When your internet business grows sufficiently, you must engage a freelancer to do some blog posting and article writing. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to keep up after you have more than 50 or 60 blogs active. Even better, pay one to write one or two eBooks for you. After all, selling your product is where the money is. Who has the time to write all that? So if you want to maintain those blogs up and keep the traffic flowing during your Internet marketing career, you must hire a freelance writer.
There are several books available that teach you how to write articles and how to work as a freelancer. Additional guidelines that explain how to conduct keyword research and incorporate SEO into your content may be found online. But I haven’t found a manual defining how to hire a writer to produce such articles FOR you. As a freelance writer, I’ll also share my criteria to determine which proposals to accept.
Ah, I’ve got you now! Did you believe that all of us freelancers were waiting outside like bridesmaids for you to throw us the bouquet? Well, you’re mistaken. We aren’t. Quite the reverse. Only unemployed freelancers are gathered there waiting for you. Everyone else is gone. Either they’re inexperienced freelancers who lack experience, or they’re awful authors with a bad reputation. Let me explain what we need from YOU if you want a top-notch freelancer.
Posting History – I don’t know if you know this, but writers must pay to join reputable freelance services like Elance. We receive a certain quantity of tokens in return for a monthly fee. And we are required to utilize at least one of those tokens each time we submit a proposal for your job. Therefore, even sending you the requested writing samples costs us money.
That’s not necessarily bad, but we are equally wary of newcomers as you are. We can see how many jobs you’ve listed and how many you’ve awarded by looking at your profile or job posting. I’ve seen too many novices post a job and never award it, so if this is your first job posting, I probably won’t waste one of those tokens by submitting a proposal to you. As I did, you will have to earn your stripes. I won’t waste my money on that if you posted 50 or even 100 jobs and only selected 2 or 3.
How can you avoid this? Give The Job! It’s that easy. If you can’t afford to pay someone, don’t post it.
I’ll remind you once again about your budget. Only beginners and those who aren’t excellent writers are waiting for you to give them a break. Dogs consume bones. Independent authors are not canines. You must pay over $1 for every 500 words if you want a professional freelancer.
Your Request – I’m going to become ugly right here. Why do you think you can DEMAND something from a freelance writer? A freelancer you engage is no longer your servant; they are now your employee. We have more clients besides just YOU. Just a few samples of the job advertisements we encounter every day are as follows:
Whenever I want to Skype or IM you, you MUST be available.
Don’t even bother uploading a sample until you can pass Copyscape.
If you even want us to look at your application, it MUST include “my dog has fleas.”
Daily progress updates are a MUST.
You MUST be a native English speaker.
You must be a master of grammar.
And now for my favorite:
If you ever want to be considered, you MUST submit a 500-word article on the following keyword. – Right, I see. We will have completed all your writing for FREE by then, so you won’t NEED to pay anyone.
I now concur that each of these wants is legitimate. I am a human being, though. You don’t have to shout the word “Must” in my face for me to grasp it. Treat me with the respect I deserve, and refrain from adding the word “or else” to the end of each of your MUSTS if you want ME to submit a bid for your jobs.
You can try to sugarcoat it all you want, but I won’t be at your beck and call all the time. Send me an email or request 15 minutes of my time on Skype if you feel you HAVE to talk to me every day. I work for other clients, so I must be skilled in what I’m doing. While I strive to accomplish it, I don’t need somebody watching over my shoulder. Regardless of the budget, I don’t even waste time reading these job postings since I don’t need the headache.
Let me now describe what we search for when we browse those job listings:
We want to know that you post jobs and promptly reward them. How will we meet your deadline if your bid specifies that you need the work finished in 2 weeks, yet you wait 13 days to award the job?
We need to know that you will provide us with the data we require so that we may finish your task quickly. I just won a task that will take four weeks to complete. The person was expected to deliver 250 articles per week for four weeks. The pay for this enormous job was excellent. So as soon as I heard that this individual was employing me, I declined the number of other well-paying positions. He emailed me 35 different articles over four weeks. Not the 200 that were anticipated. Only 25. Not only was I unable to complete the task for him and receive the payment, but I had also turned down other PAYING jobs to give myself enough time to complete the task.
Please be as descriptive as possible when posting jobs. Saying that you require 200 articles on various subjects merely demonstrates your lack of confidence in your marketing strategies or your reluctance to disclose the project details because you anticipate that doing so will result in higher bids. You must inform us of the topic if you want someone proficient in writing about it. And consider this: You ask us to submit proposals, and you typically select a provider based on pricing and proposal content. You will enjoy it more when we explain how we intend to handle your job. Why do you think we differ from other people? To correctly price our bids, we require information.
We want you to quit telling us that it will just cost you X amount of dollars because it is a simple job. Then YOU are the one who brings us a 1000-page research document to sift through for a single 10,000-word booklet. Do it yourself if you find it to be that simple.
In essence, it comes down to independent contractors being also persons. But you require us more than we need you. Ten other people privately approach us and plead to write for them because they pay us well. There are ten others for every one of YOU who thinks we’re sitting here holding our breath, hoping you’ll give us your job.
Writing for a living is a job. As you do with your websites, we don’t get any residual income from it. We have to sit here and write if we want to get paid. Consequently, if we have offered you a spot on our calendar, you must pay for it. And if you’re going to hire a top-notch freelance writer—one who can deliver on time, speak English, understand SEO, know how to use keywords, hold your hand through the entire process, and blah, blah, blah—then join the queue and hold your breath alongside the others.
Freelance SEO content writer Beamer M. Anderson specializes in the How to Make Money Online market. She is available to write for your website and covers many themes for Examiner.com and Blogcritics.org. For any of your article needs, contact her at White Hat Writing.
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