How to hire freelance writers: how do you hire them, pay them, test them
Recently I wrote about how to get success by authoring multiple blogs where I identified the problems. It doesn't take a genius to work out that time is going to be a massive factor.
Authoring one blog and being *serious* about it takes time; you need to write consistently good content as often as you can. Therefore adding a second blog to your list will either take time away from your original one (bad idea) or increase the amount of time you need to spend blogging - which can be problematic depending on your situation. Therefore it's not unreasonable to contemplate hiring a freelance writer to make life easier... Here is my guide to doing so.
Why would you want a freelance writer?
As I said in my guide to authoring multiple blogs it's easier to build 5 websites that get 5,000 visitors a day than it is to build one website that gets 25,000 a day. So splitting your efforts into separate ventures could well be more profitable. Time is the real constraint so hiring a freelance writer will help.
How do you find one?
Most freelance websites will have writing areas; mostly populated by people wanting bloggers. Look in places like Project4Hire (who have writing specific bits) but the best place is probably the Problogger Jobs Board because you'll reach aspiring writers more directly.
Payment
Obviously you'll need to pay the writer somehow. Quite a few people opt to pay on a per-post basis under the premise that the writer delivers [x] amount of good posts per month. So $5 per post for 15 posts a month will set you back $75 per month, but correctly monetised you should see a return on that (provided you still set aside time for hardcore promotion). Alternatively you could offer a percentage of ad revenue generated across the website (giving the writer an incentive to not only write good content but help you market the site). A combination of both works well too.
Intellectual Property
It's up to you whether you own the ideas expressed within the content - it's quite normal for a freelance writing agreement to mean the writer signs over the intellectual property of that content. Therefore it's worth stating in the agreement (see later) that the writer signs over the content to you once they have been paid for it.
Do I tell my readers that the content isn't written by me?
That's entirely your decision - but it may alter the pricing structure you need to offer. Sometimes writers will undertake blogging contracts with you as a chance to add to their freelance portfolio; so for you to claim that you wrote the post would detract from that somewhat. It's your decision at the end of the day, I'm not going to express personal opinion on this matter.
The Freelance Writing Agreement
Because you're only dealing with small amounts of money it's not really worth getting anything too formal down; but it is absolutely worth receiving written confirmation that the writer agrees to your terms and conditions. This is useful if there's some dispute over IP or payment. Therefore you should spend some time writing the agreement before posting the job advert - you can define the payment plan, whether they own the IP and the quality of the content - this leads me onto my next point.
Always vet the writer
One of the best things about the Internet is that it brings people from all over the world into a single symbolic location; therefore it's very likely that you'll get applications from people who don't have English as their first language. For this reason you need to vet your applicants. I'm not saying avoid people who have English as a second language, but if your blog is written in English then you need fluid, high quality content in that language.
How do I vet the writer?
You'll want to see a portfolio so you can read their previous wor. It'd also be a good idea to get them to write you a sample post - this is good for two reasons. 1) you can see how informed they are on the topic and 2) you can see what their language is like. If you don't like what you get then you've got decent grounds for dismissing their application (and provide them constructive feedback obviously).
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Showing most recent 4 of 4 comments
It makes more sense (to me) to target content to a specific domain than to saturate this website; despite having had some excellent linux related exposure here before. It’s a tough call.
What I do wonder, however, is if we could have another writer to do a different topic for me. For example, I always liked scale models of WW2-era machines, but I know nearly nothing about them since I’ve only built 2 models in my whole life, and they were done 15 or 20 years ago. I have considered a modeling section for http://ww2db.com in the past, and if I do that, I definitely will hire outside guns. Payment may not be always be money, like you said, since websites don’t always generate so much income to justify it. But I’m sure profit sharing or something along those lines will be agreeable with some outside writers.
You could perhaps do something similar if you want to add an additional few topics to Seopher? For example, your Linux sections aren’t always updated regularly; if Steve gives up updating that section, and instead let another Linux guru writer your Linux posts, he may have time to do one each week (ie. more regularly than your efforts). Just a thought...
I work on a really limited budget and my pages don’t offer enough of an ROI to justify a freelance writer.
Plus I have a distinctive style. If I was going to do this I’d set up an entirely new blog and make it a multi-author sort of thing (using volunteers or freelance). A bit like Fadtastic.net (a web standards blog)
Have you considered doing so for Seopher?