Posts Tagged ‘paymo.biz’
10
Jun

Outsourcing Myself – Decisions

No commentsOutsourcingJune 10th, 2010

Time Tracking & Analysis

So I’ve religiously logged my time for a couple weeks now (using a desktop widget from Paymo.biz), and come to the following conclusions -

  • I waste too much time switching between tasks.  I need to focus more on completing things before moving onto something else
  • I waste too much time with social media.  I need to outsource Ping.FM, Facebook friend maintenance, Twitter follower upkeep, etc.
  • I waste too much time checking email.  Rather than checking my personal and multiple business accounts 50x per day, I should set a schedule and check maybe 4-5x.
  • I waste too much time doing internet shopping / research. Whether it be a gift for my mom or a new laptop for myself, I always feel the need to find the best value product out there, and spend hours doing so.   I can definitely outsource some of this research.

Virtual Assistant Providers

I’ve also been busy research sites / companies to hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) from.  Here’s the options that I’ve come up with -
Job posting boards
Outsourcing companies
From my research the job posting boards are time consuming because you have to interview people, and you also don’t want an individual because they’d be a single point of failure in your business (ie. if they got sick a lot of stuff would stop getting done).  

First Page Web Search is by far the cheapest of the outsourcing companies, and even though they specialize in SEO VA’s, they can do solely admin work too, I’ve already asked them. Only $300/month for a full-time VA! So that’s where I’m currently leaning…

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01
Jun

Outsourcing Myself – Intro

No commentsOutsourcingJune 1st, 2010

I’m determined to become more efficient and effective with my time.

Outsource

I’ve come to the realization that I waste WAY too much time on things like:

  • Checking email (hundreds of times a day)
  • Customer support
  • Internet window shopping (doing tons of research before deciding what to buy)
  • Forum reading
  • Social networking (Facebook, Twitter, other Ping.FM sites)
  • Blog posts for niche sites

Most of these things can and should be done by someone else, so I can free up my time to do more important things. I’m not the only qualified person in the world to do these tasks, although sometimes I trick myself into thinking so 

So I’ve decided I want to hire a Virtual Assistant.

My plan is:

  1. Log my time in detail for a couple weeks to see what can be outsourced or eliminated or managed differently
  2. Write a list of VA-appropriate tasks
  3. Hire a VA for a trial period (from a company, not an individual…as they’d become a huge bottleneck in my life if something were to happen to them)
  4. If they don’t work out, find someone else, and if they do continue giving them work.
  5. Make damn sure that my instructions are super clear and adjust the responsibilities and authorization (financial accounts) they’re given over time.

I’m already in the midst of doing #1. I’m using the site Paymo.biz with a timer widget that lets me switch between tasks easily.

I’ll continue to post about my outsourcing experience, so hopefully others can learn from my mistakes…which I’m sure there’ll be many of haha.

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