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Is hiring virtual assistants (VAs) necessary for running your e-commerce business? When should business owners proceed with this step?
Despite common beliefs that one should save costs and do-it-yourself (DIY) before your business is established, Willy will like to offer you an alternative way of looking at this issue in this episode.
In this episode, Willy is going to cover:
- Where you can go to hire non-expensive and reliable VAs;
- Perks you will get from hring VAs to help handle your business;
- Why it’s better to hire VAs to help you manage your business as early as you can.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Nowadays, hiring virtual assistants, or VAs, to help handle various aspects of an ecommerce business is very common. However, many people will be troubled as to WHEN and WHERE they should hire VAs. In this episode, I shall share my opinions about this matter.
Okay, so here’s the thing: when you first start an ecommerce business, you will want to save costs and do everything by yourself. This is very natural – most of the time, ecommerce business owners will only start to think of hiring VAs to help them much later, when they feel that their businesses are more established.
Such a habit isn’t wrong, but I will like to offer you a new way of looking at it: if you ask me when is the best time to start hiring VAs to help you with your business, I will tell you the earlier the better. The reason for doing so is simple – because hiring VAs can help you run your business much more efficiently.
Take, for example, if you run an Amazon e-commerce business, you will know there are so many things to do before you can start selling your products. You need to research for products, negotiate with suppliers, arrange for the import-exportation processes, etc. These tasks are pretty mundane and they can make you lose that ‘fire’ for your business – you know, the excitement you get when you first startup. If you hire people to tackle these tasks for you, you will always feel positive when you go about managing your business, because, hey, now you don’t need to settle those draggy, nitty-gritty stuff! This will be so much better for your mental health.
Moreover, although necessary, some of those tasks are very repeatable. For example, product research. Why do you want to spend hours repeating the process of going through sourcing websites for new product ideas, when you can just get someone else to do that for you? You should focus your time and energy on the more complex things – like how to optimize your listings such that they sell better. Isn’t that a better usage of your time?
Now, for a start, if you are not comfortable with the idea of letting other people handle your business matters, I will recommend hiring VAs to work for you for around 3 hours per day, to ease into the process. Before that, you will need to set up an SOP, or a system with clear instructions on what the VAs need to do. You will be in charge of monitoring their progress daily, and… that’s it. That’s all you need to do!
Meanwhile, as you set up and explain your instructions to the VAs, you will also be clearer of the business process yourself. You will find that you can adapt faster to changes, because you know very clearly now why you are doing what you are doing. At the same time, you can learn people-management skills, and that’s something you need to learn anyway, because… eventually you will want to expand your business and hire employees to help you, right? So why not start this learning process earlier?
As for where to hire VAs, that’s easy – there are hiring websites like Onlinejobs.ph, Upwork, Fiverr, etc where you can find VAs for your needs. And they are not expensive to hire too. Personally, my favourite place to go to is Onlinejobs.ph. They have VAs who have good communication skills, and are willing to work hard if you pay them the expected price.
So, are you more confident about when you should hire VAs? Try it now – you will be happy to see how much hassle it can save you!
See you in the next episode.