A lot of people have been asking about outsourcing to the Philippines or hiring Filipino virtual assistants. Perhaps this growing interest was spurred by various internet marketers talking about how you can hire Filipinos for $2-$3 an hour.
Well, it looks like it’s looking more along the $400~$600/month range. Anyway, I’ll post here what I’ve found online…
In Get Paid by the Hour in oDesk, Gem Baltazar (TheLadyProgrammer.com) writes about the oDesk freelance site. Some Filipino VAs visit that site, so you may be able to touch base with some of them.
Mike Sasuman (@maikeru76) told me via Twitter about Jefferson Faudan (@jeffersonfaudan), which led me to the DvoVirtualTech blog.
It looks like they have a pool of people you can choose from:
Programmer – $1,400
Graphic Designer – $1,400
Web Developer – $1,400
Virtual Assistant – $1,200
Link Builder – $1,000
Article Writer – $1,000
Those look like monthly rates, and the outsourcing provider normally handles the screening of the freelancers. If you were to hire an article writer directly, for example, you’ll probably pay that person around $400 a month.
Assuming an 8-hour day, 22 days a month, that $400 comes out to $2.27 per hour. If your writer produces one article an hour, that’s 8 300-word articles per hour. I wonder, though, how many people are motivated enough to produce 8 articles each day, Monday to Friday, without going bonkers.
Just looking at the list above, however, I wonder: What exactly does a Virtual Assistant do? Handle email, customer support, and administrative matters, perhaps?
The other names which come up when it comes to outsourcing to the Philippines are Oliver Turner, Joel Christopher, and the Agents of Value. I’ll update this post once I get more info…
