One of the fastest ways to build new content for a website is to hire a writer or even a team of writers to create articles. It’s quite easy to find freelance writers online and outsource work to them. However, you do need to be cautious with your hiring because there are a lot of low quality content producers and some of them will not hesitate to pirate content from other sites to try to earn a quick buck.
In general, you should have confidence going into outsourcing that you’ll see a positive return on your investment. The best way to have this confidence is to only hire a writer for a profitable site and just spend the site profits to expand it. Spending a lot of cash upfront to build content before you start earning anything from it can be a recipe for disaster.
If you want to outsource your writing work to someone else, this tutorial guide is for you. Even if you don’t want to outsource right now, it could still be a useful lesson for the future.
Create Precise Outsourcing Plan
Between your overhaul plan and the writing plan you put together at the start of this class, you will probably have most of the information that you’ll need to send to your writer.
You’ll want a plan that you can send your writer for this project that will detail exactly what you want them to do and what you expect from them. This will help to ensure that you receive higher quality work and it also helps to avoid confusion between you and your writer that could lead to a variety of problems.
In particular, make sure you have the following info for each article and/or piece of content that you want written..
- Primary Keyword Phrase
- Secondary Keywords / Sub-Topics
- Summary of anything specific you want for this page of content
- Word Count To Write
If you are hiring a cheap writer, you may even need to give them a crash-course in writing for SEO. However, this is why I prefer to go with someone that has experience and even a track record for good search engine rankings with their writing.
Also consider general information that may be useful to your writer. For example if you just want 200 new words on a particular topic to add it to one of your existing pages, tell them that is what it is for and show them the actual page it will be used on to ensure you get writing that actually fits.
This plan that you put together is something you will send to your writer. However, you could also send this to someone that you have selected for the job and/or are considering to ensure that they understand everything that the project involves. In general, I will avoid posting this complete information in the job posting because you don’t want to publicly share things like your website and/or your overhaul plan.
Writing Outsourcing Proposal
Before you start hunting for a writer, you need to write up a proposal to attract potential candidates. In this proposal, you basically outline the details about the job that a writer would need to know before placing a bid to complete the work.
The more information you can give in this proposal, the more professional writers you will attract and the more likely you are to end up having the work successfully complete and avoid confusion with your writer. However, do be careful not to share sensitive information, such as your website (this can be shared with the person you end up hiring but should be kept private until then).
Here’s the general information you’ll want to include in your job posting..
- General Topic For All Articles and/or Full Topic List
- Total Number of Articles & Total Word Count (Could Be Broken Down Per Article If List Is Provided)
- What Kind Of Writer You Want To Hire
- Time to Complete Project
- General Price Range For Work
- Any Other Details That Could Affect The Amount Of Work Your Writer Will Need To Do
Create a Job Posting
Once you have your writing proposal and outsourcing plan together, you’re ready to start looking for a writer to hire.
If you have a lot of writing to do and/or want the job completed quickly, you could consider splitting your work up into multiple projects and hiring a different writer to complete each piece.
Ultimately, you can hire a writer from a ton of different places. With that said, if you have a preference from personal experience and/or are looking for a very professional writer, feel free to go outside of the training class.
I’m going to recommend using Freelancer to hire writers because there are a lot of high quality writers there for a decent price and it is somewhere that you can safely hire someone with their escrow system.
This site will also allow you to post your project for free – you won’t pay anything until you select someone for the job. Even then, they only charge a low percentage based fee (about 3% in most cases).
Go here to create an account to hire writers:
Alternative sites to use to hire writers:
Writing Job Details
Once you have an account on Freelancer (or another to hire a writer), click Hire Freelancers → Start a Project at the top of the page.
On this page, simply provide the requested info for your project. The important information about each section is discussed below.
- What type of work do you require? – Here you simply select categories to organize your work so freelancers can find it. “Writing” is your likely choice in the first box. This then provides a second box, where you can find the item that best fits what kind of writing you want. The first or last options are likely fitting for most people doing an overhaul – “Write some Articles” or “Content Writing”.
- What is your project about? – This is the title of your project, so it should be meaningful and attract the eyes of your ideal candidates. Something like this would work for my site.. “Write Quality Articles About Down Comforters – Detailed Info Provided”.
- Tell us more about your project. – The first part of this “What skills are required?” allows you to narrow down what type of writer you want and also auto-notify those writers that already have an account on the site. Search words related to your niche and “writing”. Also search for things like “SEO” and “English” to attract more quality writers. The second part “Describe your project here…” is where you would paste your writing proposal.
- What budget do you have in mind? – Potential writers will bid on your project, but you can still specify what you are looking to pay here. I would recommend to pay a fixed price for the entire project. For many people doing a smaller overhaul, the $30 – $250 price range is likely a good choice.
- Get the most from your project! – In general, I recommend avoiding these upsell options. This will cost you money whether you hire someone or not. They give your project more exposure, but this is generally not needed for small writing projects and will just cost you more in the long run.
Other potential places you could hire people: Facebook writing groups, local writers on Craigslist, hire another website owner / blogger, or even search Google for a marketplace of expert writers in a specific niche (search something like this: “hire expert writers” .. you could even insert the name of a niche to get more specific with that search).
Select Best Candidate
Follow these recommendations to select the best writer for the job..
- Talk Privately Before Picking – Freelancer allows you to private message potential candidates before selecting someone. ALWAYS communicate with a potential writer before picking them for the job. You’re looking for professionalism, knowledge about your subject, and even well-written responses to help you weed out the bad picks. Chances are, the person that presents themselves the best and has the credentials to back it up will be the best pick.
- Review Work Samples – Always review actual writing from a potential candidate so you can see the quality of their writing. Refer back to chapter #2 in this class where I provide writing samples – are they writing fluff content or quality content? You obviously want a quality writer.
- Subject Knowledge – Find out how much someone knows about the subjects you want them to write about. Sure, someone can always learn that information, but if they can’t give you any in-depth knowledge privately then they likely won’t be able to write high quality articles on the subject.
- Track Record Proof – Whenever possible, see if you can get some proof of an SEO track record for your writer. Ask if they can tell you some keywords where their article is ranked in the top 10. Verify it for yourself and also check competition and keyword traffic for the phrase (at the very least you want to see that the phrase has a few hundred monthly visitors or a top ranking may not be considered a great accomplishment there).
Work Delivery & Payment
As long as you’re going through Freelancer to hire a writer, this part will be pretty simple, safe and painless. Otherwise, there is an element of risk to this part of hiring someone online.
On Freelancer, you can use their escrow system to deposit the funds for your writer when you select them for the job. When they complete the work, they upload it to the Freelancer system for you to review. When you’re satisfied, you can release the escrow funds to the writer. If there are any problems, Freelancer can step in to help.
If you do the work outside of Freelancer and cannot make use of some kind of escrow system, I would simply advise caution when handling payment and delivery. DO NOT BLINDLY TRUST ANYONE UNLESS YOU HAVE WORKED WITH THEM BEFORE AND HAVE A REASON TO TRUST THEM!
Outside of Freelancer, if you can’t meet someone in person, you can actually present the trust issue as a two-way street – for your protection and theirs. You don’t want to pay without getting the work in return, and a writer obviously wouldn’t want to do work without getting paid.
To solve that trust issue, I advise breaking a project up into small pieces.
For example, just have them write one article to get started. They send you the article, you review it and then pay them. That one article project job will help to build a level of trust for both of you.
I have offered the first payment before they send the file before, especially if they are skeptical in any way. However, this is where it becomes important to have the first project be tiny because you have to expect that it is possible you’ll get stiffed. $5 – $10 lost is much better than $100-$200 lost.
As far as the actual work that you receive, I recommend doing three things with it before you approve payment and accept the work as complete..
- Read it yourself to make sure it is a quality article that contains useful information. Also make sure it is in line with anything that you requested for the project. If need be, you can ask a writer to revise an article, but I would also make sure to do this sparingly if you want to have the writer do future work for you. If it is a blatant disregard of the instructions they agreed to, definitely get it revised before paying.
- Use Copyscape.com to verify that the content isn’t plagiarized and/or used somewhere already. If this content exists somewhere else, they’re probably trying to scam you. This is worthy of reporting to Freelancer and likely a reason to cancel the project and find a new writer.
- Use Google to verify that the content isn’t plagiarized and/or used somewhere already. I like to take a few random sentences from the article (one at a time), put them in quotes and search them on Google. You really shouldn’t be finding other sites that contain your exact content that your writer is delivering to you for a paid project. This could also be grounds for reporting, although do look deeper if you find something like this to verify that it is a blatant copy of existing content (you’re paying for unique content written just for you).