An Amazon virtual assistant can help your business be more productive. Here are the pros and cons of hiring one.
Amazon sellers have a lot on their plates. In addition to creating product listings and fulfilling orders, sellers must have an excellent customer service strategy, advertise their products, maintain positive vendor relations, and keep up with current trends.
One seller can’t achieve all these jobs on their own. While merchants can hire skilled professionals for each role, you can always opt for a Jack or Jill of all trades: an Amazon virtual assistant.
A high-quality virtual assistant will perform all essential tasks of your Amazon business. They’re an invaluable asset to your team since they have the skills and expertise in various ecommerce tasks to ensure you maximize profits.
But what is an Amazon virtual assistant? Is it worth it to hire one?
Overview of Amazon Virtual Assistant
An Amazon virtual assistant is what it sounds like―a professional who works remotely and helps you manage your ecommerce business. Virtual assistants can increase business productivity by 25%, making this one of the critical roles in any organization.
No day is ever the same for a virtual assistant; one day, they can focus on market research and track sales and returns the next.
While this is one of the most wide-ranging roles, these professionals must have critical skills. These include inventory management, customer service, marketing/advertising, and vendor relations.
Pros and Cons of Amazon Virtual Assistant
An Amazon virtual assistant aims to tackle daily tasks, allowing sellers more time to focus on their core business duties. However, a virtual assistant isn’t the solution for all businesses. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of hiring one:
Pros
- Reduced stress. Handling all these daily tasks can be overwhelming for any seller. A virtual ally has the expertise to handle different tasks, resulting in less burnout for Amazon store owners.
- Saves time. Amazon virtual assistants are skilled in completing time-consuming tasks quickly.
- Cost-effective. Instead of hiring multiple staff members, you only need one virtual assistant. Sellers can save even more money by hiring a freelancer (but ensure you stay compliant with independent contractor labor laws).
- Scalable. As your business grows, your virtual assistant can take on more and different tasks.
- Flexibility. Virtual assistants are among the most wide-ranging roles. You can find VAs online and worldwide.
Cons
- Access to sensitive information. Since your virtual assistant can access sensitive business and customer data, you must trust them. Hiring the wrong person can make your business vulnerable.
- Added expenses. An Amazon VA salary may range as low as $15/h. However some of the best may charge as much as $30/h. Even if you only hire a part-time virtual assistant, you must commit to paying their wage.
Amazon Virtual Assistant Services
As stated, an Amazon virtual assistant can perform numerous tasks. But which duties can you assign to them?
Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment is one of the most important aspects of your Amazon business. But order fulfillment encompasses more than packing up a product and slapping a shipping label on it.
It involves several tasks, such as managing stock, handling refunds and exchanges, and canceling orders. If you use Amazon FBM, you have even more tasks since you must store and ship the products yourself.
A virtual assistant for Amazon can handle many tasks, such as returns and inventory management, relieving a seller’s burden.
Customer Service
Excellent customer service is essential for running a successful Amazon store. Fortunately, this is one of the core tasks that a virtual assistant handles.
In addition to connecting with customers directly, your VA can handle interactions on your product listings, such as answering FAQs and responding to reviews.
Vendor Relations
Positive vendor relations are an overlooked strategy for Amazon sellers. When a seller has an excellent reputation, they can grow their business in many ways, such as by sourcing more products.
While sellers usually handle this strategy, you can delegate specific tasks to your virtual assistant. They can research different private label products you can add to your inventory and sample them.
Your virtual assistant can also use their customer service skills toward your vendors to maintain strong relationships with your suppliers.
Advertising and Marketing
Amazon offers several ways to advertise your brand, but sellers are often too busy to manage a a marketing campaign. While you can hire or outsource an Amazon marketing expert, your virtual assistant can handle many advertising tasks.
You can assign several simple tasks, such as keyword research, to your virtual assistant. They can set you up on Amazon ads and boost your product listings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Your virtual assistant can periodically monitor your campaigns to ensure you’re converting leads while maintaining a good return on ad spend (ROAS).
Even if your VA doesn’t have a marketing background, they can adjust your backend to better reach your customers, such as setting your target audience.
Market Research
All sellers must know their audience to stay ahead of the game. If you don’t have time to conduct market research, your virtual assistant can analyze this data to understand your customers and competitors better.
Some examples of market research include analyzing competitors (such as marketing strategies and product pricing), staying updated on product trends, and tracking other industry updates.
Tips to Hire a Virtual Assistant for Amazon
One downside to hiring an Amazon virtual assistant is that you put a lot of trust in them. Fortunately, there are ways to ensure you hire the best professional the first time.
- Search online. If hiring a part-time or full-time employee, you should post a job ad. However, if you only want to onboard a freelancer, you can search various platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. These platforms are great because you can filter by criteria like experience and location.
- View their portfolio. When you find a potential virtual assistant, ask for their portfolio. You’ll want to ensure they’re experienced in the roles you need and familiar with your niche.
- Conduct a video interview. Always set up an interview with potential virtual assistants. Since they work remotely, scheduling a video chat to verify their identity is a good idea. You should also ask about their experience, rates, availability, and skills in this interview.
- Set permissions. Before fully trusting your new virtual assistant, you can control the information they view. Set permissions and restrictions on which data they can view.
Is an Amazon Virtual Assistant Worth It?
As stated, there are pros and cons to hiring a virtual assistant. Some of the most significant benefits include saving time, increasing efficiency, scalability, accessing their broad set of skills and expertise, and flexibility.
But those benefits won’t be worth it if you consider the cost for experienced VAs, quality concerns, and trust. If you hire a virtual assistant in another country, you must also tackle language barriers and time zone differences.
A virtual assistant is most beneficial if you need to complete multiple tasks. But if you don’t need several roles, you can always identify the most important ones and hire or outsource an expert. For example, if you need to boost your brand awareness, you’ll benefit more from a marketing professional.
An Alternative to Amazon Virtual Assistant
There are many tasks to running an ecommerce business, and an Amazon virtual assistant can make life easier for sellers. These professionals work remotely and can help you tackle many roles, such as order fulfillment, customer service, vendor relations, and market research.
What if you need more time to focus on your core business duties but don’t think hiring a VA is right for you? We offer an alternative. We’re more than consultants. We’re a team of Amazon professionals who can implement different strategies to grow your e-commerce business.
Click here to learn more about our services.
Author
Stephanie Jensen has been writing ecommerce content for seven years, and her copy has helped numerous stores rank on Amazon. Follow her on LinkedIn for more insight into freelance writing and creating high-quality content.
