How Filipino Virtual Assistants Fill In Your Automation Gaps


The great thing about using tools like Oberlo, SalesForce and Infusionsoft is that they can automate a lot of what’s going on in your business. It’s amazing how much you can do now with these tools at your side.

But these tools can’t do everything and that’s exactly what Bodie discovered with his growing e-commerce business. It was easy to do everything yourself when only had a few sales per week. But when you start shipping products and answering customer queries daily, you need the extra help.

And the thing with Bodie is he wasn’t content with just growing his business. He wanted to expand and wanted to build more business. And in order to do that, he needed more time. He needed virtual assistants do to most of the work for him so he can focus on growing his business.

In this interview, Bodie shares:

  • His Onlinejobs.ph hiring system to improve your chances in finding the right person
  • Why outsourcing to the Philippines is a win-win solution for everyone involved
  • How he transformed his Filipino VAs from one-trick ponies to rockstars who can do it all.

The best thing about outsourcing is it gives you the freedom to do what you want. Whether it’s starting a business in an expensive city or expanding your brand, Filipino virtual assistants can provide you the help you need at a fraction of the cost.

Give yourself that freedom today. Sign up for an employer account and find out how your Filipino virtual assistants can make amazing changes to your business.

You can also read the full video transcript below or subscribe to his channel, That Entrepreneur Lifestyle.

What’s up guys! Bodie Davison back with another video for you. So, today’s video we’re going to talk about hiring a virtual assistant, and also where you can do that.

So OnlineJobs.ph, you guys that have been around my channel for quite a while know that I’ve used this website a fair bit and talked about it in quite a few videos. And also if you go back just a couple of months ago, I have Carlos…, had Carlos working for me making all my thumbnails for my YouTube channel who’s also from the Philippines.

So I’ve definitely used Filipino workers and OnlineJobs.ph over the years. And one of the main reasons is like why would you want a virtual assistant you might be thinking. But one of the main reasons is let’s say for Shopify drop shipping because that’s how I came about it after work, after a few years of doing it.

So when you start making a lot of sales with Shopify and dropshipping specifically, you’re fulfilling a lot of orders. Now when you start out that’s you know…, you don’t care you’re excited you just doing it all the time. Once you start making like 10 to 20 sales a day that starts to become quite a bit of effort to go through it.

Even though it’s semi-automated you still have to go through and fill out quite a few things and like click a few buttons it doesn’t seem like much. But if you start dealing with emails…, emails from customers, so inquiries or complaints
or whatever and then you start dealing with fulfilling orders.

Like I’m saying, once you start getting successful with it that’s going to start taking up a lot of your time and then it leaves no time for you to do anything else.

So in the world of growing a business online or you know in real life, you’re gonna need spare time to continue to expand your business.

Like, for me to keep doing my YouTube channel, for me to keep doing affiliate marketing, Amazon FBA, all the other things that I’ve been doing, eBay drop shipping. For me to do that and continue to grow as a brand myself you need people to help you.

So that’s where virtual assistants come in, straight away you’re going to be thinking like what do you pay a virtual assistant? How do you get one? Well, these are the questions that I’m going to answer for you right now.

So, there’s a lot of different ways to use OnlineJobs.ph.

One of the main ones straight off the bat you’re gonna have to sign up. So sign up for an account. I’ll leave a link below for that, so you can sign up.

And then, there’s a few ways to do it but let’s say we go search resumes because this is one way to do it. So you can either post a job or you can search resumes.

So, if we search resumes here and we go dropshipping and we’re just going to search it up. And what it’s going to do…, it’s going to show you a lot of people that have experience in these things.

Now one of the crazy things about this website is a lot of people will look at this and then they’ll feel a bit uneasy about hiring someone.

The thing is you’ll find people that may…, that are like way more skilled than you are on here.

So there’s a lot of awesome talent and you don’t have to pay them that much, this is the whole point of having your virtual assistants.

So when you look at the exchange rate, what they’re earning in their home country in the Philippines it doesn’t cost you that much money to pay them. So that’s the whole point, you’re not ripping them off or anything they want to work for this amount because it’s a good income for them.

And for you, it’s cheap help…, so yeah it’s a win-win situation.

So what it’s going to show you is how much they actually go for etc and then this is the main thing that you’re going to be interested in. You’re going to see what they’ve done and what they have experience with.

But before you go down there one of the things that I like to do is change the ID proof to greater than 70.

So what that is, is proof that it’s actually them so you know you’re not going to go through looking at a heap of these job seekers that they’re probably fake accounts and they just want to…, it’s a money sort of thing and they’re not going to turn out to be the person you are.

There are lots of ways to check for that which I’ll show you in this video.

But you want to just select this straight off the bat, so now our search results and then we’ll go again. So just let it load up here, all right so this lady’s still there.

Let’s just go down for a look, skill summary…, you can view that profile obviously and check out what they’re all about.

So two to three dollar an hour and the pretty much the going rate that you’re going to pay for a good worker is going to be the two to three dollars an hour in USD.

So I’m in Australia so that works out to be a bit different but a lot of you guys are from America, so two to three dollars USD an hour.

You can just see what they’ve done. You can see what their education is. What sort of stuff they
have on offer.

And then you can search up people this way as well.

So Photoshop, there’s going to be lots and lots of things that are going to help you out. So experience with Shopify here. Two years in email support.

So straight away like things like that or what pop out to me because they’re the things that take a lot of my time is like emails, replying to customer emails. And also like I was saying using someone to fulfill orders on Shopify.

Now the thing with that is as well to expand on that, you start them out on something and see how they go like let’s say you go through a whole process which I’ll tell you in this video.

But let’s say you end up hiring them and then you just go through and just give them tasks and then see how they go. And as they’ve worked for you for a bit, you would obviously give them more and more tasks. And to tell you the truth you probably end up paying them more over time because they’ll become very…, very valuable to you and you want to hang on to them.

So this is how I’ve always done it and I have friends that have always done it.

You start them off pretty basic and then start to give them more and more and then see how they go with that. And if you know if they’re smashing it and they’re doing really well, you’re going to end up paying them a little bit more. And you’re going to end up making sure they’re happy and really looking after them like you would with any employee.

So this is one way to do it.

Like I was saying you’re gonna see all that skill summary, all that sort of stuff. You can use the search function like I did and just put in different things. Like maybe you put in a burr low because I know that I want the person to be able to use a burr low.

I’m not sure if that’ll pop up it should do here.

So three years in online workshop affair…, blah blah blah blah blah. So yeah, this is the sort of person that I’m looking for product research….

Sorry that’s the other huge thing that I’ve use Virtual Assistants for is teaching them how I do a product research.

Because product research, let’s face it takes ages and you always want to be looking for new products on Shopify. And once like this person’s already trained in it but probably not the way I like to search for things. Once you teach them to look for products that and do it the way that you do it, show them how you do it which you guys have obviously seen how I do it throughout my channel.

Then that’s an awesome thing to outsource to someone because that’s something that takes heaps of time and I could be focusing on something else.

So if you’ve got a virtual assistant that you’re paying like two to three dollars an hour. They’re finding winning products for you and they’re fulfilling orders and they’re replying to emails on your business. You can almost semi-automate your whole business and be focusing on other things.

So you’re making money but you’re also focusing on other ways to make money. It’s a win-win and this is the whole point in having someone.

Having a virtual assistant that can help you.

So…, and like I said that’s your average sort of rate like the one to three dollars or two to four dollars you’ll see it over and over again. Shop by customer support like I was talking about. Shopify VA, this person knows about dropper fired and this is a great way to be able to do it and find people that will help you.

So let’s go through some steps of how else you can do it.

Another way is to post a job. So if we just go home here, I could have click post a job up there but in other ways to click post a job.

Now in your job title, this is obviously what they’re going to see and then be applying for it.

So you could put like Shopify…, well let’s just do product research because I’ll still think about that. So you could do Shopify product research and write assistant or whatever.

Then in the Job Description, you’re just going to describe what you want them to do.

Wage/salary, obviously you can make that up based off what you want to pay them.

So like I’ll say in the two to three dollar range is where I would be at an hour.

Any type of employment, so you probably put part-time or freelance, it depends.

And then again that ID proof comes up, that just in my opinion. Why not make sure that they’re legit person and not someone that’s going to screw you around. Because if we’re talking about not wasting time like you know that’s why you hired someone you don’t waste your time interviewing people or you know going back and forth with people that are just going to waste your time either.

So then we’re going to go down, what skills are required and this is where obviously you would just select all the sorts of things that you need from the person.

So customer service and admin support jumps out obviously. Marketing and sales, there’s so many things like affiliate marketing obviously is a good one as well.

So there’s so many things, look YouTube marketing. They all pop up guys. I’ll let you go through that by yourself.

Then you have an email.

And then you would post your job.

So once you’ve posted your job, then you’re going to enter interview them through Skype.

So a lot of people would have been wondering how do you do the interview.

Interview them through Skype and here’s why.

You want to be able to check that they are the person that they say that they are. So when you are face to face with someone even if it’s through the internet you know but you can see their reactions to how you talk to them etc.,. You get a good feel of what that person is like.

By the way, sorry I didn’t mention this. All of them have excellent English and that’s something that’s obviously a big one as well. Because you want to be able to communicate and make sure that there’s no confusion on what you’re asking for when you’re paying someone to work for you.

So back to what I was saying though, when you interview someone through Skype and a video. You’re going to be able to get a good read on what sort of person that is.

That’s one of my superpowers. My girlfriend finds it annoying but I can meet someone and within five seconds I know what sort of person they are.

Called me judgmental but honestly I think it’s a superpower that saves me from wasting time on people that are either negative or you know just someone that puts out a bad vibe. So yeah that’s just me.

Then what I will do is the next step. Let’s say we’ve went through some interviews. What I would do is give them a sample project to do.

Now that could be something very basic but maybe it’s like you want them to write a blog post or something and you give them very specific tasks that you want them to do.

Why would you do that?

Because one, it’s going to weed out people that are just going to waste your time.

And two, because obviously they wouldn’t put in the effort if they weren’t that keen.

And three, you’re going to get an idea on whether they can follow instruction and give you exactly what you want out of a task. So that’s a big one as well.

Now next, let’s say you hire them.

So you just let them know that you’ve hire them.

Where do you go from there? How do you pay them? Etc.

Well, how you pay them is through PayPal. That’s how I’ve always paid them.

There’s a few different ways you can do it. EasyPay…, etc but PayPal is always the best way to go and let’s face it.

PayPal is so safe like if you end up having any problems with them or they rip you off, which they won’t when you go through this whole process obviously.

An OnlineJobs.ph is the most legit website in the world for hiring Filipino workers and VA’s.

You just look it up on the internet, it’s got nothing but good reviews etc. Besides people that didn’t know what they done when that hiring someone.

So you know you can reverse payments…, etc on PayPal. If anything ever happens so no problem there.

So, I guess that pretty much sums up what I was getting out of just looking through what I wrote rip down here.

You posted your search lots of the things that are hire someone for like you could your business might be very different to mine. And you know you might need them to do like I say blog post writing for an affiliate marketing website.

Who knows what you want to use them for or maybe it’s just some sort of customer support that’s different to Shopify.

I know a lot of people hire, this is a huge one and I’m not at that scale with eBay drop shipping but fulfilling
orders on eBay when you’re drop shipping on there.

Obviously you have to sell a lot of orders because the profit margins are usually quite small.

So that’s where you would have a virtual assistant help you out.

But I think this is going to summed up everything I want to say about this and I think this will give you guys a very good idea on how you can now go out and hire your own virtual assistant.

I hope you enjoyed the video.

If you have any questions, drop a comment down below.

I’ll be sure to answer them for you because I have plenty of experience in this one.

If you are looking for your own virtual assistant, obviously go and check out OnlineJobs.ph and I’ll leave the link down below.

If you’re new here, hit that like and hit that subscribe.

And I’ll see you guys in the next video.


Julia Sta RomanaAbout Julia Jasmine M. Sta Romana

Julia has been working for OnlineJobs.ph since 2012, first as a writer and now as its social media manager and content development specialist. She also founded the Davao Virtual Assistants Association, the biggest VA association in Davao City.

She’s a full-time wife and mom and volunteers her time as an internet rights advocate.

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