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A while back, I wrote an article on how to start a business with no money by becoming a freelance writer.  This time, I’ll look at freelance writing from the other perspective.  If you are looking to hire someone to write for you, here are some tips to successfully hire a freelancer.

“Slow To Hire, Quick To Fire”

The first rule that entrepreneurs need to live by is this, “Slow To Hire, Quick To Fire”.  Entrepreneurs just cannot afford to make mistakes when it comes to hiring people.  It’s better to take the time to evaluate someone than to fire someone when things don’t work out.  Because you’re hiring a contractor, it is however, easier to fire someone but that’s just a waste of time.  With that said, I believe referrals are still the best way when it comes to hiring anyone.  But when I started, I did not know of any freelance writers and had to go to Guru, oDesk, and Elance.  The writers I have now are from Elance.

Creating The Job Post

In creating the job proposal, I try to be as specific as I can in the qualifications.  There’s an option to select what skills the job is for, such as ghostwriting, web content, blogs, English, etc.  I try to select as many of them as it is applicable.  I also state in the job description what the writing topic is.  There are certainly writers who can do the research and then write about the topic.  That’s fine.  If any apply, they will have to show that they did the research in their writing (I’ll talk more about that later).  But typically, I like someone who know the topic.

Eliminate Job Proposals

Once the job description is posted, the process to eliminate providers begins.  There will be lots of proposals that come in.  I usually get about 20-25 each time I post a job.  In my first round of eliminations, this is what I do.  Decline proposals that:

• Does not mention the details of the job description in the proposal.  There are a lot of automated responses that look really good and just try to get as many jobs as possible.  If they are that impersonal with the selection process, how much more when they actually work for you.
• Does not contain correct grammar or spelling in the proposal.  I can’t believe this one myself.  The first impression I get is a bad one.  Did they even look at the skills that were required?  Grammar and spelling.  I understand that there are language differences.  But if you can’t tell if it’s correct grammar or not, then you should pass.
• The writing sample included does not contain grammar or correct spelling.  Some pass the second test but when I go look at their sample writings, it’s the same.

Test Their Writing

After this, you should be left with say 5-7 providers.  Now, contact each of them and see how quickly (or slowly) they respond.  Decline all the ones that do not get back to you within 24 hours.  By now, you have looked at their writing samples.  The next step is to see how they write for you on your topic.  Consider these questions:

• Do you like how they structure the paragraphs?
• Do you like the voice in the article?
• Are you engaged in reading it or is it very dry and boring?

You want to find out these things.  In your communication with them, say you want to hire them to write just one article for you.  From then, you will decide whether to reward them for the entire job.  In Elance, you can award more than one provider with the job.  To setup the sample article, create a milestone for it and say how much you will reward once that milestone is completed.  What’s nice is how Elance breaks tasks down into milestones.  They allow the employer to essentially remove the provider from the job if the task isn’t up to to standard.  So let’s say a job was worth $50.  It is for 10 articles.  This is how I setup the milestones for each provider with the sample article task included:

• Milestone 1: call it sample article.  Fund the Escrow with just $5.
• Milestone 2: call it whatever you want.  This would be for 9 articles, worth $45.  You don’t need to fund this until the provider completes the first milestone and I want to continue to work with them.

You could still break milestone 2 further by doing articles 2-5 and then articles 6-10.  It just depends on you.

At this point, you hired the 5-7 providers to each write a sample article for you.  Set a deadline for them so they have some motivation to complete it on-time.  If they can’t, I decline because that shows they can’t adhere to deadlines and it’s not what I want.  Maybe you don’t care about that, but for me, that was a big one.  When the articles come back, check their grammar and spelling.  Maybe there are some things you want them to change or a format you want them to follow.  I tell them exactly what I want and ask to have the edits made.  I want to see how flexible they are and how willing they are to make edits on their writing.  If they aren’t willing to make edits (I had one), I decide to not award them.

Finally, make sure the writing is unique.  Copyscape offers a free service that tracks if the content looks like something else on the internet.  It takes a URL that you provide and scans the internet.  That URL should be a page on a blog that has the full writing samples.  If it comes back with anything, you know to remove that provider.  This is what I do:

• Create a subdomain under my root domain.  For example, If my main domain was myblog.com, I would create a subdomain called submit.myblog.com.
• Install WordPress on that subdomain and add each article as a post.
• Submit the URL of the homepage to the Copyscape website.

Final Thoughts

Before I started this process, I thought I would most certainly hire someone from the US or UK.  Turns out the one that I originally hired that was from the US never submitted the work on time and did not respond to my emails in a timely manner.  Although the writing was good, I just could not justify hiring someone like that.  I had a few that were not flexible and were unwilling to make edits to the writing.  Some plainly did not message me back once the writing was submitted.  That was really irritating.

The person that I ended hiring the second time is from India.  The writing wasn’t great but it was doable.  The person was timely with the writing submissions.  This person’s sample article was actually submitted sever days before the deadline for the providers I was considering.  This person had no problems making edits and following the format I wanted.  Now, I ask for a .doc format and if everything looks good, I ask the article to be posted on a site.  I can then take the HTML format and do a straight copy and paste into wherever I want it.

Overall, it’s been a good learning process.  I kept an open relationship with the writers I did not eventually hire.  But because I already evaluated them, they are good ones to hire if I need something in the future.  Here again are the points summarized:

1. Be specific in posting job description
2. Eliminate providers that responds with generic proposals
3. Decline providers that has grammar or spelling mistakes in proposal or sample writing
4. Create milestone to see sample article writing
5. Decline providers that don’t respond in timely manner, or is inflexible.
6. Going rate for an article- $5 for a 400-500 word article.