Monday 18 August 2014

Task Management Apps for Virtual Assistant

Asana is a web and mobile application designed to enable teamwork without email. It was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-engineer Justin Rosenstein, who both worked on improving the productivity of employees at Facebook.

Company and History

Moskovitz and Rosenstein left Facebook in 2008 to start Asana (named after a Sanskrit word meaning “yoga pose”), which officially launched out of beta in November 2011. The company announced that they had closed a $1.2 million angel round in the spring of 2011 from investors including Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, Mitch Kapor, Owen van Natta, Sean Parker, and former Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel, followed by a $9 million USD series A-round in investment led by Benchmark Capital in late November 2011.On July 23, 2012, Asana announced a new round of funding — Peter Thiel and Founders Fund, along with existing investors Benchmark, Andreessen-Horowitz, and Mitch Kapor, have invested $28 million in Asana; Thiel also joined Asana's Board of Directors. According to a New York Times article and someone briefed on the funding, the investors valued the company at $280 million.

As of March 2014, the software product is used by tens of thousands of teams, across all industries and in every continent except Antarctica. Companies that use Asana include Airbnb, Dropbox, Disqus, Foursquare, Pinterest, Stripe, Lets Rent, and Uber.

Product

Asana is a teamwork communication manager. The product supports many features, including workspaces, projects, tasks, tags, notes, comments, and an inbox that organizes and updates information in real-time. The product is designed to enable individuals and teams to plan and manage their projects and tasks without email. Each team gets a workspace. Workspaces contain projects, and projects contain tasks.

In each task, users can add notes, comments, attachments, and tags. Users can follow projects and tasks, and, when the state of a project or task changes, followers get updates about the changes in their inboxes.

In May 2013, Asana launched Organizations, which enables companies to adopt Asana at enterprise scale: from hundreds to thousands of employees. With the launch of Organizations came new capabilities including an Asana Team Browser, a unified view of a person's My Tasks and inbox, employee auto-join and IT administration abilities related to provisioning and permissions.

Post-email application

In June 2012, Asana announced a new feature called Inbox that aims to help teams minimize the use of email.^] As one step towards building a “post-email application”, Asana’s Inbox shows “updates to tasks, comments, due date changes, and other status updates people would normally reserve for email.”.

API

In April 2012, Asana released its API to third-party developers. The API is available for free to everyone with an Asana account and can be accessed through their developer site. Asana is integrated with several popular productivity tools including Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Harvest, and Instagantt, Jira, Zendesk, among others. The complete list can be found on their apps page.

Pricing

Asana is free for teams of up to 15 people. Asana Premium plans are paid versions of the product for larger teams or entire organizations. Pricing is tiered based on the number of people within the team or organization.

Competitors

eXo Platform (Open Source)

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Virtual Assistant Hottest Career @ Home

Have you ever thought that your home will be your working place?

Or have you ever thought about working from home?

Maybe these sounds like you…..

The word VA is one of the hottest job online now, it is task about administrative support and it is the bread and butter of lots who quit their daily routine office job….YES you heard it right they QUIT their regular office job for becoming a VA at the present of their family we’re they can see them every minute without any worries about what are they doing now…VA is short for Virtual Assistant or PA as Personal Assistant, Virtual Assistant (VA) is an administrative professional who provides immediate professional support, services, and skills to busy entrepreneurs and business managers via the Internet. …Thanks to internet you can work anytime without traveling around the world to give your service to other who are in need for a skills like yours. In the early days, VAs typically focused on administrative support tasks such as Document preparation, travel arrangements, desktop publishing, bookkeeping, scheduling appointments and other administrative tasks. However, the VA industry has evolved significantly over the past couple years.

Many virtual assistants have shifted their focus away from purely general administration to many other cool niches like Social Media Marketing, Virtual Events (Webinar and Teleseminar Support), Internet Marketing Support (Email, Search Engine Optimization), Content writing and editing, Blog design and management, Online business management, Screen calls, take messages, respond to inquiries and requests for information as directed, Maintain General Manager files and information flow including in box/out box, email, mail, Research, filing, document preparation as directed, Travel planning and coordination, Maintain calendar and scheduling, etc.

So, the Virtual Assistant option has quickly become the ideal avenue for getting pertinent, time-sensitive projects done. Also, even medium and larger companies have started using Virtual Assistants to offload work demands and expand their capacity. The cool thing about running your own virtual assistant business from home (or from wherever you want) is that you can set your own schedule and work when you want and where you want. Many VAs have a home office which enables them to raise their family and avoid those dreaded day care costs. Others love to work in coffee shops or anywhere they can get a nice WIFI connection.

For me I love to stay at home with my family as I do my task project and I can answer any calls or message from all my client I work with. Here in the Philippines there are about thousands of Virtual Assistant now and it’s still growing,

I start my freelancer career in Odesk way back September 2012 and got my first task 5 months later as data entry and researcher, for beginner like me in that time is such frustrating as I don’t have enough knowledge

how freelancer works online, so I start to research, watch youtube tutorials on how to become a freelancer platform in Odesk, how does it work and how I can earn from working infront of my Desktop Computer, lots of question I have in mind but the only answer I got is “PATIENCE” in this kind of business or career you want to pursue you must have a BIG PATIENCE cause there is a millions freelancer all over the world and half a millions Client, So in my situation I plan to have that patience, since I got my first task in odesk using my patience and now I shift to Elance and found opportunity to grow my services and skills as I gain more experience and confident on dealing lots of different task. I just keep in touch on what happen around technology and adopt every apps and software that goes and boom like mushroom that help all freelancer to make their daily task project easier.

What I can suggest to new freelancer who wants to be a Virtual assistant… Be patience and learn those apps you think might help your task easier and set your brand of service….

Now I am building my own brand of service and start building audience for my brand, I do post now on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Page, Google + and some other Social Media Apps. Building your brand makes you noticeable for audience and prospect Client.

Happy building your Brands and Services.

Monday 4 August 2014

ELANCE is an online staffing platform "The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy"

Elance is an online community of over 4 million businesses and Freelancers working together differently.

As a Client hiring on Elance, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that you’re in control, working safely and only paying for what you expect. Plus, we’re here with you every step of the way!

As a Freelancer providing services on Elance, you’ll have the opportunity to work with Clients in more than 170 countries – from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses to individual entrepreneurs. By using Elance, you will have confidence and assurance you will get paid for the work you deliver!

Background

Elance was first launched in 1999, its name inspired by a 1998 Harvard Business Review article titled "The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy". It was initially developed as a technology for supporting virtual work. Two years later Elance introduced a vendor management system (VMS) for contractors and third-party services used by large enterprises. In 2006 Elance sold its enterprise software division and developed instead its current web-based platform for online, contingent work.

As of February 2013, Elance is used by approximately 500,000 businesses and 2 million registered freelance professionals, who have collectively earned nearly $850 million to date.

A merger with oDesk, another online staffing platform, was confirmed in December 2013. The deal is expected to be finalized in April 2014 and the two companies will create a resource that consists of 8 million freelancers and 2 million businesses.

Clients

The Elance website allows businesses to post jobs, search for freelance professionals, and solicit proposals. They can evaluate the contractors applying for the job and, once a contractor is selected, communications and files are exchanged through the Elance system. Payment for jobs, which can either be hourly-rateor project-based jobs, is made by the client through Elance's system, which deducts a percentage of the fee, 8.75%, as a "commission." Elance offers a Work View tool provides an official record of work completed. For project-based jobs statement of work or milestones are used to indicate progress toward completion, and funds are held in escrow by Elance to ensure payment upon completion of the milestone.

Freelancers

Freelancers search Elance's website for jobs, and can research clients' buying histories on the system. Each freelancer can post a profile displaying past jobs and feedback, a portfolio, and specific skill and educational-background information. Registered free users are allowed to submit a limited number of proposals each month while those on paid membership plans can submit additional proposals. Elance offers payment guarantee once work is done using the Elance system.

A 2012 survey of freelancers conducted by Elance indicated that freelancing was the "sole source of income" for 48% of respondents, and that 69% had at least a bachelor's degree.

Skills

Information technology jobs such as web and mobile programming and development, accounts for the majority of earnings on Elance (59%), followed by creative jobs (24%), marketing (7%), and operations (7%). Jobs for writers and graphic designers are also popular. Elance maintains a current list of their overall top 100 in-demand skills, and in 2011, the most in-demand skills were PHP programming, WordPress programming, article writing, graphic design, and HTML programming. Specific data, including global job growth numbers and earnings on the most in-demand skills, is made available on Elance's website.

Awards and recognition

Elance has been cited as an example of the emerging paradigm of informal workplace communication, employing social media tools and cloud-based applications to drive productivity. Elance also caters to the increasingly liquid labor market by facilitating direct contact between contractors with specific skillsets and clients with specific needs. This reduces search friction and benefits the economy as a whole.

According to 2013 reports from Accenture and Deloitte that mention Elance, enterprises are increasingly looking to supplement their permanent employee workforce with flexible, extended workforces of project-based personnel.Business owners support the trend because it lowers their payroll expenditures, and workers support it because working for multiple clients results in increased job security. Project-based hiring also allows small businesses access to highly skilled workers at a significantly lower cost as compared to hiring full-time staff.

In 2009, Elance was selected as one of CNET's Webware 100, an award recognizing products and services that embody Web 2.0 ideals of collaboration and cloud computing. In 2013, Elance was selected as one of Red Herring's top 100 companies.

Issues

While Elance has received accolades by the technology industry and business community and there are some good reviews by those who have obtained work through this system, some of those people who actually compete for jobs using this social media have been more critical. Some complain of competition in a global job market with low rates and no benefits, work delivered but not paid for, job descriptions that are not always accurate.

Merger

On December 18, 2013, Elance announced that it would sign a definitive agreement to merge with its competitor, oDesk to create an online workplace for a combined total of 8 million registered individuals. A joint statement issued on the same day stated that Fabio Rosati, chief executive officer of Elance, would lead the combined company. The new entity’s name was to be announced after the deal was closed. According to Rosati, the executive team and board will be balanced with people from each company. Both websites would stay open, and the company will keep both Silicon Valley headquarters, with ODesk in Redwood City, California, and Elance in Mountain View, California.

E-lancing websites

Following is a list of e-lancing websites which are currently in service:

Key people: Fabio Rosati CEO
Industry: Internet
Online employment platform

Freelance marketplace
Website: elance.com
Current status: Active

Rank: Alexa rank 456 (April 2014)

ODESK Industry Analysts refers to as an "online staffing" platform

oDesk is a global online work platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. Based in Redwood City, CA, oDesk was founded in 2003 by Greek entrepreneurs Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis.

Background

oDesk was founded by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis. The two friends created a new technology platform (an online workplace) to allow distributed teams to work together and help instill trust in work happening via the Internet. oDesk, along with its network of freelancers (spanning any type of work that can be done via the Internet) launched in 2003.

Staffing Industry Analysts refers to oDesk as an "online staffing" platform:

"Online Staffing — A type of Talent Exchange consisting of an online platform where contingent workers, contractors, freelancers can offer their skills and services for limited projects or even on-going assignments and where organizations and individuals can post their requirements or put tasks/projects out to bid."

Staffing Industry Analysts estimated that the total global market for "online staffing" was approximately $1B in 2012:

'Fifteen years ago, this industry segment did not exist. But today (after an acceleration starting around 2007) it generates about $1B+ in global revenues, consists of over 50 firms, and is growing at high double-digit growth rates. Six major players account for about half of the total industry segment revenues in 2012, but it can be expected that future market/industry expansion will also be based on now-smaller or not-yet-formed players."

In March 2013, Staffing Industry Analysts, projected that the "online staffing" segment would grow to $5B by 2018.

Online marketplaces often manage the payments and make money by charging membership fees and/or "marking up" on the billings of the contractors/freelancers. The mark-ups can range from 5 percent to 15 percent. In general, these mark-ups are significantly less than the mark-ups of traditional staffing firms, which usually—technically—enter into an employment relationship with their workers.

Description

oDesk allows clients to interview, hire and work with freelancers and agencies through the company's platform. Prospective clients can post jobs for free, and freelancers may create profiles and bid on jobs, also for free.^[11] The company collects 10 percent of the payment. Payments are made through oDesk, which handles many bookkeeping tasks for the transaction. The transactions are transferred into the contractors' accounts after a 6-day safety period. The company's site is entirely in English, and all transactions are made in U.S. dollars.

As of December 2012, oDesk had 2.7 million freelancers and 540,000 clients worldwide. In January 29, 2012, the company reported that its top 5 countries (in terms of dollars spent for oDesk contractor services) were (in rank order): (1) US, (2) Australia, (3) Canada, (4) UK, and (5) United Arab Emirates. oDesk reported that services paid by clients hiring through the site for the year totaled $360 million in 2012.

The specific areas of expertise supported by the site include web development and a wide variety of programming/software development skills, graphic design, writing and administrative support. The company provides voluntary skills tests in various disciplines from English aptitude to specific programming skills, and profiles include a feedback mechanism.

Innovation

The company's oDesk team software increases transparency and allows a client to have confidence in the billing done by a contractor whom the buyer may never have met and who may be half a world away. In an October 2008 interview with website Web Worker Daily, CEO Gary Swart said the work diaries “give buyers unprecedented visibility into work performed,” and that the Team software's “hassle-free tracking guarantees convenient, safe, and accurate billing for all work performed.”

Merger with Elance

On December 18, 2013, oDesk announced that it would sign a definitive agreement to merge with Elance, to create an online workplace for a combined total 8 million registered individuals. A joint statement was issued on the same day. The Chief Executive Officer of Elance was to lead the combined company. The new entity’s name was to be announced after the deal was closed. According to Rosati, the executive team and board will be balanced with people from each company. Both websites would stay open, and the company will keep both Silicon Valley headquarters, with ODesk in Redwood City, California, and Elance in Mountain View, California.

Competitors

Awards

Bersin by Deloitte "WhatWorks" Award (2013)
oDesk ranked #543 in the 2012 Inc. 5000, #441 in the 2011 Inc. 500, #286 on the 2010 Inc. 500, and #110 in the 2009 Inc. 500
AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies (2012 and 2011)
AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 (2012 and 2011)
Silicon Valley Business Journal Fastest Growing Private Company List (2011, 2010 and 2009)
San Francisco Business Times Fastest Growing Companies List (2011 and 2010)
SAMCEDA Innovation & Entrepreneurship Awards - 2011 Fastest Growing Innovator Award of Excellence
2011 TiE50 Internet/Social Networking Winner of TiE50 Awards Program.
TechCrunch50 DemoPit Winner (2010)
Silicon Valley Business Journal Emerging Technology Award (2009)
International Association of Outsourcing Professionals 2009 Global Outsourcing 100 Rising Star
Deloitte Technology Fast 500
Finalist for the "Red Herring 100 Global" Awards 2007 and 2009.
2007 Rising Star in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 Program
Finalist in PC Magazine’s 2006 Small Business Awards

Saturday 2 August 2014

Working on Elance

Building Your Freelancer Profile

In this Elance University tutorial, you'll learn what it takes to make your profile standout. Whether you're new to Elance or an experienced user, we'll show you the profile areas that matter most to clients, and where you can make an impact right away.

This 2 minutes and 40 seconds videos is free to watch on Elance University.

ENJOY WATCHING!!!

Please do follow, Connect or Like US...

https://twitter.com/VMA_Team

https://www.facebook.com/VirtualMediaAssistant

http://ph.linkedin.com/pub/levi-garcia/66/46a/397/

http://levigarcia3.wix.com/vma-team

VMA_TEAM

Virtual Media Assistant Team

HOW TO BECOME A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

By: Amy Lynn Andrew

A virtual assistant offers help to individuals, organizations or companies over the internet. I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a great work-at-home opportunity and something many people could do.

A lot of people hear “virtual assistance” and think of administrative assistance, like a secretary. It can mean that, but that’s not all. Here’s a big list of possibilities. I bet you’ll see something you could do.

Types of things virtual assistants do

There are countless services you can provide virtually, like writing, ghostwriting, graphic design, researching, editing, tutoring, desktop publishing, counseling, audio/video/photo editing, coaching, consulting, bookkeeping, copywriting, social media management, project management, transcription, programming, data entry and anything else you can do without having to be in the same physical location as your client. Call it “virtual assistance.”

At rates ranging anywhere from $15 to $100+ an hour (depending on your skill), it’s a great option for those who want to work from home. After my own stint as a virtual assistant (VA for short), here are my tips.

1. Get a website

You have to do this. People need to be able to find you. Your own presence on the web is crucial. It gives you a more professional appearance, the chance to highlight some of your skills and an opportunity to explain your process. If you’ve seen my step-by-step guide, you’ll know you can be up and running in as little as 15 minutes. (Note that my series talks specifically about blogs, but it applies equally to regular websites. After setting up, just follow the instructions in this post.)

2. Buy The Bootstrap VA* by Lisa Morosky

I get a lot of requests to promote ebooks, but I rarely do so. However, I bought The Bootstrap VA and it is ABSOLUTELY one I recommend. I share a bit of my experience in the book, but oh my goodness, the finished product is jam-packed with actionable tips. For $12.99, it will be the best investment you’ll make. Seriously. It’s like taking a college course. Lisa has worked as a virtual assistant for many years and after reading half of her ebook, I was so impressed, I hired Lisa to be my own virtual assistant. She knows her stuff.

3. Get involved in social media

This would include Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or whichever social media platform your potential clients hang out. Commenting on blogs can be good too. Relationships are key. Being involved in social media is one of the best way to find clients and vice versa (at least until you are established and can rely on word of mouth).

4. Be helpful

Some people looking for work as a VA come across as spammy. In my case, I had offered Crystal (MoneySavingMom.com) some ideas about her website in a casual conversation on Twitter and that was the start of our working relationship.

5. Check out what other VAs are doing

Ask around, read some great articles, do some googling and find some people who are already VAs. Check out their websites, see what they offer and get an idea of how it might work for you. A perfect place to do this is the free Facebook group that you get access to when you buy The Bootstrap VA.
Conclusion

I’m asked all the time how to make money online. There are many ways to do so, but one excellent idea is to take a skill you already have and turn it into a service you can offer online. I’ve done this myself. Many people have done it. The internet has made it possible to do so many things remotely, or, “virtually.”