How to Hire Freelance Writers – Hint: DON’T Use Fiverr!

When I was first starting out hiring freelance writers, I faced a complete disaster. I had bootstrapped a successful niche website that was making six figures in revenue, but I quickly realized that I needed more writers to keep up with the growth. So, I turned to popular freelance platforms like Upwork and Fiverr to outsource my writing needs. But man – was that a mistake! Instead of getting quality content, I ended up with articles that were so bad that I had to rewrite them myself.

I wasted a lot of time and money on those self-proclaimed “freelance writers.” But I didn’t give up (I just learned a few expensive lessons). In fact, it taught me an extremely valuable process that I’m excited to share with all of you. I developed a system for hiring high-quality freelance writers that won’t leave you broke (and frustrated).

If you’re sick and tired of getting subpar content and wasting your hard-earned money, you’re in the right place. Hiring freelance writers can be a total game-changer for your business, but it’s not always easy. Let me tell you about my experience and share my secrets on how to hire top-notch writers without breaking the bank. So, get ready to streamline your process and revolutionize your content creation strategy!

If you have any questions along the way, shoot me a message, and I’ll be happy to help!

How to Hire Freelance Writers

Step 1: Determine a Budget and Output Needed

The first preliminary step to hiring your writers is answering a few questions:

• How many articles do you want to be published per month? 
• How much are you willing to pay per article? 
• Are these SEO-focused articles with a length requirement?

Depending on the niche, prices for content can vary. Most writers will charge per word. For my website, I knew I wanted to release around 30 articles per month, and I had budgeted $750 per month for this ($25 per article). For $25 per article, I expected to get entry-level writers not located within the U.S. For top-notch niche writers, expect to pay upwards of $500 per article.

I also knew I wanted to focus on getting articles written that would drive affiliate signups. The goal was to spend $750/mo but to make more of that back in profits over time from these articles.

Step 2: Conduct Keyword Research and Draft Article Outlines

One mistake I made early on was assuming writers knew all about SEO. This is typically not the case, especially if you have a low budget. Because of this, it’s worth doing the research on the front end for what keywords you want to rank for. You can use Google Keyword Planner (free) or another keyword research tool of your choice for this.

Create a spreadsheet of the primary keywords you want content for, and draft the titles you’d like for each article that include the keyword. For example, if I researched the term, “Best Dog Leashes” and saw that it’s a low-competition keyword with around 1,000 searches/mo, I may draft the title, “10 Best Dog Leashes to Stop Your Pup from Pulling.” Put these into a shareable content calendar. 

I also HIGHLY recommend creating a content outline for each article. This will include the H2 and H3 headings that you will need for the article to rank based on research. Remember, if you are a marketer – you should be the SEO expert; the writers most likely aren’t! This will make your writer’s job 100x easier because your writers will know exactly what you want to be written, and they just have to fill in the blanks. Yes, it includes extra work from you on the front end, but you will get exactly what you want with minimal revisions. It’s really a win-win.

I also created a “cheat sheet” for my writers, which was essentially a checklist of on-page optimizations to make for each article before submitting it.

Step 3: Create a Shareable Content Calendar with Content Stages

You can use tools like Asana or Monday.com to manage your content, or you can be cheap (like me) and use Google Sheets. I created this Google Sheets content calendar that you can use, which makes it easy to track the progress of articles on a monthly basis. I also let the writers I hired assign themselves articles based on the topics they felt comfortable writing.

Step 4: Create a Hiring Post

Here is where the real fun begins! It’s time to create your first hiring post and open the floodgates. I would steer clear of Fiverr and Upwork and create a post on LinkedIn or writer-focused Facebook groups. Make sure to include the industry you need content for, how much you’re willing to pay per word or article, and how long the articles need to be. In the post, tell the writers to send (3) writing samples. If they send an entire portfolio or less or more than 3 examples, exclude them from your list of potential candidates. We need people who can follow instructions (this will save you a lot of headaches later).

Step 5: “Hire” 10 Writers to Write the Same Article

Out of the writers that send 3 writing samples and are interested in writing for you, choose 10 and give them instructions on an article to write. It should be the same exact topic for the 10 writers. Give them all the same deadline and pay them all for their work.

Do not skip this step! It’s important they all write on the same topic so you can compare apples to apples. It’s tempting to have them all write on different topics so that you have 10 new pieces of content instead of 1, but the investment to weed them out is worth it in the long run (trust me – I made this mistake!).

Step 6: “Fire” 5 of Those Writers

Now, read the 10 articles that were sent to you. You’ll want to choose 5 writers that were the most well-written and followed instructions. These are the 5 writers to whom you will give access to your shared content calendar document and divvy out the work.

Look for things like:

• Are there spelling errors or grammar errors? Or was the content spell-checked?
• Is the content plagiarised? Run it through Grammarly.
• Did the writer follow instructions?
• Did the writer meet the deadline?
• Was the article actually valuable information? Or was it just “fluff”?

Step 7 (Optional): Have an Introduction Call with Each Writer

I think it’s extremely valuable when you can have a ZOOM call with each of your writers. It will put a face to a name and have your relationship more relational rather than transactional. Hmm…a relational relationship; who would have thought? 

And who knows – if your business grows substantially, you may be able to bring some of these people on full-time in the future! You’d be amazed at the difference it makes when your writers know that you care about them and their career aspirations.

Troubleshooting/Common Issues

Payment to International Countries

Payment to freelancers in other countries can be challenging. I encourage all of my writers to sign up for PayPal. Sometimes the country does not allow PayPal, in which case, you’ll need to make the decision on if it’s worth the hassle to go through another payment provider for a single person long-term.

Plagiarism

I have a strict 7% plagiarism rule that I ensure my writers abide by. I use Grammarly to run all articles through to ensure it’s not copied/pasted from another website. If I receive plagiarized content, the writer is given one chance to course-correct, and if it happens again, they do not get any more writing jobs from me and are banned from my content calendar.

AI-Generated Content

I use a free AI content detection tool, which I will link here. If the content is AI-generated, then the writer will not receive any more writing jobs. We hire writers to produce original content, and as Google and other search engines adapt, we do not want our websites penalized for being AI content farms in the long run. Keep in mind; sometimes these AI detection tools are inaccurate – so use your best judgment here.

Writer Outsourcing Content to Other Writers

I eventually learned that one of my freelance writers was farming out the content he was assigned to other writers. The initial article I assigned him during my “weed out” phase was great, but soon the content quality diminished and was inconsistent. I would recommend establishing that the content should not be outsourced on the front end. 

Didn’t Hire Enough Writers

If your writers are swamped and unable to complete the required output of content, then go through the same process as above to hire more writers for the team. Aim to “test out” double the amount of writers that you think you’ll need so you can weed out half or more.

Hired Too Many Writers

If some writers are unable to assign themselves articles due to too many writers competing for work, you have some options. If they are all talented writers, you can create a “content cap” for each writer. I.e., Each writer can only write 5 articles per month (to keep it fair). If you have the budget, you can also release next month’s content early so they have content to work on. And if it is just WAY too many writers, you may need to cut a few for now.