FancyHands – Outsourcing Your Tasks to a Team of Online Assistants


Via @kadavy, I came across an online service called Fancy Hands – a membership-based site where you can outsource many of your online and cellphone-related tasks.

It’s a little tough to pin down, exactly, what tasks the company covers. But I got fascinated at the idea, and kept looking around. Gradually, through looking at some examples and reading a few testimonials, I’ve kind of got the gist of what constitute acceptable “tasks,” and what things the service cannot do.

In their words:

Anything that doesn’t require us to physically go somewhere for you. Anything a smart, patient, internet-savvy person with a cell phone can conquer. As long as it’s legal, we’ll do it.

The idea of having a service like this is appealing, but I’m finding that I don’t view myself as overly busy. I’ve found myself wondering – would I be able to come up with X number of things per month, to justify this service?

Some tasks, like the basic research examples, seem to be not worth using a “task” if I’m only purchasing 5 tasks per month. Other ones though (like getting an assistant to wade through Comcast customer support, and patching you in should verification be needed) seem totally worth it.

At this point in my life, Fancy Hands seems like an indulgence, but I wonder if I’d find good ways to use the tasks. I think I could have definitely used this service much more back when I felt busier – back when I was a manager, or when I was in the midst of planning for my wedding.

I guess what I’m saying is – I feel busy nowadays, but am I really personal-assistant busy? The idea of farming out unpleasant tasks is definitely appealing, and it seems that Fancy Hands is less like hiring a full time assistant, and more about trying to pick up tasks that fall a little below that.

If I’m paying $25/month for 5 tasks, it seems that each task has to bee around 10+ minutes of work or effort, to make the membership a worthwhile one. It’s been interesting to note that, ever since I learned about this service… I’ve been kicking around possible ways in which I might utilize it.

Poke around and check out their FAQ and features. One nice detail that seems to get lost is that you can having Fancy Hands help you schedule appointments (which they’ll update in a shared Google Calendar)… and this seems to be done without having to use up one of your monthly alloted tasks.

Overall, the site has a really nice and informal tone. Whoever they’ve got doing copy has done a great job, as even their Terms of Service is actually fun to read.

// Fun discovery – One of their front end developers is a fan of Arrested Development. View source on any page, and look for the “Popups” section:

<!– POPUPs: the mere fact you call making love ‘popup’ tells me you’re not ready –>

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