Top 5 Websites to Hire Virtual Assistants

Atiba de Souza: Hey, welcome to the Build Your Team channel, where we talk about how to build the ideal team for your business. All the tips, tricks, and strategies for managing your team, especially virtual assistants. And so today we're going to dive into a question that I get an awful, awful lot. Where in the world should I go to hire a virtual assistant? 

What are the best websites for hiring virtual assistants? Well, the truth of the matter is guys, there is no best website. They're all different. They all provide different services. And it really depends on what you're looking for and what you want. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to review five sites for you. 

Now in these five sites, four of them I've personally used myself. The fifth one is one that people have asked a ton about, so I've decided to include it here as a review for you. But again, I haven't personally used this site myself, so let's dive right in and we're going to actually start off with that site.

And before I go any further, let me also say. Hey, welcome! And hit that like button down below. Hit that subscribe button down below. If you're into building teams, this is the place to be. That's what we're going to be talking about. We're going to be interviewing some fantastic people as well, who will help you build your team! So go ahead and hit that like button and that subscribe button so you can get notifications. 

Now, let me show you this website here. So this is Zirtual, guys. Now this is the first site and the way I'm going to do this for you today is I'm going to build you up to my favorite site. Site number five that I'm going to show you today is my favorite. It's my go-to.

Zirtual is the one that I have not used yet. Full transparency. So I'm doing a review, have not used it, but I've looked enough and seen enough to be able to share some good information with you. So Zirtual is all about US-based virtual assistants. So everybody's in the US and they say that everybody is college educated.

Okay, great! All right? College educated. That doesn't mean that they're super smart. It just means that they went to college and they have some debt, okay? But they tout that as a big deal. Now why is US-based super important? Because when you're hiring a virtual assistant, you can hire them from anywhere in the world.

However, if you're hiring a virtual assistant from a culture that's not your own, you have to also understand that there may be cultural differences that you have to account for in your working environment. If you don't want to do that, then stick with US-based virtual assistants if you're in the US. If you're in the UK, stick with UK-based virtual assistants or wherever you are, if you don't want to deal with cultural differences. 

Anyway, back to Zirtual. So Zirtual, one of the really cool things about Zirtual is this phone number up here because they provide you support. Do you need help? Are you having an issue with your virtual assistant? You can pick up the phone, call them and they have a real person who answer the phone to help you. 

Now, what areas do they specialize in? Well, they're kind of wide ranging, it looks like. Everything from inbox management, they have website maintenance, event planning, expenses, social media strategy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The thing that I will tell you, and the thing that I always caution you about when you're hiring a virtual assistant, especially for something like social media or even event planning to it, to an extent, okay? Content marketing, definitely, anything that you hire a virtual assistant to do for you, that is public facing. In other words, your clients or potential clients are going to see it, make sure that that virtual assistant is actually part of your team. Somebody who's working with you on a consistent basis so that they get to know you and your company. Not just some random person. 

And that's one of the things that Zirtual provides for you, is they will provide you with a dedicated virtual assistant, okay? And that's super important because if it's somebody who's never heard of your brand before, and now they're doing social media strategy for your nip, creating posts may not be what you want. So always make sure that someone who's doing public facing work is actually part of your team and not just a one-off task type of person. 

Now, what the heck does Zirtual cost? Let's go look at their, their, their cost. Looking at this here in their plans, so they charge you on a monthly basis. And you get a certain number of hours per month.

So here for 12 hours for the month, you're going to pay $449. I think that works out to be about 37, $37 per hour. I think if my math is correct. It's been a long day. Anyway, about $37 an hour at the base. Now it's going to get cheaper the more hours you buy, but that gives you a kind of understanding of what you'll be paying for there, okay? In that time. 

Now, one of the questions that I don't have an answer for what you should ask, if you decide to go with Zirtual is what happens with extra hours. Let's say only use 10 this month, do they roll over? I don't know. Maybe in their FAQs up here, the FAQs. You can come in and look at that if you decide to go that route.

Now. Again, the upside of Zirtual is what? US-based, if that's important to you and they provide you with dedicated staff. You have the same person doing your 12 hours every single month. That's super important if that's important to you. 

Now, the next one is Fancy Hands. Fancy Hands is a company that I used several, several years ago, and they don't give you a dedicated person. They actually work in what are called "task buckets". So you create a task, and a task in their world is going to last 20 minutes long. 

So let's say you've had a job and you knew it was going to take someone an hour, that would be the equivalent of three tasks for them. And so you come to Fancy Hands and you're going to define your task. And then they will find someone that they believe is most suitable to do that task for you. So every single time you go to Fancy Hands, you very well could end up with a different person. 

Now they are all US-based as Zirtual was. So they are a US-based company as well, but you don't get that one-on-one, get-to-know-your-virtual-assistant. It's just a random person doing tasks for you. Now depending on what you're looking for, that might be okay, okay? If you just need somebody right now to do a little bit of research for you, find out the best hotel to stay in in Austin, Texas, for example, or the price of the best hotels, then yeah! Fancy Hands will be great because that person doesn't need to be really embedded in your team or really understand your company and your brand. Because all they're going to do is just do that bit of research and provide you the answer. The Fancy Hands is great for that.

Now, in terms of plans and pricing with Fancy Hands, what are we looking at? So again, their task base, so here on their small plan, you get three tasks per month or requests per month for $18. So that's about $18 an hour because each request or task, as they say up here, standard requests are up to 20 minutes of work. But that also means that if it only took 10 minutes, guess what? You still paid for the task to be done. 

You don't get a refund. You don't get a partial, okay? So that's a bit of a drawback, but that's what it is. And if you're just looking for random tasks that really are, don't need someone to be embedded or understand your larger business model and who you are and what you do, then Fancy Hands may be great for you, and in terms of what they can provide. 

When we used them before, we did use them to do some research and they provided back to us a Google sheet with all of the research in the sheet for us, okay? But it's a great place to start because it's super cheap. Eighteen bucks to get-- to do three requests. Give it a try. It might work out really well for you. 

Oh, let me also say this, all the links to all of these sites will be in the description down below. You'll be able to find those. So you don't have to worry about remembering all the names right now. They will be down there for you.

Okay. The next one is Fiverr. Now Fiverr is super, super popular and Fiverr is different than the first two. Very, very different than the first two in that, number one, Fiverr is worldwide. So the people on Fiverr are all over the world, okay? That's number one major difference. US-based versus worldwide. So you can find people anywhere that you want to hire people from. Now, the other thing with Fiverr is usually, usually labor on Fiverr is a little less expensive than the other places, okay?

Now we've looked at Fancy Hands or Zirtual, okay? It's going to be less expensive for you. Now, these people here are also looking for more task-based work. Usually they also, usually, not always, usually aren't looking to be with your team or embedded with your team for a long period of time.

Sometimes they are, but not always, okay? They just want tasks and they're specialists in, and particular. In, and particular? That's not good English. In a particular area okay, guys? And so let's look at, dive into Fiverr a little bit here. And so this is just, I'm inside of Fiverr here and you can see at the top here, they have all these different categories. 

And when you go to graphic design, look at this guys, they bring graphic design into all of these sub areas of graphic design. So let's say you needed a tattoo design. Great! They can do, they've got people who specialize in that. Let's say you needed something for your Twitch store. They've got people who specialize in that. 

And so the people who are in these categories have specialties doing these types of tasks, okay? So that's one of the beauties of Fiverr, is that you can really drill down, and find people who are specific in the area that you're looking for. Let me give you an example. And I did a couple searches for that. My recently viewed here can show you some breadth of this. 

So here's somebody who does logo design. Great! No problem. Starting at $10 for a logo design. Great! No problem. Then this young lady here, she will help you design your LinkedIn. Awesome! This one here, she wants to be the, your beautiful female model. So if you have a product and you need to shoot a commercial, or you need someone to model your product, you can send it to her and she will model it for you, shoot the video, send it back to you and then you can use it in all of your marketing and look professional.

So my point here guys is you can find people who can, who will, who are willing to do almost anything you want on Fiverr, okay? 

Now, when you click into someone's profile on Fiverr, we're going to dive in a little bit deeper here. You'll see, they'll have some information here. Maybe a little slide show, show you some of their past work. Sometimes they even have a video introducing themselves. They will tell you a little bit about themselves and their background here. And then over here on the right-hand side, they'll have their pricing.

So this particular person has basic standard and premium pricing and you see the different price levels, but then you get different things for each price level and you get to choose which one you want. Now that's super cool about Fiverr. 

Here's what I don't like about Fiverr. Number one, in order to hire someone on Fiverr, you have to sort through all of these profiles to find the people that you actually want to hire. You can't post a job and have someone say, "Hey, I'll do that job for you" or offer the interview to do the job. You have to go and do all the legwork to decide who you want to invite to do your job. And then they could be busy and say "I'm too busy. Sorry, guy. Find someone else". And then you got to start all over. 

So that's one of the things I don't like about Fiverr. What I love about Fiverr is the pricing. Pricing is great usually on Fiverr, okay? But it does take a bit more work. 

All right. So let's move on to the next one, which is Upwork.com. Now Upwork.com has actually been around for a very long time. They've bought up several other companies.

So I started using Upwork back, I think, and it wasn't Upwork back then. It was one of the other companies that they bought up. E-Lance or, or Freelance, or one of those companies that they bought way, way back in 2010. I mean, it's been a long time, okay? And the beauty of Upwork is as an employer, you get to come in and post your job. Just like a regular job board and then candidates reply to you.

And when they reply, you can go back and forth and you can chat with them and decide who you want to hire. Now Upwork likes to keep everything inside of its platform. Then in a point of fact, Fiverr is this way too, but Upwork likes to keep everything inside of its platform. All communications, everything, including all payments.

So you hire the person through Upwork to work for you and you pay them through Upwork. Now that's both good and bad, okay? It's good from the point of view that when you are just hiring someone from somewhere in the world, that you don't know, that you've never met, and you're still building that trust relationship on both sides of the equation, and you have a job that you want done, you don't know that they're going to do it and, or do a good job with it, right? And you're hoping that you're hiring the right person.  

And so what Upwork does is after you've negotiated how much you're willing to pay for the work that you want done, Upwork will take your payment and put it in Escrow until you release it to the worker. So how does that help you? Well, it helps because if you have a situation where the worker doesn't do a good job, then Upwork will back you on not paying them. If they don't deliver what they're supposed to, Upwork will back you. 

The flip side is it also protects the worker and gives them peace of mind that you are willing to pay because you've put the money, then Upwork has it in Escrow. So it's a little bit of a safety thing for both parties, okay? I've actually had to use that where I've put some money in Upwork or sorry, in Escrow, for someone that I had hired. Thought she would be great based on her past work and conversations. She turned out to be pretty poor, is the word, the term I will use, all right? She turned out to be pretty poor. And I had to go to Upwork and say, "Hey, listen. She said she was going to do X. She only did Y. I'm only willing to pay for Y. She didn't do all of X". And Upwork said, "Okay, how much are you willing to pay?". I said, "Well, that's worth 25% to me". They said "Great! We'll send her 25% and we'll return your 75%", because she did not deliver what she said she would. So that's one of, it is a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because everything has to go through Upwork and they charge you fees. They charge you fees to hold the money in Escrow. And then they charge the employee fees when they get paid, okay? 

So that's one of the downsides of working with Upwork. Now, in terms of talent, you can find some fantastic people on Upwork. Absolutely! I've got people who've been on my staff, the longest tenured. And a matter of fact, the longest tenured person on my staff came from Upwork. You can absolutely find some fantastic and super talented people on Upwork.

Typically, if you're going to compare Upwork to Fiverr, you're going to find better quality people on Upwork than you are on Fiverr. And you're also going to pay a higher price for them. Makes sense. Better quality people, you're going to pay slightly more. That just makes logical sense. 

Now, the last one, and this is my favorite guys, and again, I'm going to drop links to all of these in the description down below, okay? But this is my absolute, absolute, absolute favorite. This is my go-to place. The guy you see on this, on the screen is John Jonas who created this. This is OnlineJobs.ph. I actually had a chance to send a message to him some time ago through a mutual friend of ours because I love his site so much. 

OnlineJobs.ph is a job board for virtual assistants from the Philippines. Everyone here on this site is from the Philippines, okay? What I love about OnlineJobs.ph is it's very simple to use. You post your job. People respond. There's not a lot of overhead or, or hoops to jump through like there are with some of the other sites, like Upwork. Takes a little while to post a job on Upwork, okay? You almost need a tutorial. You don't need that with OnlineJobs.ph. Very, very simple. 

Also in OnlineJobs.ph, if you liked the Fiverr model of going through people's resumes and choosing who to talk to, you can do that here too. You can absolutely do that. So you get the best of both worlds here on OnlineJobs.ph. And they have fantastic, fantastic people here from the Philippines.

The other thing that I like about OnlineJobs.ph, is he also has a lot of training built in here. So once you're, once you've logged in, in the back office, there's a lot of training to teach you and help you learn how best to manage your staff and your team. So I love OnlineJobs.ph. 

Now like everything else, there is a drawback. OnlineJobs.ph is the only one that charges you, charges me, the employer to post our jobs. You pay a monthly fee, okay? You pay a monthly fee to post jobs and have people respond in communicating back and forth with them. But John Jonas is pretty darn upfront. He said, "Listen, I'm going to charge you a monthly fee because I don't want to charge the worker a monthly fee", which I completely understand and, and I completely get it. That's fair, okay? 

But cause he's got to make some money and he says, but here's the deal, pay the fee, hire your people, cancel your subscription. You're not locked in. You don't have to stay. It's a one-month-at-a-time subscription. You don't have to stay for months, and months, and months, and months, and months. You're not locked in and I love that here.

Other than that, what I love about OnlineJobs.ph is in general, when I post a job on here, I get more responses from people on OnlineJobs.ph than I do on Upwork. And I track that because oftentimes I'll post on both sites and I may get 10 responses on, on Upwork, but I would have gotten 50 on OnlineJobs.ph. I'll take the 50. Yeah, might be a lot more to sift through, but guess what? You're looking for a needle in a haystack when you're hiring someone. You're looking for that ideal person. I'd rather have more to sift through, to try to find that ideal person than fewer. But that's just me. That's just me. 

So guys, these are five sites that we've just gone through where you can go find a virtual assistant, like today, like no joke, today! Seriously, you can post on any of these today and have somebody working as early as tomorrow. So what are you waiting for? Go do it! The links are down below. Click the links. Go find a site that works best for you and enjoy! 

And as always, if you have any questions, drop them down below. I'm here to answer your questions.

Alright, everybody! I'll see you later. Bye-bye!