Jun 26
Time is THE most valuable commodity. Yes, it is of the essence- and in fact- it is the essence of a life of peacefulness, and low stress. That is if, in fact, you have some to kill. Most of us don’t, and that is why many people are “outsourcing” there lives so to speak. Ever wondered what it would be like to have some of your most tedious errands taken care of for you? Or maybe you have menial tasks, like making plane reservations, or even dinner reservations, but simply don’t have the time to do it. Nowadays you don’t have to be the CEO of a big company or a celebrity to have a personal assistant, no sir. Today’s personal assistants can be found online in the form of a “virtual assistant” and are relatively affordable for anyone making at least $30,000 per year. The Gorilla heard about this concept and thought “how cool!” Now, you understand, the Gorilla doesn’t want to compare himself to a “celebrity,” but it sure would be nice to have someone at his beck and call, when he needed a little help with those tedious things, such as calling American Express to get that erroneous charge off of his account. You know how long they put you on hold for- right? Well, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone else perform this time-consuming little task for you, so that you could continue to be productive at your workplace? There are a number of web sites that offer services just like these and much more. They do virtually everything you could imagine from ordering a birthday cake to sending out “thank you” notes on your behalf. Some even have messenger and courier services if a delivery is needed on very short notice. You’d think the prices on services such as these would be simply outrageous, but they are in fact, quite reasonable depending on the need, and which services you plan to use. For example, one interesting site the Gorilla visited, AskSunday.com, charges about $29 per month for up to 15 “requests.” Another site, GetFriday.com, offers pay-as-you-go and monthly plans in increments of 10 or 15 minutes. The monthly plan starts at around $120 for 10 hours. Not bad, at all! Many working people can afford it-even in this wilted economy. The point is, most of these tasks take up our valuable time, which can make us less productive, and therefore cost us time- which is money. These virtual assistant services seem to counteract that fact, so the cost is completely relative to what you might lose if you had to perform all of these tasks yourself. And the critics agree.
They say if you look at the type of people who use these sites, they are most likely not going to stop because of inflation. Demand for personal assistants, for businesses and personal reasons, is climbing. According to research firm Evalueserve, which estimated revenue from such sites last year at $250 million, they anticipated it would grow to $2 billion by 2015. Wow! It makes sense in a such a harried world to outsource some of your little day-to-day errands. The Gorilla is a big fan of the virtual assistant and loves the services they provide. (Not to mention- Mrs. Gorilla is currently his personal assistant…so she loves the idea as well!) It sure gives a whole new meaning to “multi-tasking!”
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