For those of you who may not know, I am a bit of a control freak. I like things a certain way, and I get really antsy about letting others “help”. I’m that person who reloads the dishwasher after my husband “helps” because he didn’t put the cups in the right spot. Anyone with me? It might come as a surprise, then, that I’d be recommending bloggers to hire a virtual assistant. See, I have a VA (a few, actually) and they make my life so much easier. I get to hand over the stuff that doesn’t need my personal touch and spend more time making awesome content for you! I realize, though, that most bloggers are nervous about virtual assistants, so I thought I’d throw together my best 5 tips for hiring your first VA for your blog! 
5 Tips for Hiring Your First VA for Your Blog
- Look for VA’s who are already bloggers. You want this person to become a second-you for your site, so it helps if they already know their way around the blogging world.
- Hire out what you’re bad at, what you hate doing, and what you don’t have time for. If you dread chore threads, hire that out. If you are terrible at designing, hire out a few printables. If you never have time to get guest posts edited and published, hire a VA for that!
- Find out your hourly wage, so that you know how much you can pay a VA. If you know that you can make $50 in an hour of focused work, it totally makes sense to hire a VA for $20 for that same hour. Why? Because that $20 frees you up to make the $50.
- Don’t settle for a crappy VA. There are a million people calling themselves VA’s these days, but not all of them are high quality. There are really VA’s out there who make your life simpler and can help improve your business (and make you more money!). Don’t settle with a crummy VA, find one that becomes a second-you in your business.
- Use LastPass for passwords. I don’t know about you, but it can be really hard to hand over your passwords for social media and other things that your VA might need. It almost feels like handing over the keys to your car to your teenager for the first time. Fortunately, LastPass makes it super simple to share passwords with those who need them in a responsible way!
LastPass is one of my favorite tips for hiring your first VA for your blog because it takes out some of the anxiety of delegating. See, LastPass allows you to safely share passwords with your VA, sync any password changes, and you can revoke access at any time. That means if you don’t follow tip #4 and you have a crappy VA, you can re-secure your accounts so that they can’t mess anything up. LastPass allows you to access whatever password you need, wherever you are, so no more trying to remember if you used the * or ? when they required a symbol ever again! 
The best part about LastPass? You can Get LastPass for Free! Once you sign up you can easily and securely store passwords for all of your accounts, so you can spend your valuable time on more important things! When you’re hiring your first VA for your blog, you’ll definitely want to have LastPass set up so that you can safely share your passwords without fear! 
