A few years ago, very few people even knew what a virtual assistant was . . . let alone use one. That has all changed.

These days, anyone can have a virtual assistant, thanks to international outsourcing. There are VAs available in the US, as well as around the world. While some swear by using an Indian or Chinese virtual assistant, others claim that American and Canadian VAs are of far better quality, though they charge more.

Truthfully, I think it depends on the business. If you have the money to pay $40+ an hour, then a more local virtual assistant is probably best. You don´t have to worry about cultural or language barriers and your time zones are going to be pretty similar. Your American VA can answer phones or pick up your mail, something that a foreign virtual assistant will have difficulties with.

However, if you are a fairly small business, then a virtual assistant from abroad might be just the thing. They are cheaper, work when you sleep (usually) and if you get a good one, they are supposed to be quite resourceful. Now, I´m going on what I´ve read since I´ve never hired a virtual assistant . . . but that´s all about to change.

The Decision

Lately, I´ve been swamped. I have work coming in, commitments online and off, my kids to look after and a myriad of household chores piling up. It´s overwhelming. And it can´t go on like this.

So, I took a hard look at my life and decided that I need to start reassigning some of the more menial tasks, the ones that I never get around to doing or that take me entirely too long to get through. However, I don´t earn huge amounts per hour, (though I´d love to change that), so I needed to find someone that wouldn´t charge too much.

Since I live in Guatemala, outsourcing physical tasks like housework is pretty cheap. I can get a girl in to clean for 4 hours a day for around $50 a month. We already outsource the laundry to a lady up the street who is far better at scrubbing grass stains out of a toddler´s jeans than I am and charges $5 for a massive tub of laundry once a week.

But it´s time to take this a step further.

Last night, I made up a list of business and personal tasks that could be done by a VA. There are quite a few, which really surprised me! So the hunt began.

Search for a Virtual Assistant

I had a few prerequisites. I needed the following:

• Someone cheap (I can´t afford to pay much at this point)
• Ability to pay with PayPal
• Someone who spoke English fluently, since I need them to write letters and such.

Well, American virtual assistants were ruled out immediately because of the higher price, though I´m sure they would be a great choice if I could afford them. I found several virtual assistant groups via the Tim Ferris blog, but they either didn´t offer prices or required use of a credit card, which I still don´t have.

The next step was to search for Indian virtual assistants and I finally came across the VA4U site, which is basically just a listing of VAs around the world. I actually found one here in Guatemala, but her ad was in Spanish, and though she might be useful in the future, I need English at the moment.

In the end, I contacted about a dozen different people in various countries to get their prices and see if we could work together. Within 4 hours, I´ve received two replies. The plan is to try a couple of virtual assistants out and then make a decision on whether to stick with one. This is an experiment at this stage, to see if I really would be more productive by outsourcing some of the more tedious work involved in running my various endevours.

You´ll be kept posted!

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