As an Amazon FBA seller, you have a lot on your plate. You are likely a little burned out between sourcing winning products, creating listings, managing orders, keeping warehouses stocked, and dealing with customer returns. I understand how you feel because I am a seven-figure Amazon FBA seller and brought in 1.3 million dollars in sales my first year. I have been right where you are: overworked, overwhelmed, and bogged down with tedious tasks that can easily be outsourced. I pulled myself out of that chaos by hiring an Amazon FBA Virtual Assistant (VA), and you can too. This article will discuss what VAs are, what tasks they can help with, where to find them, and when the right time to hire a VA is.
What Is An Amazon FBA Virtual Assistant?
A VA is essentially an online secretary, taking care of busy work that Amazon sellers don’t have time to do. VAs are independent contractors that work from home, handling any administrative, business development, social media, marketing, or other tasks you may need help with. Because they are contractors, you don’t have to worry about employment tax, payroll fees, health insurance, or other perks that full-fledged employees would receive. This makes it possible for small businesses to scale and grow without spending enormous amounts of money hiring permanent staff members.
On a personal note, I owe much of my success to the support I have received from VAs; without their help, it would be impossible for me to manage my growing businesses.
What Tasks Can VAs do?
Virtual assistants can handle a wide variety of tasks; however, customer service, inventory management, and opening Amazon cases are the most common areas of concern for Amazon sellers. VAs can respond to customer complaints, return requests, and general questions, so you don’t have to spend your day arguing with a shopper. Additionally, a VA can keep track of your inventory in an excel sheet and alert you about sales and when you are getting low on items. Lastly, opening cases through Seller Central can be a huge time suck, and a VA can take care of the entire process for you, from start to finish.
Advanced VAs
An advanced Amazon FBA Virtual Assistant can handle more complicated tasks, like pay-per-click advertising (PPC), talking to suppliers, product research, I999/product tracking, and more.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
To properly train VAs, I suggest implementing a standard operating procedure (SOP) document for each task you outsource. For example, if you are outsourcing customer service, put together a detailed document outlining every step of returns or complaints. Make it as detailed as possible so that your assistants can refer to it as they are working.
To streamline the SOP process further, I like to make a video of myself doing the task, send it to the VA, and have them write out each step in a Word or Google document. This way, I know that they understand the task, and I have an SOP document ready to go for all of my future VAs.
Where To Find Amazon FBA Virtual Assistants
There are a few online platforms that you can use to find and hire VAs. Here are the most common websites:
I personally use Upwork to hire contractors. You can easily filter and search by country, price point, and more to find the right VA for you. I usually hire VAs from the Philippines because they are the most cost-effective.
A few other popular sites are www.Freelancer.com and www.Onlinejobs.ph.
Pro tip: If you search for contractors with titles like “Amazon FBA Product Researcher,” you will get contractors that are more expensive or use cookie-cutter methods because they have been doing that specific task for a long time. Instead of going this route, I like to look for new-ish contractors to the Amazon FBA world, i.e., have some essential data entry experience but are relatively fresh to Amazon work in general. $4-8 dollars per hour is my ideal pay range for contractors on Upwork.
When Is The Right Time To Hire A VA?
Now that you know what an Amazon FBA Virtual Assistant is, what tasks they can do, and where to find them, you are probably wondering when you should hire one. The short answer here is that you should hire a VA when you feel overwhelmed with tedious tasks preventing you from scaling your Amazon business.
Every morning I write out my “To-do” list for the day. When I find that my list is filled with brainless work, I delegate them to a VA. Any task that I don’t need to do personally or isn’t going to help me grow gets sent off to my assistants. For example, I can’t outsource the filming of my Youtube videos, but I can outsource customer service.
It’s also crucial that you have the cash flow to hire VAs. US-based VAs charge $20-30+ per hour, so crunch the numbers and make sure you can remain profitable with VA fees.
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To be a successful Amazon FBA seller, there are a lot of tasks that must be handled. As your business grows, you may want to consider hiring a virtual assistant to take care of the tasks that you don’t have time for anymore, like customer service, inventory management, opening Amazon cases, and more. VAs can handle the busy work for you and are relatively cheap if you search for them in the right places. I hope this article helped you understand the benefits VAs provide and gives you clarity about where to find them.
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