How to Hire a Content Writer
Start With Article Writing
I outsource most of my article writing. Now, I typically only write for pet sites such as my Chris Farrell Review Site and customer websites. The heavy lifting at this point is article writing content for purposes of search engine optimization(SEO) and backlinking. To learn more about writing articles and its importance see my post on article marketing.
Writing content is a necessity and it can be tiresome and boring. So why not have someone else do it for you? Your time can be spent much better building sites for customers and doing research on keywords for your next mini-niche site (although mini sites nowadays need to be much more then they were only a year ago). But that’s another post.
Outsource Your Article
So we know article writing is an important element when it comes to gaining ground in the search engines and it is a “must do” if you want to help get your sites ranked well in Google. It can be tedious, takes research and can take a lot of your time; especially if you hate to write.
Outsourcing this task is the way to go and getting a quality 300 or 450 word article written on one or two keywords for a buck fifty ain’t bad. But not so fast! Content is not necessarily king, but quality content is king because not all content is created equally.
Finding a Quality Writer
I learned this the hard way so I’m going to give you some advise. I still consider myself somewhat of a newbie but back when I was ‘really’ new I decided to try my hand at outsourcing and hired a content writer. Crash and burn!
Not knowing what the heck I was doing I set out and hired someone to write 10 short articles for me so I could back link my parrot and bird training site. Long story short, I paid too much and ended up re-writing most of the material. I learned a little bit from that so here are some pointers for those of you who are considering hiring a writer.
Find an Article Writing Service
You won’t have any problem finding an article writing service because there are tons of them out there. I’ve tried a few and primarily use Odesk now. The services they offer are all pretty the same and you can find contractors of every flavor willing to do work for you.
The fees may vary but you can find professionals who will make you a simple logo all the way up to those who will design your website from top to bottom. But let’s just zero-in on the content writers for a moment.
Test Drive Your Content Writer
One thing you will learn very quickly is that it’s in the numbers. What do I mean? Well, you will have to go through many writers to find one who is reliable, dependable, can handle the work and most importantly; one who can freakin WRITE!
Now I’m no english major, nor am I the best writer but I do have a grasp of the english language. What you will find are a lot of writers responding to your request from foreign countries, many of them from India or the Philippines.
Their writing samples look acceptable but once you get the finished product from them oftentimes you find out you just got punked!
Understand me, I’m not trying to put down or insult anyone. I’m just sharing “my” personal experience here.
–Important– I would be less then transparent if I didn’t note, however, that I’ve only used foreign writers. They bid on my posts. I haven’t hired anyone from the U.S. yet and that may be because my price structure is too low.
In fact I’m sure that’s the case. Some people just won’t write a 300 word article for $1.50. Call me cheap.
That being said, I do have a couple of great writers, one from India and one from the Philippines who turn out well researched and written material. The problem can be finding one who has the staying power and can put out consistently.
Writing good articles does require a little work. You have to do some research if you’re not familiar with the topic and then be able to put it all together in an informative well thought out article.
Understand that many article writers have no idea or knowledge about the topics you’re giving them to write about.
So if you want someone to write you a quality article about electronic drums, personal fitness trainers or even orthodontics, for instance, just remember that they’re literally starting from scratch.
Many times you will find writers who simply go out to the web and snatch, or article scrape, a sentence here and a sentence there and then throw it all together in an article that makes no sense at all. It’s very obvious so just be aware of this.
I believe this is very common and done often because there are many pieces of software available which can go out and scrape content from the web. Unfortunately many writers do this because they bid on tons of contracts, have tons of projects in progress and deadlines they really can’t meet.
So ‘they’ hire out their projects at lower rates to others who can’t write. Thus, you end up with a piece of badly written content.
I’m in the process of ‘test driving’ five writers now; one or two of which I hope will stay around for awhile.
Give Clear Instruction To Your Writers
I don’t consider myself anal, but it’s so, so, so frustrating when you think you’ve explained yourself and you get back something totally not what you wanted. Going back and forth with your writers can be a pain as well. So be very specific when when giving instruction.
Hire Someone to Write For You
It’s not all gloom and doom and you don’t have to have a great writer, just a good one. Writing content is a huge part of internet marketing and something that can’t be avoided.
Hiring a good writer will free up a lot of your valuable time so you can take care of other business. It will take some time to find someone who you’re comfortable with.
Of course if you’re willing to pay three to five dollars for an article I think it will cut down your ‘test drive’ time.
