual assistants. One company that I’ve tried a few times is One Concierge. They do pretty much anything, including errand services and you pay per request so you don’t have to have a contract or a membership. However they will work with you and set up a contract if you require services frequently. For instance they set up a contract with to shop for me and deliver my groceries bi-weekly for a flat rate.
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Travis — April 21st, 2011, 6:38 am

Anyone try to outsource their job search? I’m trying to find someone to update resume’s per the requirements of each job, write cover letters, apply to job posts, do company research, and find executives contact info. I’m looking into several of the companies listed above, but would love to hear if anyone has had any success doing this.
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- Mj — August 18th, 2011, 11:26 pm
  
  I’m also interested in this and would love to know if anyone has also used the above listed websites.
  Reply
Markus — August 26th, 2011, 12:57 am

This kind of service doesn’t work for more than the most simiple tasks (which would take me no time myself). I tried three different ones and was disapointed with all of them. The last was good for one day and then all of a sudden didn’t exist anymore.
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- Rudy — September 2nd, 2011, 3:26 pm
  
  Hey Markus!
  You should try uassist.me! I have been using them for a quite a while already and so far the experience has been awesome.
  Before that I tried Asksunday, Taskseveryday and Getfriday…I was about to give up when I found uassistme.
  Reply
Dan — October 14th, 2011, 12:14 pm

Like with any of these services they are only as good as the people you have working with you. When they move on or are promoted you oftentimes have to start over. This is what just happened with uassistme. The implications for a business are significant. I feel the answer is to be adaptable. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow so you constantly have to be flexible and continually recruit and guide to make sure the best possible fit for your business is in place now. If they aren’t, then quickly look for a replacement solution.

We also have started to use Fiverr for some micro-tasks. This is a whole new way to expand your services, but obviously also requires an additional level of management on your end.

Having been into outsourcing for over a decade now I’ve come to the realization there are no easy answers. There are some things that you simply can’t outsource and you must do yourself while there are others that you must delegate. The key is to know the difference. Although this is coming from a guy who finally figured he needed to hire an outsourcer who manages his outsourcing team.
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John Peters — November 24th, 2011, 9:47 pm

I am interested in receiving recommendations for VA capable of performing book editing and formatting as I am planning on self-publishing a book. Thanks. – John Peters
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Casey — February 20th, 2012, 11:21 am

I’ve both worked as an assistant and hired several for myself using oDesk. I love it and have been able to use Eastern European talent for all of my tedious tasks like link building for new sites, SEO keyword research, writing, etc.
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steven riley — March 14th, 2012, 6:11 am

A low down for you, I’m doing a test on Ask Sunday, Brickwork and Tasks Everyday

For the record so far, Ask Sunday took my money over a week ago and I received an email saying that my Assistant would start the following Monday, still nothing and I have called, emailed, ect ect. and still nothing.
If you are reading this Blog Ask Sunday I suggest you get in contact with me as soon as possible or the next task I will be giving to my competent DA’s will be to documents what has happened and update every outsourcing blog on the internet, I’m not joking.
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Nick — March 17th, 2012, 12:15 pm

Great discussion here. I’ve been interested in personal outsourcing ever since reading the 4HWW. I’ve had a couple VAs myself — one from TimeSvr and one from Elance — both excellent.

Now I’m working on a side-project (not quite a muse yet) to collect honest reviews of the various outsourcing companies, and would love to get some feedback from real customers. Some, like Red Butler, seem to be generally positive while others, like Ask Sunday, tend to be generally negative lately.

If anyone cares to share their experience, it is much appreciated!
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- Marcos — March 19th, 2012, 1:07 pm
  
  I’ve used them all, pretty sure AskSunday is going out of business. They are taking people’s money and not providing any servicel. I also signed up with tried Quintessentially, but they’re more about events and connections than actual assistant work. I tried finding someone on Odesk.com, but they too were inconsistent with response times. So far RedButler.com has been best for assistant and concierge tasks, but I still use my American Express for all travel. Good luck.
  Reply
Jeff — April 7th, 2012, 4:52 pm

Im a big fan of outsourcing! I used asksunday for a while but frankly i didnt like it…. I didnt feel a connection with the assistant. Im currently using Uassistme ( this is my third month) so far the difference has been incredible. First of all the assistant really speak english! They are located in Central America and work the same timezone that I do…. Its a bit more expensive than asksunday and getfriday but if you are really interested in outsourcing and using your assistant to grow your business its totally worth it.
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- Ivan — May 10th, 2012, 8:10 am
  
  I’ve tried 3 services and must say that all were great for rote tasks that didn’t require much thinking or cultural awareness. Unfortunately, that was not I’ve been looking for. I need someone with an excellent business mind, who can manage our website and online presence and continuous business developments. At present, I am using Lifenzyme and it is too early to judge them. However, Dennis ( ..not sure that is my VA’s real name is doing a good job so far and he has been given free hands to go beyond my instructions to develop my business concept. He has a good and creative perspective and providing us with solutions and solving it before it is even something we need to mention, makes things so much easier.
  
  Keeping my fingers crossed to see how far it goes..!
  Reply
Rachel — May 30th, 2012, 9:15 pm

Hi Tim,
Thanks for all of the great info being shared here!
I am based in New Zealand and operate a tour company in South America. I would love a South America based virtual assistant. I see in an earlier post you mentioned there are many VA companies in South America. This would be perfect for me! Do you (or anyone else out there) have any recommendations?
Thanks
Rachel
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- Dan — May 31st, 2012, 12:44 pm
  
  Rachel – I have used UAssit in the past and still think they are the absolute best outsourcing company we’ve ever used.
  Reply
Sam W — July 4th, 2012, 3:02 pm

Hey Everyone, I think this link will help you out….
http://www.virtualassistantassistant.com/virtual-assistant-reviews-ratings

Its got reviews on several VA companies.
I got my company from there, (Uassistme) its seems to be one of the best. Longerdays, which is based in the US is a good, but expensive choice as well.
Hope it helps
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- Nick Loper — July 9th, 2012, 1:54 pm
  
  Hey Sam, thanks for the shout-out.
  
  The site relies on honest reviews from real customers so if anyone has some first-hand experience with any of the companies listed, please feel free to post a quick review.
  
  Thanks!
  
  Nick
  Reply
Dean — August 16th, 2012, 11:28 am

Hello my loved one! I want to say that this post is awesome, nice written and come with almost all significant infos. I?¦d like to see extra posts like this .
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Max — January 8th, 2013, 12:08 am

The first company I hired, Get Friday (December 2012), did not work out. In huge ways. And Get Friday had beaten out Brickwork hands down going in on responsiveness during first contact so Ferriss’s book recommends were clearly dead soldiers, outdated and probably really impacted by popularity the book itself created. Hey, when I was an assistant, I did not dictate to my boss when I would bother to work – and then do an unparalleled in inadequacy job when I did show up – which was what I was getting from Get Friday. Resulting Facebook posts like, “Why the F*CK am I up at 7 am pulling all nighters to fix the disaster someone who is supposed to be helping me just created?”

But. I researched a lot, read a lot of forums and blogs [like here] and my ultimate take away was two companies were my best bets, Tasks Every Day – http://www.taskseveryday.com/ – and BPOVIA – http://www.bpovia.com/

I found Tasks Every Day first and Tasks Every Day would have won, early on, if they didn’t require a 20 hour commitment per month going in. I was not ready to do that going in so I kept going. And found BPOVIA. Which had a hell of a lot of good talk of mouth and also only required a 10 hour commitment going in. With one bad commitment already on the books, Get Friday, paying a second company to come in who might be just as bad and slapping down cash for 20 hours to do it was not going to work, but I was willing to slap down another ten. So the marriage between myself and BPOVIA was born.

And I am so happy. Everything about BPOVIA has been good. They were back with me immediately, on their Sunday, with a manager talking to me and my new VA talking to me (Skype, yay!, learn it love it live it) on their day off, and my new VA went and hit my sites that day to get a feel for them before going on the clock the next day. He’s smart, he’s fast, he picks things up quickly, and I am here posting this at 1 am because I am actually off at 1 am because of him, instead of 5 AM. And that doesn’t happen in my world. I don’t stop work till work is done and before now, work wasn’t done before 5 AM. And now in three short days’ time, and that includes training time, it does. My entire world just changed.

I highly recommend BPOVIA. If you contact them, tell them Max Adams says Cris Yeong rocks give him a raise – just don’t take him off Max Adams’ account. [I am not kidding, you get Cris pulled off my account, I will resort to violence. Also, no jury will convict, I am that cute and you are that much in trouble.]
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C. Vincent Plummer — January 10th, 2013, 5:44 pm

So I’m curious

I am looking for the best and cheapest option for content generation for our new web site. I can give very specific information about creation and am curious which one of these services you guys would recommend for this kind of thing?

Thanks,
Vincent
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- Nick Loper — January 10th, 2013, 6:19 pm
  
  Hey Vincent,
  
  Couple options to try for content generation.
  
  For a long-term hire I think your best budget option is the Philippines (Virtual Staff Finder being the most well-known recruiting option, but that’s for full-time workers).
  
  If your budget allows, you can find talented writers closer to home on Elance.
  
  In both cases, like you mention, a super-detailed spec is key to success.
  
  Any other questions or concerns, feel free to send me a note — nick @ the domain linked above!
  Reply