Check out the video below for a step by step guide on using Upwork.
Before you start posting your job or searching forums for writers, it’s important to know what you’re looking for.
Your list of requirements will be unique, based on the content expertise you are looking for, but here’s a good list to start with:
- Writing skills: As basic as it sounds, there’s nothing more frustrating than bad grammar from a “professional writer.” If you really want to test if applicants are detail-oriented, in your next job posting insert this instruction: “Please mention ‘Blue Moon’ in your application.” If you don’t see “Blue Moon” mentioned in their application it could mean they won’t pay attention to details in your work.
- Basic knowledge: As a minimum, your freelancer should have proven experience writing similar posts and basic knowledge of your industry.
- Confident writing voice: It’s great to be accurate, but a big challenge for any blog is to stop readers from clicking away. Look for a unique writing style and the ability to improve your writing with examples, analogies, and metaphors.
- Commitment to quality: In your interview process, give some feedback. How your freelancer receives your advice is one of the best measures of how well they will work out.
How to get started
You know your blog is a great way to attract interested prospects and build a list of valuable followers.
Not to mention, a regularly updated blog is great for SEO. But more on that another time…
But it could also mean higher costs and a longer search process.
Just like shopping for groceries, if you don’t start with a list it could be an expensive trip to the store.
All that you have to do to get started is sign up, enter your payment information and publish your job ad.
This online marketplace allows you to find up to 16,000 writers living in the United States.
Since Compose.ly values quality over quantity, you’ll find that its prices aren’t as low as content mills. However, this means you can count on it for delivering pieces of content that require little to no editing on your end.
If you’re looking for top-notch writers that can execute more specialized tasks, you may want to opt for a platform that’s 100 percent dedicated to freelance writing. ProBlogger is one such platform. Big freelance portals like Upwork are also great because they attract a huge number of professionals from all parts of the world. Many of the international freelancers working there have native language proficiency but they will charge a smaller amount than a freelancer from the US, UK or Australia, for example.
Contently
Yoast is a free WordPress plugin that gives use the ability to edit our title tags and meta descriptions. This WordPress plugin helps us rank higher in Google because we can control what visitors see when they search for our keywords.
Content Guppy bills itself as a done for you seo content marketing agency. They will create an SEO plan, manage freelance writers (so you don’t have to), and publish seo content on your website.
ProBlogger is one of the most popular and authoritative blogs about blogging on the web. It’s founder, Darren Rowse built the blog from 0 to 312,000 email subscribers who read the daily articles.
So what does it take to choose one platform or another and can you make sure that you’ll get access to the best writing professionals? The answer will depend entirely on your needs and your budget.
As you are finalizing the instructions when hiring a freelance writer, be sure to provide examples as well, if you have them, as this will go a long way toward increasing the success rate of your orders.
This is a place where you might want to go if you have a ton of orders that you need to have completed in a short amount of time that are relatively similar.
With Writer Access, the administration team is stronger, so you can expect to have more guidance when you are looking for the right writer for your work. The biggest difference between Textbroker and Writer Access is that Textbroker is much more of a “content mill.”
That way, when you have future work, you can send work to them directly. This is a great way to increase the success rate on your orders because you know that the writers to whom you are sending work will do a great job for you every time.
Step 2: Decide Which Type of Writer You Need
Then, when you approach BKA Content with content that you need written, BKA Content will help you figure out which team is right for the work that you require. Then, BKA Content will price your work, charge you for it, send it out to their writers, and return it to you when it is finished. Of course, you will set the deadline and get your work back on time.
Then, you can head over to Writer Access and find the right writer for your needs!
The crowd order section is a first-come, first serve location. The first writer to click on the order will claim it. Then, he or she will have to submit the order to you by the deadline.
- Writing quality is paramount. Don’t settle for good writing. You need phenomenal writing. Writing that will capture readers’ attention and get them interested in your company. Find the best writer you can, and pay them what they deserve. It’s absolutely worth it.
- Don’t be afraid to pay for quality. High-quality writers don’t come cheap. Sure, you can pay $50 for a 1,000-word article. But if the writer has poor English skills, isn’t good at following instructions, and is inexperienced, you’re going to have spend at least a couple hundred bucks’ worth of time editing the post before it can go out. Pay to have it done right the first time.
- Think of your readers first. Don’t choose topics and hire writers based on SEO. Before anything else, consider your readers and what information they’re going to find useful and helpful.
- Remember that content marketing isn’t just writing. There’s article formatting, editing, SEO, publishing, distribution, and more. If your writer isn’t well-versed in all of this, that’s okay. But someone has to do it — and that might mean hiring another freelancer.
And there’s more. There’s keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), editing, publishing, and distribution. Are you going to take 15 or 20 hours out of your week to do all of that? It seems unlikely. So what are you going to do?
Asking other members of your industry for recommendations and searching on social media are both great ways of finding writers as well.
Even more goes into the content marketing process. Keyword research, strategizing, performing SEO, distributing your posts, and building links takes time and effort. Do you have time for all of that? And if you do, are you confident that you can create content that’s relevant, useful, and absolutely world-class in quality?
Our best tips on hiring a great writer
- There are a lot of terrible writers out there
- Not all writers are familiar with content marketing and SEO
- Many writers won’t have the style or tone you’re looking for
- Some writers are bad with communication and deadlines
Publishing high-quality, useful information brings readers to your site, shows them the value of your product, and helps turn them into loyal customers. You offer something to them — valuable information — and they give back to you — by buying your product or service.
Here’s a simple visual example of how it works. This is our blog traffic from the past year and a half:
After reading this article, you might be thinking that hiring a freelancer sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. But that couldn’t be further from the truth — outsourcing your content writing is crucial. Unless you have a big in-house team that’s dedicated to writing, editing, researching, optimizing, and publishing a large variety of content, it’s going to be the best option for your business.
Thanks, Lily! Copy tends to be one of those intangibles that people aren’t sure how to value.
The problem is, there’s no one answer to that question. Just like you could pay vastly different prices for a pair of pants at different stores and price points, so too you can pay vastly different rates for a blog writing service. So let’s break it down by what you could pay:
And OK, yes, I might be a bit biased here—this is how I make my living, after all. But for our clients who put us on retainer or pre-purchase a package, our rates per post come out closer to $250–$500 per post, depending on their needs. I’ve set my prices there because it’s a price that seems advantageous to both me and my clients. We shoot for long-term relationships with our clients, and we structure our fees so that we can spend as much time and energy as we need researching and writing—without costing the clients more.
The way at least one of these services works is like this: a client comes in and says, “I want a blog post about the real estate market in Atlanta,” and then a team of hungry writers all jump on it, and the client gets a selection of blog posts on their topic. They choose one, and that writer is paid for her work. In theory, I suppose the writer could choose to buy all of them, maybe over the course of a few weeks, and all the writers would get paid, but there’s no guarantee of that for the writers.
Here’s what I would suggest you ask yourself as you’re considering who to hire to help you out (and how much to pay them):
I recently chatted with a colleague who told me she was using a reputable company referred to her by a BIG name in our circles, and they were charging her $5,500 for four posts per month. I asked her if they were doing all the research, coming up with the topics, the strategy, promoting the posts etc. for that price…
How do they do it? They have economies of scale on their side (just like Wal-Mart). For one thing, they hire a big team of writers. I use the term hire loosely. Their writers do what’s called “working on spec,” which is short for speculation, which means they write the articles with no guarantee of being paid.
I can’t truly judge the quality of the work being turned out by these services because I haven’t seen it first hand. (Which is also why I’m not using the names of the companies—I’m not out to stir up bad blood, here.) All I can do is draw some logical conclusions based on the facts.
I feel like I hit the blog post hiring guide jackpot. This is gold!