13 bENEFITS OF HIRING An amazon vIRTUAL ASSIsTANT
Is A Wholesale Amazon Virtual Assistant right for you?
Hiring an Amazon Virtual Assistant is a fantastic way to increase your productivity and run your online business more successfully, or have Amazon virtual assistants manage it all for you.
With this new type of workforce, you can hire employees from across the world with varying levels of skills and expertise. As a result, you can pay less than the minimum wage while getting a completely qualified employee.
Amazon Virtual Assistants can offer part-time and full-time availability with relatively short notice periods, so hiring staff for specific projects is also possible.
What is an Amazon Virtual Assistant?
This is the question that Amazon sellers, and just about anyone looking take their business to the next level asks.
An amazon virtual assistant (also known as an Amazon VA) is a person who performs tasks for you over the internet. Using their computer, they can handle some or all of your online business operations. This way, you can focus on what matters most to you and improve your business!
Amazon Virtual Assistants are a new breed of personal assistants in a virtual world. As a business in today’s electronic age, it can be hard to stay afloat without some form of digital assistance. An Amazon VAs job description will consist of multiple tasks for which you would usually have to hire an expensive employee.
How do I get started with an Amazon Virtual Assistant?
You can hire an Amazon virtual assistant through a VA company like ours. However, it is essential first to vet the companies you are thinking of hiring on how they provide their VAs and what tasks they can accomplish for your business. Once you find a company that matches your needs, you can inquire about hiring an Amazon Virtual Assistant by filling out the contact form on their website or emailing them directly.
What is next? Well, once your Amazon Virtual Assistant comes on board, they will begin their work right away! Remember to stay open-minded when working with someone online. Communication and setting expectations can take some time, don’t expect your virtual assistant to be perfect on day one. Make sure you review what tasks they are doing daily, and following up on them is necessary before you see results.
The exception to this is if you’re using an advanced virtual assistant to run your business, then you might have to sit back and learn from them. They prob have years of experience and are used to doing the jobs necessary to run a profitable Amazon store. By trying to micro-manage them, you can hinder their productivity and get less work from the virtual assistant.
What Does an Amazon VA Do?
1. Customer service
Having your virtual assistant monitor buyer messages can take a small amount of time per day, but any inquiries that come in must be addressed within a 24 hour time period. So even though it is a simple task-it has to be taken care of on a day-to-day basis.
Having the skills to interact with buyers properly is critical since they may help you avoid negative feedback or even generate good reviews by professionally dealing with customers. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive, so having templates set up that ask for reviews can help you grow your Amazon store reviews.
Here are some tasks your virtual assistant can take care take off your hands.
Creating templates to input into the message system
Answering queries in a timely manner with accurate information about your products
Responding appropriately to reviews, both positive and negative
Matching reviews to orders and taking any necessary action
Dealing with refunds
2. Finding and opening accounts with suppliers and Distributors
A virtual assistant can work with you to find the best suppliers and distributors for your Amazon store.
Your Amazon VA can help you find potential suppliers or distributors by looking through internet listings and sites, such as online business directories and trade shows where suitable suppliers will be represented.
When they find suppliers or distributors that will work for your Amazon business, your Amazon VA can then contact those suppliers on your behalf and open the account for your FBA business.
If you have an experienced virtual assistant, they can contact the supplier and negotiate discounts to strengthen the connection and hopefully obtain better pricing in the future. This time-consuming process is perfect to outsource to your virtual assistants.
3. Product Sourcing
Once you have opened an account, your virtual assistants can access the supplier’s catalogs. If you have an experienced VA, they will know how to inquire about getting multiple catalogs from the supplier.
Suppliers will have anywhere from 5,000 – 100,000 products in their catalog. Going through each product manually is just too time-consuming. Therefore your virtual assistant will use a catalog analyzer to scan the list and narrow it down to a more manageable list of potentially lucrative items.
4. Product Research
Product research isn’t just one of the most time-consuming aspects of running an Amazon business. It’s also one of the more challenging. So if you want to outsource this activity to a virtual assistant, you’ll need to either find someone with experience or be willing to dedicate some time to training.
When you first start working with an Amazon VA, have them go through the potentially profitable items that the catalog analyzer has produced and do product research on each product one by one to start making a purchase order.
After the purchase order is completed, your VA will send it to you to double-check and make sure you are comfortable with the products. If you have an experienced buyer that you trust, you can finalize the purchase order before purchasing the items.
5. Shipping management
After you’ve placed an order, you’ll have to either ship your products to a prep center or send them directly to Amazon. Most large suppliers will require you to use a prep center since they don’t want to manage box content, fnsku labeling, shipping labels, etc. You may also have your virtual assistant arrange your shipments to the prep center or directly to Amazon’s fulfillment center.
It’s also a good habit for your VAs to double-check the quantities sold against what was received by Amazon. If the numbers are incorrect, you are in luck because you may send your invoices to Amazon, and they will reimburse you for any missing items.
6. Repricing products
After your products are available on Amazon, you may either have a VA manually change the price each day or instruct them on using Repricing software that will reprice your items all day long.
We strongly advise you to employ a Repricer since it may quickly boost your sales by more than 50%.
Because people are constantly adjusting their prices, your VA could match the other seller’s price to share sales, and right after, they lower it again. If this happens, you will not be getting any sales until you manually lower your price to match the buy box.
This is why it’s so crucial for virtual assistants to set up a Repricer to adjust your prices to stay competitive automatically.
7. Save Time
Our Amazon virtual assistants are highly trained individuals dedicated to exceeding your expectations. They have advanced training in customer service tasks, order processing, data entry, product research, inventory management, contacting suppliers, utilizing seller central tools, and so much more.
They work diligently to complete all of your tasks before the deadline so that you have more time to focus on other areas of your Amazon business.
8. Cost-effective
Hiring an Amazon virtual assistant is a cost-effective way to get tasks completed. Virtual assistants work for less than minimum wage and are motivated to help you run a profitable business because they look for a reliable long-term employer.
You won’t have to worry about paying benefits, vacation time, or sick time. Instead, you only pay for the hours that the VA works, making it a very affordable solution. Outsourcing a virtual assistant for $5 is a way better route when you value your time at $30. You can get the same job done for 1/6th of the cost.
9. Proactive
Amazon virtual assistants are always on the lookout for ways to make your life easier. They keep an eye out for deals, discounts, administrative tasks, and new opportunities that you may find beneficial.
For example, they could find a great business opportunity that would enable you to expand your business or help you score better deals with exclusive suppliers or manufacturers.
10. Tax Benefit
Did you know that you can write off your amazon virtual assistant on your taxes?
The great thing about utilizing our virtual assistants is that it is considered a service, so instead of paying $15 an hour plus deal with w-2 for an employee, you can get one of our trained virtual assistants for a simple fee of $5 an hour.
*attention* Make sure you always talk to your tax expert before writing off any expenses!
11. Grow Your Business
As an Amazon seller, the best way to grow any business is by staying focused and freeing up your valuable time. An Amazon virtual assistant can help you do just that!
By taking care of all of the little tasks you don’t have time for or are not a good use of your time, you can focus on the bigger picture and watch your Amazon business grow! It’s an investment that will pay off in the long run.
12. They're eager to learn
As an Amazon FBA seller, you need a virtual assistant that is flexible, willing to learn new things, and is excellent at forming relationships with individuals. You can trust all of this with one of our Virtual assistants because they thrive on knowing the ins and outs of the Amazon marketplace and making a significant difference in your life.
Not only that, they are looking for a long-term job, and keep in mind, you can utilize a virtual assistant for non-Amazon tasks. As an Amazon seller, it’s common to use a VA for your other business or full-time job to free up time.
13. Great English
Filipinos have an Americanized accent with a tinge of Spanish that sounds quite nice. Compared to most country’s accents, the Filipinos are most closely related to ours, which helps when you want them to call and open accounts with suppliers. We have found that they have a much higher success rate, and because of the other qualities you have read about, they are good at building relationships with suppliers and distributors.
Since the Spanish colonial period, Filipinos have used English as their primary language for law and trade. And it appears that this American heritage has genuinely become a Filipino people’s national identity. Because of this, they are the most commonly used country for outsourcing customer service.