Tasks You Can Easily Outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Some jobs are easy to take care of yourself. Others are a bit tedious, time consuming, and distract you from making more money or running your businesses efficiently. For those jobs, you can hire a virtual assistant to take care of them for you.

Web Development

For people like me, most web development projects are simple enough. A little HTML here, a drop of PHP there, add a splash of CSS and we are off and running. However, web projects are not easy for everyone.

Many entrepreneurs hire web developers from freelance sites like Elance or Odesk to take care of their online projects. When working with a freelance web developer, be sure to lay out your expectations and be very, very clear up front so you know what you are getting.

New Employee Hiring

While it might sound weird to ask someone else to hire employees for your company, a headhunting agency really helps you in the end. They take the load off of your back while still providing you with some quality candidates. A staffing agency around Washington DC could be your best bet to finding some of the best candidates out there.

Copyrighting

If you have a company blog, newsletter, or any type of writing needs, there are armies of writers ready to work for you. When looking for a writer, make sure to be careful when vetting applications.

You can easily find writers from around the world, and some of the best rates will come from India and other countries where English is not the native language. Make sure the writers will live up to your grammar, vocabulary, and content standards by asking for writing samples and doing a short trial before bringing them on for more regular work.

Research

At some point, we all need to know something we don’t. If you are going to need anything more in-depth than what is on a Wikipedia page, it might be worth bringing on additional help.

Depending on what you are looking for and what you need, it might be worth the cost to have someone else do the hard work for you. Research VAs are usually inexpensive depending on the level of effort involved.

Trip Planning

Do you travel frequently for work or pleasure? A virtual assistant can do all of the work to find the cheapest flights, best hotels, and highest rated restaurants for your trip. Depending on the company, you may have to make the actual reservation yourself, but the VA can lay out the entire itinerary and, in some cases, make the reservation.

Alternatively, you can try a Visa Signature or other credit card concierge service to take care of it for you.

Data Entry

No one likes entering big sets of data into a spreadsheet or database, but sometimes that is part of doing business.

You can find a VA for data entry projects from a variety of freelancer sites. Unlike copywriting, you don’t need a freelancer that writes incredibly well, just someone who can get the information entered accurately. You can save money looking outside of North America for these types of projects.

Email Management

Every once in a while, we all get overloaded with email. If it happens to you regularly, and you have tried to de-clutter your inbox (I wrote a free zero inbox week course that might help), you may need to outsource that as well.

When looking for a VA to help with email, make sure you find someone you really trust for a long-term relationship. Email holds a lot of power, and you don’t want someone that you don’t trust in your inbox.