Virtual Assistants and Outsourcing to the Philippines
A lot of people have been asking about outsourcing to the Philippines or hiring Filipino virtual assistants. Perhaps this growing interest was spurred by various internet marketers talking about how you can hire Filipinos for $2-$3 an hour.
Well, it looks like it’s looking more along the $400~$600/month range. Anyway, I’ll post here what I’ve found online…
In Get Paid by the Hour in oDesk, Gem Baltazar (TheLadyProgrammer.com) writes about the oDesk freelance site. Some Filipino VAs visit that site, so you may be able to touch base with some of them.
Mike Sasuman (@maikeru76) told me via Twitter about Jefferson Faudan (@jeffersonfaudan), which led me to the DvoVirtualTech blog.
It looks like they have a pool of people you can choose from:
Programmer – $1,400
Graphic Designer – $1,400
Web Developer – $1,400
Virtual Assistant – $1,200
Link Builder – $1,000
Article Writer – $1,000
Those look like monthly rates, and the outsourcing provider normally handles the screening of the freelancers. If you were to hire an article writer directly, for example, you’ll probably pay that person around $400 a month.
Assuming an 8-hour day, 22 days a month, that $400 comes out to $2.27 per hour. If your writer produces one article an hour, that’s 8 300-word articles per hour. I wonder, though, how many people are motivate enough to produce 8 articles each day, Monday to Friday, without going bonkers.
Just looking at the list above, however, I wonder: What exactly does a Virtual Assistant do? Handle email, customer support, and administrative matters, perhaps?
The other names which come up when it comes to outsourcing to the Philippines are Oliver Turner, Joel Christopher, and the Agents of Value. I’ll update this post once I get more info…
First posted on Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Tags: outsourcing, virtual assistants
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Disclaimer/Note: I, Mike Sasuman, is gainfully employed with AoV and Mr. Viloria NEVER noted that my name or the handles that I messaged him through Twitter were going to published as of this writing.
If Mr. Viloria were to have told me of his search/article/post was about webmaster/IT staff outsourcing. I could have referred the company I belong to for the past year. http://agentsofvalue.com.
Thank You.
Clarification: It was a publicly published Twitter message at http://twitter.com/maikeru76/statuses/1770175039
Since it is a publicly-accessible URL (as are most Twitter messages), and since the info was given in a public venue, it is a good blogging practice to cite the sources.
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=maikeru76+manuelviloria
In other words, @replies in Twitter are not private.
Let us admit it, a lot of Filipinos need jobs here in the country. Outsourcing is very beneficial for both developed countries and the third world countries. This would also help our economy and help a lot of poor families.
Well, you can get highly-talented workers here in the Philippines. That is why outsourcing in the country is a win win situation for both the company and the workers. They can save a lot money and give a decent income for the workers.
I’ve just hired someone from the Philippines, she’s a graphic designer, designing web sites for us so far using wordpress.
Very very impressed with the results so far, it’s only been just over a week.
However, we did hire someone just before her for a couple of days (he then left us), in comparison he was not a patch on her.
We’re not using her as a VA, it might just be me, but for now I keep all that sort of stuff to myself, but someone to help me develop new web sites quickly either to promote affiliate products or actual products /services that I’m selling is perfect for me (so far).
Thanks for this article, I find it helpful in pricing our services