I don’t know about you, but the idea of an assistant to help me keep my projects on track or, moreover, get them done, seems rather attractive these days. Well, it turns out that those virtual assistants are out there, and they are available 24 hours a day!  Yep!

According to a recent article in the New York Times, these services are for people who want help managing their lives, but don’t need a full-time assistant.  Does this sound like you?  Well, read on to find out what’s out there. And whether you can fit this type of help into your budget.  The article suggests a price range of $81 for an app, to as low as  $20 an hour.  So, what do the various services do?

The first website I visited is Fin – https://www.fin.com/,
Some of the claims are as follows: email; text; schedule; research.  24 hour service, 7 days a week. They are more flexible, highly educated, and you only pay for what you use.  That’s pretty impressive.  According to the article I read about this service, the experience with the company was a little confusing: the charges they accrued; how those charges were accrued; and the service was not what was expected. Although they eventually worked it all out.  My suggestion is to be perfectly clear what services you are asking for, and make sure to use those services one request at a time, instead of mixing them.  Use this link to review how the pricing works – https://www.fin.com/pricing

Upwork – Is a Personal Virtual Assistant service – https://www.upwork.com/
The site has Excel experts, writers, administrative support, and virtual assistants.  When you click on a link for that specific service, the assistants have their hourly rates posted.  Some assistants have a picture of themselves posted as well.  I found the website easy to negotiate when looking for what your service needs are.  You can review how it works at this link: https://www.upwork.com/i/how-it-works/client/#work

Fiverr – https://www.fiverr.com/ Was listed in the New York Times article.  I have used this service to create a logo for my website.  I was very pleased with the service at the time; its efficiency and ease of working with the artists.  They prepared logos and submitted them to me, and I chose from those samples.  Costs were not expensive.  They have graphic designers, writers, programmers, music and audio services.

You can read more about these and other services at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/style/siri-alexa-personal-assistants.html