I have had virtual assistants for a while now and it really is one of those things that one you get one there is no turning back. Virtual assistants can do just about anything from booking travel arrangements, web research, online orders, booking appointments to giving you a wake up call or reminder.
Here are some of the things I recently had my virtual assistant do.
- Order return address labels
- Order postage stamps
- Organize my business email addresses
- Order Valentine’s Day flowers
- Cancel a haircut appointment
Virtual assistants range from about $5/hour to $20+ depending on the skill level you need. Not everybody needs a virtual assistant but I bet a lot of people would benefit in having one. I also have virtual assistants who to technical work and web research but for simple tasks or questions I like to use Yahoo Answers.
If getting a virtual assistant sounds interesting to you check out these sites.
Again, once you get a good virtual assistant there is no turning back.
Yahoo Ansers the Free Virtual Assistant
I’m a big fan of Yahoo Answers because it provides excellent answers to all my simple, complicated and even silly questions. The other reason why I love Yahoo Answers is that it is a huge time saver and I’ll tell you why later. I wrote about Yahoo Answers in a previous post.
Here are some ideas on questions you could ask at Yahoo Answers
- If you are planning a vacation or trip you could ask what are the “must do” things
- You could ask what is a good Italian restaurant in New York City or San Francisco
- What hotel has the best location in a certain city?
- Which is a better dog for children a pug or golden retriever?
- Is coffee bad for your skin?
- How do I get a passport?
- What age do you have to be to drink on international flights?
- What are some cheap things to do in Las Vegas?
I like to use Yahoo Answers for a lot of opinionated answers. It allows me to find out the inside scoop which I might not have found if I did a search on Google.
Save Time, Use Yahoo Answers
Who wouldn’t love more free time. The problem with when doing web research is it’s like going down a rabbit hole. For example, I recently wanted to know how chocolate affects mental clarity and productivity, so I jumped on Google and began my research.
30 minutes later I had about 10+ browser tabs open with websites about the benefits of chocolate, yikes! Even worse I had sidetracked and began reading other relevant blogs and websites. I was even clicking on advertisements on those websites. Talk about information overload. I am trying to train myself to use Yahoo Answers more to prevent this from happening.
Instead of continuing my research I posted the question “Can Chocolate improve productivity or mental clarity?” on Yahoo answers. It took less than a minute to post the question. In less than 30 minutes I got 3 answers, one of them was what I was looking for. You can view the responses here. By the way, I just bought a bunch of dark chocolate based on this article which I got from Yahoo answers.
Even if you don’t have a question Yahoo Answers is a great site to check out as you can browse popular questions. Of course if you feel like helping other people out you can provide answers to questions too. I recommend you try it out and you will be amazed by speed and results of Yahoo Answers.
Good article but remember you get what you pay for and you are a little off on your hourly wage for VA’s unless you are talking about cheap overseas outsourcing. Again you only get the quality of work that you pay for. Cheap is not always the best way to go.
No doubt about it you get what you pay for but there are also ways to empower your VA too. The way I see it, if you have a good systems for your VA then they won’t need to be highly skilled and therefore you can find a cheaper virtual assistant.
My disappointment with Yahoo Answers came in the form of their “reward” system. I racked up thousands of points in a couple of days, and ended up with a Yahoo screensaver as my reward. Pfft.
Wow, I didn’t even know you could get items from Yahoo for accumulating points. A Yahoo screensaver, that is pretty weak.
Hey Dean,
Thanks for the insights regarding Yahoo! Answers. I blogged about your post over on the Yahoo! Answers blog. You can check it out here.
If you get a chance, select a best answer to your question. Sometimes if left open, a sub-par answer will be voted as the best answer, and that excludes others from benefiting from the Q&A in the future (either through search or from browsing the community).
Thanks again, I enjoyed reading your post.
Thanks, I have selected the best answers to my Yahoo questions.
I agree, you can learn some good stuff there. For example, I was looking for aircraft mini-models and used the search box of Y!A. As a result, found some pretty cool sites just by following others’ people answers.
In addition to YA i have tried wikianswers and allexperts – both work on the question/answer model. The drawback of ‘free’ assistants though is that quite often the quality of answers is not remotely as good as what you actually need. But hey, at least it is for free!
Nice post, just found it through Google and it’s a very interesting idea which I would never have thought of. Inspired me to join Y! answers, and I stumbled it for you 🙂