Virtual Assistant Week: Find Assistants in Lower-Income States for $10/hr

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The way I teach how to find a good virtual administrative assistant for making phone calls, helping you find deals, etc) is to not necessarily look for a person who is already looking for work as a VA, or through a virtual staffing agency.  You will likely have to pay $20+/hour.

Instead, I have found success in working with people who have the same skills and experience many full-time VA’s, but are willing to work for less–around $10-15/hr.

BUT, sometimes when I’m speaking to investors club and I mentioned that I recommend only paying your assistants $10 or $15/hour at the most, jaws drop because people simply don’t believe that anyone good would work for that amount of money. This may certainly be more true in states that have a higher cost of living, like California.

So here’s a trick that I recommend:

Hire a VA in a state where lower wages are the norm.  If someone’s virtual, what does it matter how close or far they are from you?  And if location doesn’t matter, why not hire someone who is excited to work for $10/hour?

Or someone in the middle of nowhere who would be happy to have the chance to work without driving 60 minutes round trip?

This doesn’t mean that you are compromising quality.  There are talented people everywhere, so why not go to where you can pay less for the same results?

Here’s what to do:

1) Google the lowest-income states.

Get on Google and type in “lowest median income states” or “average household income states.”  I won’t post a link because then I may have to update it every year.

Just find a list of the 50 U.S. states in order of their average household income, from highest to lowest, and then see what the lowest 3-5 states are.

I did this in about 10 seconds and found the following:

Alabama	47th	40,554
Kentucky	48th	40,267
Arkansas	49th	38,134
West Virginia	50th	37,060
Mississippi	51th	36,338

(It looks like we got a 51st state at some point.  I must have been napping when that was announced in the news.  Maybe the list includes Puerto Rico or something).  At any rate, it looks like the South will rise again!

2) Get on craigslist.net and post a job listing in one of those states.

Do this with the same wording and category that you would if running the ad in your own city.

3) Hire away!

You’ll find that there is no disadvantage to hiring someone across the country vs in your own town, with the exceptions of A) Them not being able to run errands and make dropoffs for you, and 2) Sending mail to people in your city so it can get there faster.

If you need those services done, you can just hire one person to be your VA in another state, and then have an errand person in your area.

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And I’ve also put together a special discount all this week for those who want to finally get my course, “The Assistant Who Pays Their Own Salary,” and get someone else to find you deals and run your business for you!

Click HERE to see the course’s contents and why it will change your life.