freelancing, contentI recently started a couple of websites and whilst I’ve been writing most of the content myself, I’m at a point where I really need freelance writers so I can free up my own time for other tasks.
I’ve tried 3 gigs on Fiverr, a 16c/word job on Zerys and even a more pricey 70c/word job on Creative Ninja, and every single one of them has been absolute rubbish!
Am I approaching this wrong and is there another way to get good quality content from freelancers?
The problem may have less to do with your approach than it has to do with your budget.
Good writers tend to charge by the page or article much like good freelance engineers tend to charge by the day or week. Further, clients tend to find excellent writers rather than the other way around, so the odds of locating them on sites like Zerys are slim.
I’d also stress that nurturing arresting content that will grab your audience’s interest takes time and research. If you’re getting paid by the word, your incentive is to expedite and botch doing so. Worse still, your incentive is to turn short and to the point sentences into entire paragraphs. That makes for abysmal copy that no half-decent writer would want to author – let alone sign.
Lastly, the trick to finding good authors is to hunt them down. When you enjoy reading a blog post or a news article, email its author and ask if they’re available for freelance work.
We also seek writers constantly, and we have found very mixed quality. As Denis pointed out, seek out good ones that you find directly. And when you find one who is really good, make sure they are happy working with you. They are worth their weight in gold!
Besides newspaper writing (full-time and freelancing) I have been developing web content and business-to-business copy for more than a dozen years. The most common reason I turn down projects is low rate. The second most common reason is clients want an inordinate amount of changes (not corrections) at the initial price.
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