How to Safely Hire VAs to Monitor your Amazon Account

The best way to safely hire VAs is to follow a solid hiring plan that’s been tested for reliability. At FreeeUp, we have just such a plan that the founders developed and tweaked from years of eCommerce business experience. When you’re hiring someone to monitor an Amazon account, you’ll need some specifics, which we’ll discuss below.

Here are the questions you’ll need to answer at every step to get the information you need to safely hire VAs every time.

What Areas Do You Need to Safely Hire VAs to Cover?

The very first step is to figure out exactly what areas in your Amazon business you need help with. You can’t just start passing off tasks, however. You need to sit down and really think about what’s going to give you the best value. This begins with a comparison of your value versus that of VAs doing the same tasks.

Consider these three task types:

1.  Time-Consuming Tasks

You wouldn’t hire a VA to create expansion plans or decide that you’re going to launch a podcast. VAs aren’t executives, they’re assistants – that’s what the “A” stands for. You brainstorm and they help you put your plans in motion. Your time as the business owner, therefore, is precious.

The problem that most business owners face is that there are so many other time-consuming tasks involved in running an Amazon business. And you can very easily get stuck doing these daily tasks. If you’re there, then you aren’t going to be able to think about the bigger picture. That’s a big danger to business success.

You can safely hire VAs by identifying what’s been sucking up all your time. Passing these tasks off stops them from dragging you and your business down. VAs can knock those tasks off the list to free up your valuable time, and you won’t have to spend a lot to make that happen.

These time-consuming tasks include:

• research and supplier contact for product sourcing
• inventory monitoring and purchasing from suppliers
• customer service for inquiries, complaints and returns

2.  Tasks You Hate

The most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that passion is a huge part of their business success. If you’re doing what you hate, it’s logical to conclude that you’re not going to be very successful. The same is true for everyone.

To safely hire VAs to monitor business operations, there are two specifics you need to get in sync. First, you need to identify other tasks that you don’t particularly like doing. Second, you need to find VAs who enjoy doing those tasks. This gives you a win-win because you can pass off the tasks that make you cringe to people who will complete them consistently and smile the whole way through.

These hated tasks might be:

• monitoring and responding to feedback and having poor, irrelevant feedback removed
• downloading reports to check on FBM tracking and performance stats
• creating and monitoring split tests and tweaking listing content and pricing to match

3.  Tasks You’re Not Good At

There will always be at least a few Amazon-specific tasks that you can’t do very well. You’ve likely made a decent effort to learn about them so that you can at least manage to keep things going. You aren’t doing yourself or your business any favors, however, if they aren’t getting done at the highest possible level.

You may recognize a task as glaringly vital like product pictures that meet Amazon standards. Or, the task may be so simple that you don’t really think about it, like backend keywords; yet, these are super important to visibility and eventually, sales. Whichever it is, if you can’t do it well, you should find someone who can.

Safely hiring VAs for these tasks means finding people who can do each of these tasks better than you can. It makes a lot more sense to pay someone less than your time is worth to do the tasks at a higher level than you could.

Examples of these tasks you may not be an expert at include:

• researching keywords and optimizing listing copy
• setting up, monitoring and tweaking Sponsored Ads campaigns
• creating landing page designs for multi-channel, off-Amazon marketing and advertising

How Do You Safely Hire VAs for Each Task?

As hinted at above, the second step to safely hire VAs is to identify the best person to take on each task under the three types described. For this, you need to write out detailed descriptions of each task and identify the skills and characteristics that the best fit needs to have.

Every task that needs to get done in your Amazon business contributes to the success of your store. You should therefore give each one adequate attention. Otherwise, you’ll end up rushing and probably making a bad hire that will cost you time, money and sanity.

1.  Time-Consuming Tasks

These types of tasks take up so much time because they are mostly repetitive tasks. They are also likely tasks that need to get done on a regular basis; sometimes daily. This means that you’ll need someone who has a good number of hours to spend on them and doesn’t mind doing the same thing over and over again. This person also needs to be consistent to make sure that the tasks get done and things don’t pile up and cause a jam in operations.

List out any other properties of these types of tasks and identify the skills and characteristics that the best person for them must have.

2.  Tasks You Hate

These tasks can be anything, really, depending on what your personal preferences are. For the sake of giving an example, let’s say you hate doing split tests. With all the apps available today, A/B testing is really very easy. But you don’t like it, so it’s going to take up more time and some of your energy, too.

Split testing involves creating variations of different aspects of a product listing. This means the best fit must be analytical and organized to be able to keep all the many possible combinations of two, three and up to five or six variables in order. They must be able to test each combination at the same level to make sure that the test results are accurate, and also present the results neatly so the winner can be clearly identified.

As above, continue your list of task properties for these types of tasks and identify what skills and characteristics the best person for them must have.

3.  Tasks You’re Not Good At

As above, what these tasks are depends entirely on your particular skills and talents. In some cases, this would be doing financials. Whether you want an accountant, a bookkeeper or just someone to fill out spreadsheets with your cost of goods, to safely hire VAs for financials, they must all be good at numbers, be trustworthy, and prize accuracy above all else.

Once again, list out all the other properties you can think of for these tasks and identify what skills and characteristics you need the ideal VA to have.

Note:

This can get extremely overwhelming really fast. Choose only up to three tasks at a time to pass off so that you are sure to have enough time to focus on finding the best person for each task.

Where’s the Safest Place to Find the Best VAs to Hire?

Safely hiring VAs has a lot to do with where you source them. You may not believe this to be true if you’ve experienced hiring on open platforms like Upwork and Freelancer. I would agree in these cases because anyone can create an account and start offering services on those platforms. There’s no screening or testing required to work through them.

There are other freelance marketplaces, however, where not just anyone can claim to have certain skills and reach out to clients for work.

FreeUp and TopTal are two of these marketplaces. This is important because it offers you valuable benefits such as:

• Pre-Vetted Freelance VAs – You don’t have to weed out the scammers and unqualified applicants who just click away hoping to get a hit every once in a while. Freelancers aren’t allowed to look for work on these platforms until they have been tested.
• Verified Skill Sets – You can quickly and safely hire VAs because they are already categorized based on their skill levels, which often correlates to their levels of experience as well.

On FreeeUp, you also get these additional benefits:

• Fast Hire Experience – You don’t have to wade through dozens of applications and conduct numerous interviews to get your shortlist. You get introduced to the best fit upfront and can request for a few more if that suits you.
• Free Premium Support – FreeUp has assistants who monitor inquiries nearly around the clock to give you top-level hiring support at no additional cost. They are available on email, Skype and through the chat app in your client account.
• Tested Reliability – FreeUp accepts, retains and recommends only those freelancers who demonstrate valuable soft skills. So, you know they will be personable and professional with a solid work ethic. You can depend on them to conduct themselves with honor and meet deadlines.

The skills, attitude and experience of any hire is vital. But don’t forget the qualifications of the marketplace itself. You can’t hope to safely hire VAs if you’re trying to source Amazon-specific talent from a platform that doesn’t specialize in identifying who would be a good VA for Amazon tasks, or even eCommerce tasks in general.

When you’re searching for websites to hire freelancers online, always check to see what areas they target. You’re looking to safely hire VAs to monitor your Amazon account, so you want that platform to have experience sourcing VAs who have aptitude for tasks. (Creating and managing EBC pages, optimizing Amazon listings, maintaining optimum Amazon inventory levels, running Sponsored Products campaigns, etc.).

How Do You Know You Have the Right Fit?

If you’ve identified the right tasks to pass off and who you need to pass them off to, then the battle to safely hire VAs is already won. If you’ve chosen the right platform for your needs, then you’re on the last legs of your hiring journey. Most of your work is done and the last steps should be pain-free. Here are those last few things to get done before you actually start hiring.

1.  Interview

The truth is, you don’t have to conduct interviews at all if you don’t want to (no matter where you make a hire). It’s wise, though, to talk to any candidate at least once, however briefly, so you can spot red flags. You’re looking for any signs that tell you that this candidate is not going to be the best fit for you and the tasks they will be taking on. You should never settle for someone who isn’t the A-player that your business deserves.

Ideally, you should meet candidates face to face. You can still achieve this to a good degree, even though you’re hiring remote, by doing a video call. If that doesn’t work for you, you can at least have a good chat. You will be able to monitor response times and see if they’re really paying attention although you can’t actually see their facial expressions or check their body language.

Start the interview off by introducing yourself and your business to set the tone. Be friendly yet focused so you can get off on the right foot. You want the VA to feel comfortable, so they won’t be too guarded with their responses, but you also don’t want to encourage them to spend half an hour telling you the story of their lives.

Use your time wisely by listening intently to everything that the VA says all the way from your greetings to your parting words. Prepare specific questions to ask each candidate beforehand. You have to know what you want to confirm about them before you start talking, otherwise, you will be distracted and likely forget the important parts.

To safely hire VAs, you must be sure that you are perfectly happy with every aspect of the way they work, from their skills and experience to their communication practices and how much they enjoy the task. The interview is your chance to confirm these things.

2.  Set Expectations

Once you find the best fit for the tasks that you want to get off your plate, you can set expectations and make the hire. It’s best to give candidates a clear idea of what you expect before you hire them so that you are sure that you are both on the same page before actual work begins.

Setting expectations is a very important part of the hiring process. Start by sharing the basics about your business. Talk about your goals so the VAs understand where you’re coming from and so you can also gauge their responses to these goals. You want them to ideally share these goals so that they will work with you to reach them.

Then you can get into detail about what you need, and get confirmation from each candidate that they can meet these requirements. Even a candidate with awesome skills and years of experience will not be the best fit if they can’t give you the turnaround you need or don’t know how to set up reports the way you like them, for instance.

You can use this expectations template to write out all your requirements, or just describe what you need in whatever format suits you. The point is to be able to communicate very clearly to each VA the standards that they need to meet. Make sure they understand these expectations and agree to them before you make the hire.

Some examples of important expectations to communicate are:

• Working times – What days of the week and times of the day do you need the VA to work? Be clear about what time zone you mean, too, if you are hiring outside of your local area, such as the Philippines, which is 12 hours ahead of US Eastern time.
• Deadlines – When do you need certain assignments completed?
• Output – How much of each task do you expect to be completed at the end of each day or week?
• Communication – How often do you want to hear work reports from the VA? How often do you want to have check-in meetings for feedback and troubleshooting?

3.  Onboard

Immediately after making a hire, set a time to meet for onboarding. This is so that you and the VA can set a good foundation for the tasks ahead.

You run an Amazon business, and the VA you’ve hired knows what they’re doing. But your business will also have unique aspects to it. Moreover you are unique and will have unique preferences. Onboarding is all about discussing your unique preferences as they relate to the tasks and any unique aspects of the tasks themselves.

Examples of these include:

• Not using certain keywords because you find them offensive.
• Making sure that messages are checked every 12 hours even though Amazon requires responses only within 24 hours.
• Arranging product photos a certain way because you are telling a story with them and know that your listings sell better that way.

Safely Hire VAs to Monitor Your Amazon Account

So there you have it – the steps to safely hire VAs for your Amazon store:  identify the tasks, the best people for them, and the best online platforms to hire from, then confirm that you have the right fit, set expectations, onboard them and get to work.

If you give proper attention to these steps, you can safely hire VAs to monitor your Amazon account for you. They will have the skills and experience they need to accomplish tasks and the attitude to do them conscientiously. There’s very little chance that you will make a bad hire if you carefully prepare and don’t rush through any of these steps.

If you want more free advice, here’s FreeUp’s ebook of 36 Quick Tips for Hiring and Managing Remote Talent. It’s a handy reference that can help you avoid some serious headaches!