A virtual assistant for Amazon is someone that helps manage your store’s presence on the world’s biggest retail market online. In addition, an Amazon virtual assistant takes care of the redundant tasks that you have to perform once your venture grows into considerable size.
The idea behind the hiring of a virtual assistant for Amazon is to save yourself time. A lot of the activities that entrepreneurs perform require minimal knowledge about business management. Business owners who tend to outsource these tasks to VAs have more time to focus on other things in life and spend time with family.
What Does an Amazon VA (Virtual Assistant) Do?
Let us first understand how a virtual assistant for Amazon helps.
An Amazon virtual assistant is a person who remotely works part-time, full-time, or for a few hours every week to complete the tasks for your Amazon business. They complete the time-consuming tasks and do chores that entrepreneurs do not have the skillset to do.
Let us have a look at some of the examples of Amazon’s virtual assistant tasks.
1. Product Data Upload & Entry
An Amazon virtual assistant can take care of uploading products that would otherwise take a lot of time.
2. Processing of Orders
A VA also processes and manages FBM orders. FBM means fulfillment by the merchant, which involves the coordination of inventory management tasks with a warehouse.
3. Customer Support
Customer service is a timely consuming task and may take a lot of hours. Reliance on Amazon may not always result in the growth of your business according to its potential. A VA takes care of such tasks on your behalf.
- To create correspondence templates for the message system.
- To answer queries in a timely and polite manner. Ensure an accurate supply of information related to shipping procedures, products, and other customer queries.
- Respond to both positive and negative reviews.
- To match reviews with orders and accordingly take required steps.
- To try and minimum refunds on products sold.
4. Product Sourcing
Amazon virtual assistant services also help entrepreneurs source products, which takes a lot of time and effort. Product sourcing is a tedious task requiring a lot of time and effort to negotiate with the proper manufacturer or distributor for product quality and price.
AMZ product sourcing experts who have spent years doing these tasks can surely help you find new suppliers for sourcing your products while negotiating with vendors. One of the benefits of hiring an Amazon virtual assistant can be an increase in available suppliers’ options to have more product range at a competitive price.
5. Product Hunting
Amazon product research is a difficult task to perform. VAs can help you determine the right products to sell in the market and add to your existing range on your AMZ store. They base their suggestions on market data.
A VA also keeps a close eye on a product listing. They keep an on any adjustments required to a listing for a product that sees a drop in sales. Sometimes your VA may suggest lowering prices or find other ways to increase sales.
6. Creative Writing
VAs who specialize in creative writing can also help significantly increase sales of your product. They focus on optimizing a listing for the Amazon algorithm as well as the customers to increase visibility.
They know which keywords to use in the product description to make both the Amazon search algorithm and the customer happy.
Hire someone who has experience with email marketing. The VA will help you write catch newsletters to send to the customers, sharing your products with the customers.
7. Language Translation
Yes, you read that right, imagine if you can only speak the English language, you need someone who knows the country’s language in which you want to sell. For instance, if you’re going to sell in Japan, you will require someone who can perfectly read and write Japanese. A person who can translate product descriptions in the Japanese language and also communicating with customers using it.
8. Product Photography
The photos on an Amazon product listing need to meet specific criteria. Therefore, you need a person who can create perfect images, which goes well with Amazon. A virtual assistant who commands photo editing software and can create multiple pictures for each product listing.
9. Ad Campaigns for Amazon
You can also run ads on Amazon to reach more customers. A PPC expert Amazon virtual assistant knows how to create and optimize campaigns to deliver sales results. You can assign a VA to use Seller Central to create a campaign while removing negative terms, monitoring analytics to keep a tab on campaigns’ performance and make adjustments whenever required.
10. Inventory Fulfillment
Fulfillment of inventory is a continuous task for which you require an Amazon FBA virtual assistant. They know how to manage and track product shipping, track shipments, download barcodes, use shipping labels for units and ensure no item is missing.
What is the Right Time to Hire an Amazon Virtual Assistant?
When your Amazon store scales up to a level where you need a professional seller account, secondly, when you are using Amazon FBA, and you need someone who keeps up fulfillment tasks.
The best Amazon virtual assistant always asks you to hand them over a list of tasks you want to perform. You must break down each task that they need to perform every day of the week and the time they need to allocate to it. You save time by delegating tasks to VAs to achieve more practical business tasks like planning a new product launch.
Which Tasks Can You Outsource to Amazon Virtual Assistant?
Let us have a look at the criteria that you can use to outsource tasks.
All those tasks that:
- Take up a lot of your time
- Are repetitive
- Require skills that you do not have, and thus you cannot perform them on an efficient basis
When you make a list of tasks that you want to outsource to Amazon virtual assistants, you can find the right person for each job since it is impossible to find one person who can perform all the tasks of a virtual assistant for Amazon. Therefore, you may need to hire two, three, or even more Amazon virtual assistants in that case.
Where to Find Amazon Virtual Assistants?
Once you know that you need a VA, the next step is to find them for your Amazon store. But, first, let us explore more the proper process for onboarding an Amazon virtual assistant.
Places to find an Amazon virtual assistant:
1. Amazon Virtual Assistant Provider Services
Some agencies specialize in VAs. They have experienced Amazon virtual assistants who have multi-role exposure performing different AMZ store management tasks. You can hire an agency to get high-quality human resources. When you contact an Amazon VA hiring agency, it saves you a lot of time, and you can find the right person for each job you wish to outsource.
2. Upwork, Fiverr, and Other Freelancing Platforms
The second option is to browse through different freelancing platforms to find the right VAs. However, this approach requires a lot of patience, and you will have to go through many reviews to find the right person for a job.
3. Direct Hiring
Some job sites also allow Amazon VAs to create their profiles. Then, you can search through those profiles to hire a VA. Usually, when you use a search engine for direct hiring, you develop such profiles.
How to Interview an Amazon VA?
The process of interviewing a VA depends on your hiring source (discussed above).
When you want to hire a VA from an Amazon virtual assistant service, you can directly ask the right person for a particular job. In that case, you do not need to evaluate each VA by yourself. Instead, you need to give your job description to the agency and take care of the hiring process for you. Then, the agency helps you in finding the right person for the job.
A freelance platform lets you create a detailed job description with the tasks that you like the VA to perform. Always be more descriptive in making the job description and add any questions that you want to ask.
To qualify for a job interview, they must answer the questions in the job description. Entrepreneurs can use these platforms to find candidates, and job seekers can apply for jobs.
Once you shortlist a few VA candidates, the next step is to interview them. Ask them questions about their overall experience and skills. You may also need to discuss the types of tasks you want them to perform by having a video chat or through messages.
When you directly hire a VA, you follow the same process as you do via a freelance platform. You eliminate candidates that do not fulfill your hiring criteria and focus on the ones who closely match the job description. However, when hiring directly, you can efficiently conduct interviews to chat with them on any tool or video application. Make sure to have a reliable internet connection when you discuss the responsibilities with the Amazon virtual assistant.
Cost of an Amazon Virtual Assistant
Multiple factors contribute to the overall cost of hiring an Amazon virtual assistant. One of the critical variables is the tasks that you want to outsource. Also, compensation depends on the VA’s total experience and location.
The minimum rate of pay for a VA is $5 per hour, and for someone in the US, the rate is 15 per hour. AMZ virtual assistant’s compensation is the amount you pay for tasks like administration, fulfillment, and customer service tasks. The compensation increases with more skills and experience. For instance, if you want them to write product listings for you, do market research, do photography, and create advertisement campaigns.
How to manage an Amazon’s Virtual Assistant?
Once you have found the perfect VA for your AMZ store, the next task is onboarding them.
Training
Keep in mind the task that you want to outsource to your virtual assistant. To perform a job, you must train the VA. Ensure the training is comprehensive and covers all facets of the task.
You may consider adding a video tutorial for it.
Make sure that you provide the VA all the details about your business and products. Training is even more crucial when the virtual assistant has to complete customer service tasks.
Time Tracking
You can also use time tracking software like Time Doctor to track the time spent on tasks by the Amazon seller virtual assistants. This method helps you keep track of the productivity of your VAs. Identify areas that need improvement to further add to the efficiency of your virtual assistants.
Clarity is Key
Set the communications clear and ensure that your VAs follow the methods you approve. Always use a reliable means of communication. If there are too many tasks for the Amazon virtual assistant to manage, you can also consider using project management software. Prefer email over other forms of communication for official correspondence with frequent video calls to remain in touch.
Compensation of your Amazon Virtual Assistant
When you are an Amazon virtual assistant agency or use a freelance platform, the payment process is a lot simpler. You can pay via a credit card, and there is no need for any exchange fees to pay to the virtual assistants. However, the VAs have to work for you till the task is complete, and the platform or agency will not release the payment unless you are satisfied with the tasks.
When you hire an AMZ virtual assistant directly, you have to discuss the payment options. If you both reside in the US, payment is no issue, and you can make the payment via bank transfer. However, if the VA lives in some other country, you can consider using PayPal or Western Union options. Many new services for payment are there to help you instantly make the payment with minimum delay and at a nominal fee.
Holidays
If you are only hiring a VA part-time, there is no need to discuss weekly holidays. However, if you want the VA to work full-time or daily part-time, you will have to set the working hours.
Also, consider deciding the annual vacations your virtual assistant has to take for several days each year and any national holidays in their country. If the VA resides in a different country, you need to be aware of the gazette holidays.
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