

Ask HN: Can you recommend a virtual personal assistant agency? - conflagration

After reading some articles about virtual personal assistants, I want to ask the community, if they know of any good site to find me an assistant paid on an hourly basis for some research tasks I have to get done(i.e. finding tables of measurement data in a certain format). The tasks are not as simple as ordering food, but on a level low enough, so that they can be done by any half-way intelligent person without any previous knowledge on the topic.<p>I would really like to source some things out. Can you help me?<p>Edit: After doing some research, I found oDesk almost fits my needs, they are only missing one key feature: Searching for people speaking other languages than English.
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joshkaufman
I use TimeSvr.com - wrote a detailed post about them here:
<http://personalmba.com/delegation-outsourcing-timesvr/>

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Brajeshwar
One of my author wrote a rather nice article with relevant links to services
that provides Virtual Assistants. Here is the link to the article

[http://brajeshwar.com/2010/virtual-assistants-managing-
busin...](http://brajeshwar.com/2010/virtual-assistants-managing-business-
scheduling-better/)

I've also heard someone said Indonesian's (from oDesk) are pretty good and
easier to interact.

I suggest trying out few with small task and figuring out the best which suits
you.

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newyorker
I know a lady that is a Personal Assistant. Her website is here (be careful
the PA link is messed up): <http://www.whyorganizingworks.com/services.php>

She knows a little of some languages. Which are you looking for?

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eli
I've heard good things about <https://getfriday.com/>

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c1sc0
I've been using them for almost two months now & strongly recommend them. It
is worth asking for someone with a technical background and then giving
him/her some breathing space to get to know you.

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iworkforthem
I have been using www.onlinejobs.ph to find VAs. My criteria are; able to
speak basic English and not more than USD$5/hr. I does take up quite a while
to find the right person, at the end of the day it's worth it.

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bobds
If you want people that speak a certain language, you could try looking at
some translation communities, such as ProZ.com.

<http://www.proz.com/>

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mike_holland
I use a virtual assistant service called Rent A Smile
<http://www.rentasmile.com> \- they're specially good for research work.

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lorenzsell
i've been using filcan (<http://www.filcancommunications.biz/>) for the last
three years. they've done everything from data entry to data collection to
telephone research for me. they're based in the philippines. pricing is around
$6/hour.

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mlevey
I co-run fancyhands.com - we can help you. Feel free to contact us if you have
questions about our service.

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mkuhn
What about oDesk et al.? There is a huge amount of people offering to work as
your personal assistant.

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conflagration
Thank you for the recommendation. Some of my tasks are language specific, so I
would like to find people capable of speaking a certain language.

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paulsingh
I'm using ContemporaryVa and am very happy with it.

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makmanalp
Why not use amazon mechanical turk?

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jamesshamenski
mech turk is best at yes/no questions.

