If you own a website or blog or want to start one, you already know the critical role that content production plays.
Most people running their own sites write the content themselves and may be you are too.
But there is another way to go about getting new content to publish on your blog.
That is by outsourcing your writing needs to freelancers.
Read on to learn how to hire a freelancer writer in 2019 – and get a good return on money you spend on each order.
Why work with freelance writers?
So you can free up your time and focus on other things.
If you are a marketer, you can spend more time promoting affiliate products.
If you are a business owner, you can spend more time on customer care – or marketing.
If you are a blogger, you can focus on getting links from more authoritative sites.
If you are selling a service or product online you can focus on marketing – to get more people to buy from you – instead of spending time writing article after article.
Other reasons to outsource content creation
To get product reviews / articles you can monetize with affiliate links
To make money off some of the popular products and services in your niche, you can publish reviews on your blog.
Most blog owners usually write product reviews on their own.
Writing such articles usually take hours but the return on the time spent writing them is well worth it – especially when merchants start sending you a percentage of each sale you refer to them every month.
Instead of spending two to three hours writing one article reviewing one product (or a list of products), you can spend some money on outsourcing, get the article written by someone else, publish it on your blog and reap the rewards by monetizing it with your own affiliate links.
Outsourcing one such article can take you ten to twenty minutes. You can then spend another ten to fifteen minutes to review the finished copy before publishing it on your blog.
Or the freelance writer you hire can upload the article to your WordPress site saving you even more time.
Get more content by working with multiple writers at the same time
If you hire one writer you can get back one to three articles in a day or week.
Same thing if you have to write blog posts yourself.
But if you have money to spend on outsourcing, you can get much more written in the same time frame – by working with multiple writers.
Instead of waiting for your writer to finish one article before you send them the next one, you can distribute different post titles to two or more writers.
Get quality content at cheaper rates by hiring writers from other countries
You can order content at $0.10 per word or less if you hire a writer from a less developed country and still get content of similar quality you’d expect from a US content marketing agency / native English speaker.
If you live in United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Australia you probably know of at least one marketer/company that outsources writing to content writers in India, Philippines or Kenya.
If you are looking for a writer that charges less per word/project, consider hiring from UpWork or any other freelance marketplace.
Look for writers from Kenya and Philippines for example.
Outsource your writing to them.
Pay less per post without sacrificing on quality.
Give your writer access to an editing and proofreading tool like Grammarly if you don’t want to spend a lot of time correcting any mistakes they make.
Spend more time on content promotion instead of content creation
If you already know how the value of content accrues over time (learn more in this post) it might be a good idea to just order content from freelancers instead of sitting down for hours coming up with new articles yourself.
Hiring a writer leaves you plenty of room to do content promotion. Marketers who work with writers often just review content they get back, press publish then spend their time on outreach.
They do their best to give each piece of content they publish a chance to be seen by as many people as possible.
Much of their time is spent on acquiring links, using paid ads to drive visitors to their websites from social networking sites, and on content syndication (by allowing bigger blogs in their niche to republish their content).
Get someone specializing in the niche you are interested in to create content for you
Some of the best content you can get as an online marketer is content from writers experienced on the topic you hire them to write on.
If you are a dentist for example, you can hire a university student studying dentistry to write content for your blog / website.
You can focus on your practice, get good content at reasonable rates and continue growing your site publishing new posts (from your writer) each month.
Get more in-depth content by hiring a professional who can write on a specific topic if you can. If that is not possible, you can still get content by hiring a general freelance writer – someone who can research and write content for you on lots of different topics.
Target more low competition keywords
If writing content for high volume / high competition keywords leaves you little time to create content around low competition keywords (that can still bring in good leads) you should consider outsourcing.
While you create long-form content targeting high competition keywords, get a freelance writer to write shorter posts for your other keywords.
Publish as much content as you can on a topic with the help of other writers.
Then interlink all related posts so your site becomes one of the best resources for a particular topic in the eyes of readers and search engines.
Structure your site in such a way that each topic you write on has one main article and one or more related posts linking to it (siloing).
Budget: What is the cost of hiring a freelance writer
It depends.
Some writers charge per post. Some charge per word. There are writers who charge US$ 0.01 per word. Some charge $0.10 per word or more.
The rate is often determined by how much work research/writing work is involved.
Different topics also attract different rates.
I charge $0.04 to $0.08 per word for example. If you are interested in working with me, you can use the contact form here to get in touch.
You can order 1000-word articles from me – or hire me to write longer articles of 2500 to 3000+ words.
800-word articles in a niche such as blogging/marketing/business often cost 50 US dollars or less.
If you are interested in working with a freelance writer this year, you probably need that much for your first article.
If you are not strict with word count, you can allow your writer to write as much as they want for the same amount of money.
If you want to order multiple articles, then be ready to commit a few hundred dollars each month to this.
The process of hiring a content writer
- Do keyword research first. Most keyword research tools can show you how competitive different search terms are.
- Determine which topics you want to outsource first. Create a list of post titles.
- Outline the first post you want to outsource just to give your writer a rough idea of what you want them to write.
- Put together instructions you want your writer to adhere to – instructions on word count, structure and sources.
- Get a writer from various freelance marketplaces or content writing agency websites such as UpWork. If you like you can hire a writer in your niche by going directly to their blog and sending them an email to enquire about their writing services.
- Negotiate. Ask how much the writer would charge for the job. Once you agree on the amount to pay them, and you are confident in their ability to write quality posts, send them the work.
- Review the content you get back from your writer. If there are any corrections to be made, ask them to edit the post. You can share a Google Docs so that you are able to review any changes they make in real time.
- Pay them once you are satisfied with the final draft. At this point you can upload the post to your WordPress backend. Save it as Draft, hit publish or Schedule it to publish at a later date.
- Repeat the process if you like the experience of working with freelance writers.
Test different monetization methods
To get a good return on money you spend on outsourcing, publish the content you get from your freelance writer then add ads or affiliate links to it.
See which monetization method performs best.
If you don’t want to use ads or affiliate links, use the content pieces to promote your products / services directly to your website / blog visitors.
If you go this route, make sure to link to sales pages, FAQ page and contact forms on your site.