#611 – How To Hire Amazon VA’s

Are you feeling overwhelmed with the growing demands of your e-commerce business? Join us as we chat with Gilad Freimann, Founder and CEO of VAA Philippines, an expert in training and hiring virtual assistants (VAs) from the Philippines for Amazon sellers. Discover the transformative benefits of hiring remote employees to handle tasks like customer service, Amazon PPC management, and inventory handling. By outsourcing these routine tasks, you can free up valuable time and energy to focus on strategic business growth. Learn when it’s the right time to consider bringing on a VA to ensure you don’t miss out on growth opportunities and can maintain flexibility in your business operations.

Explore effective hiring strategies for virtual assistants, especially when you’re unsure about transitioning from traditional in-person roles to remote positions. We’ll share insights into what makes a successful long-term hire, emphasizing the importance of focusing on candidates’ personalities and commitment rather than just their resumes. Understand the challenges that Amazon sellers face as their businesses expand, such as time constraints and the need for outsourcing. Listen in as we highlight the growing trend of employing social media VAs to enhance online presence and the increasing need for specialized roles in the dynamic world of e-commerce.

Finally, we take a closer look at the unique advantages of hiring Filipino VAs, shedding light on cultural and business nuances that can lead to successful integration into your business. Gilad shares essential tips on bridging cultural gaps, such as understanding local customs like the 13th salary bonus, to foster a positive working relationship. We also discuss the importance of hiring specialists for specific tasks, ensuring each role is filled by someone with the right skills and character. This approach not only boosts productivity but also aligns with the strengths and expertise of the VAs, leading to more successful outcomes for your business.

In episode 611 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Gilad discuss:

• 00:00 – Hiring Amazon Virtual Assistants for Business Scaling
• 02:04 – When Should Amazon Sellers Outsource?
• 06:20 – Misconceptions About Virtual Assistants
• 07:31 – Effective Hiring Strategies for Remote Workers
• 08:21 – Finding Quality Candidates for Offshore Jobs
• 11:18 – Hiring Amazon PPC VAs and Social Media
• 15:16 – The Impact of AI on Jobs 
• 16:24 – Virtual Assistants in E-Commerce
• 20:53 – TikTok Influencer Marketing Success
• 24:12 – Hiring Filipino Virtual Assistants
• 27:42 – Outsourcing Specialists vs. One Generalist
• 33:00 – New Helium 10 Tool Suggestions

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Do you need help scaling your business? Maybe you’re considering hiring a VA. Well, today we’re going to talk to somebody who has trained and has hired perhaps more Amazon VAs than anyone else in the world, and he’s going to talk about everything you need to know before hiring your first remote employee. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies or serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We are going to the other side of the world it’s in the middle of the night right now in Thailand for our next guest. It’s Gilad coming back to us. Gilad, welcome back to the show.

Gilad:

Thank you very much for having me, Bradley. Good to see you.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, for those who want to get a little bit more backstory, he has been on the show before and I have in my notes here. That was episode 366. We just recently connected in. Where were we at? Were we in Korea?

Gilad:

Yeah, yeah, I was in Seoul in Korea.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, we’re in Korea. Like, hey, we gotta get you back on the show and see what’s going on. You’re one of the experts in virtual assistants and how you know for Amazon sellers, and especially, I think most, if not all, of yours. You know that your company come from the Philippines, so you know, I’m Filipino. I’m wearing my Philippines shirt and hat today in your, in your honor.

Gilad:

Let’s just talk about it in Korea.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes, yes, always representing. I had my Barong Tagalog shirt. I wore in when I was on stage in Korea and that was actually one of the trivia questions. Only like one person got it right. I think it was hey, where I knew you knew the answer, but so that’s why I didn’t ask you the trivia question. But I asked, wanted to see if anybody could recognize the Barong Tagalog there. That’s actually my new go-to outfit for presenting on stage. So whenever I go to conferences, I’m going to be trying to wear Barong Tagalog fancy shirt there. But anyways we’re not here to talk about my Filipino fashion sense. Let’s talk about the world of Amazon sellers, and I think this is a topic that might not concern sellers. Right off the bat, like if you’re just starting on Amazon, you’re in your first month of selling, first couple of months. You probably the last thing you have on your mind, necessarily is outsourcing, but a problem I think that some sellers have is they don’t know when they need it and they get to a certain point and they’re still wanting to control things themselves, but really they need help. So at what point is the average do you think where? Is it when somebody hits a certain revenue? What is it when you think that somebody should start thinking, hey, I might need to start getting some help with my business.

Gilad:

Well, I think first of all if you’re already asking this question, then the answer is yes, because you’re already feeling that you’re stuck, right? So it could come from various ways. It could come from the fact that you’re in the beginning when you started selling. Then you had like one or two messages you know customer service messages a day, and then suddenly it became like 10 or more. It could be that your inventory has become from you know one ASIN to many, and then suddenly you have a lot of things to take care of and you’re overwhelmed and then you feel that you just don’t have the time to do everything. That’s one thing. The problem with that is that you’re already missing out of a lot of opportunities to continue your growth. And I would see this that you have to, you know, look at a little bit in the future and already predict when it’s when this stage is going to happen, and not get all the way to like I don’t have anything, you have any time to do anything anymore. We work a lot with very big sellers, and we see that they see this as an investment, like any other investment in their business. They know that they have to prepare a certain amount of stocks, inventory for their brand. They don’t produce their products just when people buy them. They do a forecast for the future. And same thing is that they invest in advertising and everything. So same thing they actually invest in manpower. They know that all of these repeating tasks somebody to do their PPC, somebody to handle their inventory, their customer service, their listing creation, social media and so on. So, they prepare that in advance, so they will always have this free time for themselves to look already at the next step of their business. And that’s the first thing that goes away. When you’re doing everything yourself, you’re neglecting that and doing the must. I have to do this, I have to respond to this customer, I got a negative review, I have to do something about it, and you’re always neglecting that most important step of looking to the future and how to grow your business.

Bradley Sutton:

Correct me if I’m wrong with where I’m going here, but I feel sometimes the word virtual assistant might be misconstrued. You know like in reality these are. You know, a lot of times they’re just your employees, but it just so happens that they’re not physically there with you. You know, like we live in a world now where most companies are remote, right? So there’s a line where somebody could say, Hey, even if I’m in the United States and  I work for my home or something, let’s just say in Florida and I want to hire somebody to help and they’re in Texas. I mean theory, you know, kind of a loose definition. But if they’re not like a full-time employee, technically even they would be kind of like a virtual assistant because they’re just working contractors. So it’s not necessarily. Oh, virtual assistants are some like lower class of employee or something like. Do you even understand what I’m saying here? Am I making sense?

Gilad:

I understand. First of all, I think it’s a misconception that people had. You know, even before COVID it started when people actually worked in their office, and that’s pretty much what I knew. I remember I used to explain to people that the way to work with our VAs is using Zoom, and I had to explain to them what Zoom was. You know, and you know that it’s. You know, remember those days. I don’t do that anymore, so I mean it’s different. And people today they ask us like virtual assistant. Is it AI? Am I working with an AI agent or it’s an actual person? Because the word virtual assistant is not reflecting what it is. And I think this is where we actually call them today, in addition to like virtual assistants. So people are still getting the context correct, but it’s more about experts. And we’re training specialists like PPC specialists. We’re training Amazon experts and so on, and that’s actual people that you should see them as a part of your company and with everything included with that. So, they really feel that they’re not virtual. They’re not just there to do your one, two, three tasks and never see you. You go in and you talk to these people. We have a lot of cells that they go to the Philippines and they meet.  Vincenzo, was one of the  speakers at Korea that was with us in the in the table, but a week ago, a week before that he was is actually using a lot of our VA’s and he went to manila to visit all the VA’s and we helped him together, you know, to have all this meaning was. It was important for him to know that it’s not just virtual, and I think it’s super important. 

Bradley Sutton:

When we’re talking about virtual workers, remote workers. One hesitance that some people have is like, hey, it’s kind of hard to really feel them out. Or you know, like I’m an in-person person, like I’ll know right away in-person interview and they’re working right next to me how good or not they are. So some people might be reluctant to hire remotely, whether we’re talking full-time, part-time or anything, or like they might have a, they might not, or they might be wondering hey, how do I really vet somebody? How do I know if they’re going to be good, when I can’t even see them face to face? So what do you say to people like that? As far as to give them, I mean, nothing can give them 100% confidence. Nobody is the perfect hire award, no matter what you do. Oh, you’re going to only hire rock stars, but how can you help people like that who might be reluctant to even get into this?

Gilad:

Well, the first thing I would say to somebody is do not expect it to be fast and, you know, to find the best person for you in two days. And also, do not look only for experience, Because, well, this industry, I would say of people offshore working and trying to get a job from sellers, then it’s very wide and there’s a lot of people taking advantage of it and saying, if you’re sending a post and saying I need an Amazon person to help me on everything on Seller Central, you’ll get 400 people applying, not only in the Philippines, everywhere they will get 400 people applying. All of them will say that they’re experts with 10 years of experience on Amazon and that will take you to get to $50 million a year in a month. And the problem over there is to really vet those and it takes a lot of time. And if you’re just looking at their resumes or ask them about their resumes, you’ll see a lot of things that we see that are not true. And this is why, for us, we’re much less interested in what they say about their resumes or their previous experience. We’re much more focused on their personality. We want to see that they’re rock stars, like you said, in their personality. We want to see that they’re committed. We want to see that they’re rock stars, like you said, in their personality. We want to see that they’re committed. We want to see that they show up on time. We want to see that they think outside the box, that they are really eager to be with you for the long term. And it takes more time to find people that way. I mean, for us it takes almost two months this period. You know this process of vetting people out and finding, you know, this 1% out of the bunch that are really going to stay with you for years, and only this 1% we train. So it takes. I would say just you know a tip. Do not just go and be misled by you know experience and understand that you need some patience. You know it doesn’t go just by an interview. You know people could be very, you know, secure and talk to you fluently in the interview, and then it would disappear completely three weeks after. Very secure and talk to you fluently in the interview and then it would disappear completely three weeks after. So it’s really more into that. I’ll be happy to explain that to people if they reach out to me. It’s a little bit more complex than that, but yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Helium 10’s got over 40 tools for e-commerce entrepreneurs. I know how overwhelming it might seem to try and figure out how you’re gonna learn how to use everything everything, or maybe even to know which ones you want to get started with. So, for a completely free course that’s going to guide you through learning everything you need in order to become a Helium 10 expert, visit the Helium 10 Academy that is h10.me/academy. If I’m wondering, hey, it might be time like I’m feeling a little bit stressed. I’ve been selling on Amazon for a while. I’ve scaled up to a certain amount and I find myself not having time with my family, or maybe I still have a day job, and now I’m working as soon as I get home from my day job until one in the morning. It’s like I can’t sustain this. I need to start looking out for outsourcing to other people some of my responsibilities. What are some of those first things as an Amazon seller that I could be looking for to be getting help with? There’s no one right answer, but what do you usually see out there as the first things that people try to get off their plates?

Gilad:

We see that a lot of sellers are hiring PPC VAs, first of all because that would help them to do a lot of things that they do not either know themselves in the high level of how to do PPC correctly or they just don’t understand that it takes a lot of time to do it on a daily basis. They could use a tool or not, but they still need to sit down with the tool and work on the system, and it takes time. We actually did a case study with you guys about two years ago and we showed over there that it’s not enough just to use a tool. You need to have somebody behind the wheel to manage the tool in order to optimize it and a lot of people do not do that and then it takes a VA would take that to the next step. So you’ll see results very fast when you have, when you hire a PPC VA obviously assuming that you have good product. With Amazon experts we see that usually with bigger sellers because they already feel that you know the heavy weight of a lot of inventory, a lot of SKUs, a lot of work to be done on optimizing all these listings and so on. You would not see that you know, with a new seller, with one SKU, for example, and what we see mostly in the last half a year or so is actually social media views, because people today realize more and more the importance of brand awareness, of creating content, of working with UGC and working with influencers and  TikTok shop that’s exploding right now. It’s on, so social media is really what we see a lot of sellers are asking about and they have no idea where to start with this, and a VA is a good way for them to go into this without knowing everything. 

Bradley Sutton:

Now here’s like a philosophical question that again, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. I just wanted to get your viewpoint. I know of people, including myself, who have wanted to make sure to hire somebody with very relevant experience, like, hey, I need somebody who’s worked on multiple Amazon accounts. I want somebody who’s Helium 10 certified you know from Helium 10 Academy. I want somebody who’s helped multiple Amazon and TikTok shop brands. On the other side, I’ve talked to people with an interesting viewpoint  where they’re like you know what? I actually try to hire people that have zero Amazon experience because I don’t want them to come with bad habits or habits that maybe they’ve learned, that maybe weren’t so great from another company. I liked them to to teach them with my SOPs from scratch, and let me just find a rock star who’s really good at following instruction. Is there one way that that’s your preference? Like, do you think that’s better? Cause me, I’ve personally have always been on the other side. It was like I don’t want to have to teach somebody from scratch. You know like I would love to have somebody, but then when I think it was Josh who first, uh, Josh Hadley, who talked about the other one. He’s like oh yeah, I don’t hire anybody with experience because I’ve had bad experiences. So what do you think? Do you think there’s merits in both different ways?

Gilad:

So I think VA is actually the path in between because what we’ve done is that we do not hire people with 10 years of experience. We tried that in the past. It didn’t bring us anywhere. I mean, it was always exactly the things that you mentioned. You don’t know who trained them and what. They made tons of mistakes. They are not really willing to learn new things and Amazon is always evolving, so you need to always keep learning. So you need to have motivation to continue to learn. And also, in many cases, they disappear just to add you to their list of previous employers and then they go to the next person. So we definitely want to find those newbies with the potential to become rock stars, but then we save ourselves the time and hassle of training themselves. We do the vetting and, like I said, it takes us almost two months to find and train these newbies. So they’re not newbies anymore, but they come with all this fire within to push and to learn in advance. And then we connect them with the seller and we help the seller to succeed working with these VAs. So I’m more into finding good people and training them. And then there’s always adaptation. When a seller starts working with a VA, there’s always like you need to know how they do things, but it’s not starting from scratch. They’re already been trained by us before.

Bradley Sutton:

There are some people who are super technologically fast forward and they’re like, hey, wait a minute. Now there’s AI, everything like does this take away the need for having to hire someone? And me, like I’ve always been actually on the opposite, like I’ll use AI when appropriate. Like I use AI inside of Helium 10 to be able to write listings in other languages. You know, we use it on the podcast to do the transcriptions and to come up with title recommendations. So I do think that AI has a place, but I’ve never been the kind of person who’s like, oh my goodness, AI is stealing our jobs and it’s replacing humans. But what about in your world? How has AI, if at all affected the virtual assistant world?

Gilad:

Well, it was definitely on the table over there and people asked us a lot about this, and what we’ve seen in the last two years or so or a year and half is that actually, AI came with so much opportunities that did not exist before, any way that you look at it. You mentioned new languages, so we have sellers that they focus on one country, on one language English and then suddenly, with AI, they’ve started selling on other platforms, other countries. But then it’s not just enough to have AI. You still need somebody behind the wheel to creating the prompts, to narrow them down, to make them unique and so on, and then do these little adaptations to make it correct your brand and to your belief, and that’s exactly the work of that the VAs are doing. So I don’t think it will ever become fully automated. I think the VAs now are actually more important, because if two years ago you would post and you know, one post a week on Facebook, one on Instagram, you think, oh, I’m pretty good, I’m posting once or twice a week. Now, you see, you have the opportunity with the eye to post 10 times a day in all the platforms on Pinterest and Facebook, Instagram, everything, and that’s what you’re starting to be expected to if you look at your competitors. And you cannot do that without somebody actually doing that. So the VAs are actually trained. We train our VAs on AI. We train them on ChatGPT. We train them on languages AI tools so they could work and do customer service for other languages. We train them on mid-journey so they could create better images and so on. So they know AI, they’re using it, so they get 10 times more things done. But you know, without the VA, it would be impossible.

Bradley Sutton:

These days, I think people are seeing the need more. Who are selling Amazon? Hey, it’s not just about Amazon. You know, five years ago, six years ago, I could just start a brand on Amazon and not even really do much branding and not have social media presence, and I’d be fine. I’ll make a billion dollars. But nowadays, you know, like people are understanding that they have to take more of a holistic look at how they grow their business and brand, and that includes social media, that includes sourcing more UGC, that includes operating on other platforms, TikTok shop. So if we would have had this podcast four years ago, I think we would only be talking about Amazon-related tasks. But how can virtual assistants help with this new world of e-commerce that we’re in, where sellers have to be thinking about all these other things that maybe they didn’t have to think about before?

Gilad:

So actually we started this way. We started as an Amazon focused company and our first type of VAs were Amazon VAs and then we added PPC VAs and social media VAs came later on and it was according to the need of e-commerce and in the last year or so we’ve seen it exploding and I think TikTok shop is really like leading the way there. UGC existed obviously before that and the work of social media became very much important. Before that it was like posting on Facebook, posting on Instagram more working on brand awareness. It could be Amazon posts inside of Amazon, but it was more on brand awareness. Today, the work of social media pages would definitely be more in working with UGCs, with influencers, finding these influencers, filter them out, connecting with them, convincing them to work with you and after that, you know, making sure that, following up, making sure that they’re working and doing what they promised that they would, checking the results of this, improving the next campaign and so on. So there’s a lot of work to be done on social media here, when we’re working with influencers, and that’s exactly the job that we train our social media VAs to do, and I think this has really taken a part of in addition to PPC. So before that, if you wanted to have more eyeballs on your product, you’d invest in PPC. Today you’d see investment, huge investment in social media. And that’s because another big thing changed. Before if you wanted to work with an influencer, you’d pay the influencer, you’d negotiate and then you’d pay the influencer in advance without knowing if this would work or not. You’d pay and the influencer would say yeah, I want $1,000 for creating a video for you, and then you’d pay and you hope okay, please, please, please, make it work. Make it work without really knowing. And if it didn’t work, you have to find another influencer, or you said you know what, I’m not doing it anymore. And today it doesn’t work like that. Today the influencers are already used to getting paid by commission from the sale itself. So they will have to work harder and there’s more competition within the influencers of whether or not they should work with you and you have to be more picky to choose the right people. But then they only get paid once there is a sale and plus, you’re getting the Amazon attribution from Amazon because you’re sending people to your Amazon store. So there’s a lot of opportunity here that did not exist before, and people are starting to use more and more influencers’ work in addition to PPC and getting more and more sales out of it. And TikTok shop has exploded exactly because of this, because all the creators, all the user-generated content, are within the platform In TikTok shop. You call it creators. Basically, it’s exactly the same thing. You’re finding them and the VAs are doing exactly that. They find these creators inside or they filter and vet the influencers that approach you and propose to work with you. You have to find those that you want. They manage all the samples. You send a lot of samples because now, when you understand that you don’t have to choose like one influencer and hope that it will work, if you know that they’re getting paid only from the commission of the sale itself, then why sell with one or two influencers, why not work with dozens of influencers in the same time? And you need somebody to manage this. You need somebody to find these influencers, to communicate with them, to send them the samples, to check the results of their campaigns, to do the analytics and so on. It’s a lot of work to be done, but it’s very, very much successful. And we just are actually now doing a very good case study on TikTok shop and we took a brand that’s selling Halloween costumes and we showed how, without doing anything on TikTok shop before just creating the shop and then having a social media managing TikTok shop, generating thousands of dollars in sales without something that is really like an extra layer of payment. Also not putting all the eggs in one basket. So this is becoming huge.

Bradley Sutton:

Random question here. Your company is obviously based for Filipino employees. Why Philippines did you choose as opposed to? You know there’s a lot of other countries where there’s English speakers. You know that people hire VAs from you know, be it Pakistan, india and other places. Obviously, the advantage of those three countries is the English speaking, compared to maybe somewhere like you know, Vietnam or Thailand or something like that, where not everybody’s English speaking, But why did you focus only on the Philippines?

Gilad:

Well. So in the beginning it was really more, yes, english was a very big thing, and for me it’s also the accent that’s important, because as an Israeli, it’s easier for me to understand that the Filipino accent, which is a little bit more like an American accent actually, and English is a formal language in the Philippines, so all Filipinos speak English very well. It’s easier to find a very high level of English if you vet them. Plus, I got a lot of recommendations about this and I went there and I fell in love with the country and with the people over there and I feel like really within their souls they’re really like they’re happy to work with you together and be on board with your business and they’re very happy people in general. And once we started working with Filipinos, then we decided that we want to focus only in the Philippines for another reason because, now we want to make sure that we created not just only like an agency of VAs, but we actually created a community we have more than 700 VAs in the Philippines. So we have events over there and we go back and forth and we create trainings together and seminars and so on. So we want them all to be in the same area so we can actually physically meet them and train them and so on. So that’s became a huge deal for us. If I had to fly people from all over just to meet each other, then it would not be. It doesn’t work that way. I want them to all come from the same culture and be in the same location.

Bradley Sutton:

With the Filipino culture if I’m hiring employees from there? I mean, I know the answer to some of this, obviously, but maybe our listeners don’t. What are some things to keep in mind? You know there’s different things about maybe, bonuses or business etiquette or communication, or you know different little things that can keep employees happy is always different by region. What are some tips you can give us if I’m hiring for my first time maybe, some full-time or part-time Filipino employees? What are some things to keep in mind that maybe I didn’t think about it if I was just hiring American or European employees?

Gilad:

Very good question and I think that I would divide it between business and culture. So, business-wise, you should know that you’re hiring a VA from the Philippines. They’re working as freelancers for you. They do not become part of your company, so you do not need to pay them social security and paid leaves and so on.

They pay it by the hour, according to the contract that you have with them. Having said that, a 13th salary, for example, is very much accepted in the Philippines for Filipinos working for Filipino companies. So they would expect that it’s not enough. You don’t have to do it, but it’s something that’s, you know, very looked on in the Philippines. So it’s something very good to give as a bonus to a VA a 13th salary if you’re feeling that they’re doing a good job. But basically, you should know that you’re paying them by the hour. However, it’s also important, I think, when you’re hiring a VA, to talk with them about their future, you know, and that you want to hire people that will stay with you for years. So already prepare them to. You know that I want to have you. I’m hiring you, but I want you to come, you know, get more and more responsibilities and I want your salary to be raised every year or so, and do that. Don’t just say, ok, I’m hiring a virtual assistant. If I need, I’ll just replace that person and hire again. It’s not the way to succeed in business. So that’s one thing. On the other hand, it’s culture, and I think a big difference between the Filipinos and the Western world, I think, is that in the States and also in Israel, we are very much direct. We say what we think and if there is a problem, we say that. Also in Israel, we are very much direct. We say what we think and if there is a problem, we say that In the Filipinos it would be difficult for them to say no to you. I would say you would ask somebody if they can do it and then they would not say no, they would say I’ll try, for example, I’ll look at it later and see, and they would be afraid a little bit or to insult you or to say you know that I cannot do it, it’s not possible, not going to happen. You will not hear that from a Filipino and you have to get used to being clear with them and not be you know, I told you, you said you can do it, why don’t you do it? And so on. You have to understand that there’s a different culture here and we actually train our VAs to be prepared to work with Americans because it’s not the same. So they should work and understand that they should be more proactive, for example, and give statuses more and be more direct when working with people from the Western world. Otherwise they would be terrified. This is why a lot of VAs are disappearing after a month, because they tackle this difference in cultures and they don’t know how to handle this because nobody prepared them for that, and then they disappear. But it’s not really because they’re, you know, bad people. It’s really. You have to prepare them correctly how to work with people from the other side of the world.

Bradley Sutton:

When I’m hiring. Let’s say I have a need for a total of 30 hours a week. 10 hours is going to be helping me with my PPC on Amazon listing optimization 10 hours a week. I need help with outreach for UGC 10 hours a week. I need help with outreach on my TikTok shop, looking for influencers to get samples of my product to boost the sales. Should I be looking for one person that can work 30 hours a week that knows all of those things, or should I be looking for three people who are specialists in each of those who work 10 hours a week each for me?

Gilad:

Definitely not hire one. Superman VA Even us as entrepreneurs as the owners of the business. We’re not really Superman’s, I mean we tend to think that we can do everything in our business but there are things that we’re good at and things that we’re less good at, and we’re the owners of the business. So when hiring people, I’ll give you an easy example. I mean, a social media VA would have to be, by default, somebody very creative, very good in English, very expressive and somebody that would love social media in general. Now, a PPC VA would be almost the exact opposite in their character. They would not need to love social media, their English level doesn’t need to be as perfect in expressing themselves in writing, and they would have to be very much analytical type of people. They would have to be very good in Excel and numbers and so on and calculations, and they would usually come from this field, like being analyzers or finance people before that, and if you ask a finance person to do social media, then you would not get a good result. So it’s really like two different specialists with two or more with different character. However, when hiring VAs you do have this advantage of hiring part-time jobs and for us, for example, when hiring from VA, you can hire people from three hours a day. So you could hire a PPC specialist for three hours a day, five days a week, and you could hire a social media expert to handle both UGC and TikTok shop, because it’s all under the same umbrella of social media help, and you could hire another Amazon VA. The only difference that we have at VA is with graphic designers and video editors that you work with them, even project-based, so it’s not full-time or even part-time. You can just work with them whenever you need to.

Bradley Sutton:

Salaries. Let’s say, I’m looking at the Philippines and that same exact scenario I was talking about, and if you’re saying, hey, we should probably not try and get a Superman for all three I’m hiring for each of those, are those all around the same level of employee and I should be paying them around the same? Is one of those things I mentioned a little bit more than the other. And then also, what would be, you know, to get a decent person, maybe I don’t need the most incredible employee in the whole world, but I also, at the same time, don’t want somebody who’s completely brand new and maybe not experienced. What should I be budgeting hourly for those roles I just mentioned?

Gilad:

So the rates in the Philippines are very low compared to the Western world and you can definitely hire people for five, six, seven dollars an hour or so. Yes, there is a difference between the specialities. For example, PPC VAs are usually paid more than executive assistants or general VAs. Even at VAA, for example at VA, if you hire an executive assistant that to do more of admin type of work, the rate will be $5.50 an hour, while a PPC VA, which is the highest level of VAs that we have, is with the rate is $7.50. But it’s still within this margin of $5 to $7. You know, it’s not a big issue if you hire um people a part-time job and then I think then this is another reason why a lot of people prefer to hire well, maybe not completely newbies, and they a lot of time. They go to us because they want the salary of a newbie, but somebody that was already vetted and trained by us. So you can still hire somebody who’s newbie but was supported and trained and continue to be supported by, by, you know, a specialist, compared to hiring people with previous experience, that this goes up very fast. I mean, because there’s no, nobody really controls this. So you work one year with this person, then you work another two months with another person. You already doubled your salary just by adding more people to the list and, and this is why people prefer to hire people with less experience.

Bradley Sutton:

You know a lot of your team uses Helium 10. For you and your team, what would you say is their favorite Helium 10 tool? Something to ask all of our guests.

Gilad:

All right. So I mean, well, I asked, actually I asked our VAs, so the PPC department asked, actually I asked our VA’s, so the PPC department they said different things compared to the, to the Amazon department. So that the PPC that they focused more on the keyword tracker and the inventory monitoring because they need to forecast, you know, the amount of units and manage their campaigns according to the, the inventory and also to the keyword research and all that. So that would be more of the PPC department. The Amazon department they’re using Cerebro and Magnet and Magneto and all that, so the more of the everyday optimization of Helium 10.

Bradley Sutton:

Any something that your team has said, that hey tell Bradley to add this to Helium 10, because it’s not there yet, or something that would make your team’s life easier, or your team’s clients’ life easier, something that they’ve always asked for.

Gilad:

So I did ask and they said first of all, they called it, and this is their. They call it competitor ad spy tool. So if you could spy your competitors’ campaigns and see over there, exactly like you know their budget and which keywords they invest in their campaigns and you know how their campaigns are built, so you could see, you know your performance compared to their performance and so on. And another thing they said is an account audit tool. So if you’re looking at the new account and you want to audit this to this ASIN immunity and getting results of their images, their what’s working, what’s not working, what should be improved in order to have better campaigns and better optimization, that will be it all.

Bradley Sutton:

If people want to reach out to you, let me see you guys are in our hub, right? Let me just uh take a look here. We go to hub.helium10.com, guys in the search, just type in VAA and you will see, right there, VAA, Philippines. All right. So go to hubhelium10.com, uh, type in VAA and you’ll see VAA, Philippines. You can, you can connect right with Gilad’s team right there. What about you personally like social media, anywhere, anywhere where you want people to follow you out there, like LinkedIn or something?

Gilad:

So, people could always write an email directly to me, like Gilad@VAPhilippines.com or, if they want you know, a general question could be service at VAPhilippines.com, or visit our website and obviously also Facebook Instagram you name it.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Well, Gilad, thank you so much for coming on in the middle of the night for this podcast. I appreciate it. This is a topic I think should be very important to our listeners out there, so I appreciate you coming on and let’s have you back next year. Maybe we can do one in person in Boracay or Medellin or somewhere over there eating our ube pancakes and then talking about Amazon.

Gilad:

That could be very cool. All right, thanks for having me.

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Get snippets from all episodes by following us on Instagram at @SeriousSellersPodcast

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.