Don’t have the writing skills or time to manage writing effectively? Are you feeling a bit lazy?

As a small business owner, you know how challenging it can be. Sitting at your desk all day, you have countless articles to write for your blogs and social media channels. But fear not!

With the ever-increasing growth of quality content online, your content needs to be epic to cut through the competition and reach the top 5 positions on Google. If you write everything yourself, you’ll quickly burnout!

It’s time to outsource content writing.

But in the process, make sure your wallet won’t get burnt!

Let’s dive deep into why, how, and where to outsource your blog writing tasks. This in-depth blog post will guide you through the process.

So, if you’re ready to outsource your blog writing, let’s get started and take your blogging and content marketing to the next level!

Should you outsource content writing?

Outsourcing blog content creation gives you enough time to focus on more important aspects of your business like marketing, social media promotion, brand awareness, getting leads, email marketing, and others.

By writing blog content on your own, you are losing focus on doing what you are really good at.

👍 Why should you outsource content creation?

• Fresh perspective: If you are the sole writer for your blog, you may be presenting content from a perspective that could be boring for your readers. By outsourcing blog content, you can bring in a fresh perspective to your blog.
• Lack of writing skills: If you are not proficient in writing or simply not good at it, outsourcing your content is a viable option.
• Access to a large talent pool: Outsourced content benefits from the availability of a large talent pool online. For instance, my fitness site has a nutritionist writing for it. It’s challenging to find an in-house team member who is both a nutritionist and a skilled writer.
• Meeting deadlines: If you find it difficult to stick to your writing deadlines, outsourcing blog content to a dedicated writing team can be the solution.

👎 When you shouldn’t outsource content creation?

• Priority on blog content: If the content on your blog is the main priority for you, and you believe that writing quality content yourself is crucial for your blog’s success, then it may not be the right time to outsource.
• Skill improvement: If you want to hone your writing and copywriting skills, writing content on your own can act as a growth-hacking opportunity for you to improve.
• Budget constraints: If you don’t have the budget to hire a writer with good writing skills, as it can be costly, then it may be more feasible to continue writing content yourself. Please note that the article written by the author of BloggingX charges at least $100 per 1000 words when writing for other digital marketing blogs.

Where to find good freelance writers?

There are dozens of places where you can look for writers whom you can outsource your blog writing work.

You can find various platforms online where you will get good freelance writers.

Outreach site writers

For this, you need to reach out to the writers who are writing for your competitor sites. You can make use of tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush for finding out your site’s organic competitors.

You will come across at least 3-4 freelance writers who are writing for your competitor sites.

Now make sure that their content is getting good organic traffic and engagement. It speaks a lot about the quality of the content they are writing.

Here’s the workflow:

• Make a list of small blogs in your niche that have really good content and are ranking well.
• Use a good email finding tool to extract the emails of those sites’ freelancers/owners.
• Now make sure you reach them out properly.

Example of an email that I receive once a month or two, by looking at the quality of content on my site.

Outreach

With this technique you usually get very high quality content writers who already have written content on their blog that is performing well on Google.

Believe me.

It doesn’t mean that if the blog owner has not advertised on his/her blog as a freelancer, he doesn’t accept your inbound freelance offer.

This technique will definitely give you good writers, but cost can be quite high.

Hiring niche enthusiasts

This is a good strategy if your niche is quite obscure, and you can’t find quality content writers through competitor blog research.

You can consider browsing places like FB groups, Quora, Niche forums, Reddit, to get a good writer for your niche site.

Once you come across a niche enthusiast who has proven his writing skills in the form of forum discussions, it’s time to somehow get his email, or drop him a message in the forum/group itself.

Believe me, majority of the niche enthusiasts are clueless about the fact that they can earn like $20 – $100 by writing about what they love.

This technique lands you good writers and cost can be low.

However, it is necessary to invest some time in educating them to align with your workflow. Since they are accustomed to forum posting, they may have limited experience in blog writing, SEO, and formatting.

Problogger job board (What to expect?)

The next best place for you to find quality writers for your blog is Problogger job board.

I prefer it to Upwork and other platforms because of the below reason.

If you hire writers on Problogger, it means that you are pre-qualifying the writers and saving a lot of time and effort. Writers on the Problogger Job board have a strong understanding of blogging and SEO.

Since this platform is exclusive to hiring bloggers and writers, you can expect high-quality content if properly filtered.

However, the challenging aspect of the Problogger platform is that you cannot accurately assess the writers through reviews, job success rates, and feedback.

You will need to take on the responsibility of thoroughly interviewing the candidates, which I will discuss later in this post.

This platform is recommended if you are specifically looking for marketing, social media, or any type of digital marketing content. Based on my experience, there are also good tech, SaaS, and finance writers available.

Upwork

The quality of writers you get at Upwork is poor! I can hear you muttering in your mind.

Let me tell you one thing.

If you have a good budget and the ability to set the right expectations before hiring, Upwork is the most flexible place to hire from. It offers a wide talent pool to choose from.

Using a platform like Upwork helps streamline your workflow by automating invoicing, billing, and security in one place.

However, despite keeping 20-30% of the payment, the Upwork platform is often buggy and experiences frequent downtime, sometimes for hours at a time. This is quite unfortunate.

But the talent pool and the streamlined workflow is a big advantage.

To find excellent profiles, it is important to know how to search for the right keywords and apply appropriate filters.

By utilizing advanced filters, you can effectively identify skilled writers who are eager to take on new projects.

For instance, I search for writers who possess a combination of skills. If I need writers who can write about different email marketing platforms, I may consider copywriters who are already using various platforms and have experience in blog post writing.

Questions to ask yourself before hiring (Self-talk involved)

How much am I willing to pay?

Before outsourcing your content work, you need to first set a budget for your content writing. You can set a fair budget with the below techniques.

• Asking your friends in the same niche regarding what they are paying or what they think is fair.
• Browsing Upwork for your niche keywords, and reading the reviews or maybe portfolio content.

For niches like health, fitness, tech, the ideal price would be $15 – $20 per 1000 words. That’s the sweet spot I found between quality and price. Most of my writers are from Philippines, I prefer them to Indians as they are good in English.

You can also get content for as low as $5 per 1000 words. But I won’t really pay that low price, provided the content topic is basic and not specialized.

The above prices are what I’m paying. But do remember that the price depends upon the research needed to write an article.

Don’t be afraid to pay a good price for the articles. Hiring a good writer at a premium price, saves you a lot of time and energy spent in proofreading the content, asking revisions, typing in long feedbacks, and formatting the content.

Pro tip: You can hire a good low price writer (like $25 per 1000 words) from developing countries like Philippines, Pakistan, India, who are good at research (but most of the times bad at Grammar).

How involved in the writing process do i want to be?

You can’t expect a writer to magically write content that is top-notch and satisfies your needs.

You need to prepare a content outline, guidelines, keyword usage, resources, explainer screenshots, (apart from the style guide which I’ll discuss below), so that you set the right expectations for the writer to work on.

You can’t really fully quit out of the content creation game, unless you have a team member who can do content outlines for you and is a Google Search ninja!

You need to also consider the fact that you may need to format the content neatly before making it live.

Do I want a specialist or a generalist?

Before hiring a writer you need to first consider whether you need a generic blog writer who writes in every niche, or a specialist.

For example, as I said, I have a nutritionist writing for my fitness blog. In this case, he is a specialist writer.

If a writer writes in multiple niches like tech, fitness, etc. ,he is a generalist. If you are looking for top-notch content, generalist writers are not the way to go.

On the other hand specialist writers are quite costly ranging from $25 – $2000. Yup! There are writers who charge $2000 per 1000 words and even more in some niches like law, medicine, etc.

Finding a specialist writer at $25 per 1000 words is quite challenging.

But you need to be creative while searching a for a writer like this.

Secret tips on hiring best content creators (Shh!)

I have a couple of affiliate niche sites, for which I hire content creators.

Here are some of the tips that worked wonders for me, when it comes to hiring the best content creator for my websites.

Giving reasons for applying by high quality writers.

1. Hire them for the entire project: Hire high quality writers always for long-term work. In case of Upwork, if you set budget for the entire contract beforehand, the quality and quantity of the applicants will be high.
2. Showcase personality as an employer: Nobody likes to work for an employer who is not cool-going, and does not encourage creativity. You need to treat your employee as a team member, that’s where creativity kicks in. Money is not always the thing. People do not work for money, they work for momentum. You need to give that freedom for creative thinking and experimenting the things. Will you give them multiple topic choices every time to write about? Will you publish the articles under their name? Will you allow them to present the content under their portfolio?

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”- Simon Sinek

You need to present your business mission and vision with your writers. Humans connect with emotions more than money.

Ask writers to apply with a particular subject line

You write a very elaborative job description. But do the job applicants actually read them?

The answer is, the majority of them don’t bother to read along.

To ensure that the writers who apply for your job post, read the complete job description before applying, you need to ask them to include a secret keyword in the cover letter.

With this, the process of weeding out applicants who send the resumes or cover letters for all the projects in bulk will become easier. You can easily filter out lots of trash resumes, and this helps you focus on people who took time to read your description.

Ask insightful questions (Hint: drive indirect inferences)

You need to ask questions that drive indirect inferences about the quality and the motive of the job applicants.

“If you don’t ask insightful questions, you won’t get insightful answers.”

Remember that the questions should test their traits not their skills:

1. What is keyword density? (A simple Google search gives them the answer)
2. How many years of experience you have? (Years of experience has nothing to do with quality of the content)

Here are some insightful questions to ask:

• Have you guest posted on any popular {fitness} blog? Determine if the writer has published guest posts on popular fitness blogs, as this indicates their writing quality and validation from reputable sources. It demonstrates that the writer’s work has been recognized and approved by the owners of those blogs.
• What {fitness} blogs do you read? Assess the writer’s expertise and specialization in the fitness niche by asking about the blogs they regularly read. If the writer is actively engaged in reading high-quality fitness blogs, it suggests that they stay updated with the latest trends and developments in the industry. This indicates a higher likelihood of them being a specialist in the niche.
• What’s your research technique for new posts? Evaluate the writer’s research process to ensure they conduct thorough research alongside their writing. Research and writing are separate processes, and a writer who follows a comprehensive research technique is more likely to produce well-informed and accurate content. Ask about the sources and publications they refer to for writing articles in your niche. Determine if they use any outlining or research tools and their overall workflow. This provides insights into their experience, productivity, and organizational skills.
• What’s your proofreading and editing process like? Assess the writer’s proofreading and editing practices to ensure the quality of their work. A satisfactory answer to this question indicates that the writer takes the necessary steps to refine their articles. Inquire about their process for rephrasing complex sentences, checking for typos and grammar errors, trimming down paragraphs, including relevant hyperlinks, and improving article introductions. Discuss the proofreading techniques and tools they use, emphasizing the importance of manual proofreading to avoid grammatical errors.
• Do you implement SEO into your writings? Inquire about the writer’s understanding and implementation of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques in their writing. SEO-friendly articles are essential for blog success. Ask about their familiarity with SEO terms such as keywords, keyword density, LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) or related keywords, meta descriptions, alt tags, and keyword placement. Prior experience with SEO is always preferred, although educating a writer about SEO after hiring is possible.
• What is your turnaround time and weekly availability? Determine the writer’s ability to meet deadlines and their availability for consistent work. Inquire about their typical turnaround time for delivering articles and their weekly availability to ensure they can accommodate your content needs. This helps avoid potential frustrations caused by writers who may unexpectedly take extended vacations without informing.
• Do you have any suggestions regarding our blog content? Evaluate the writer’s ability to provide valuable input and suggestions for improving your blog content. A freelancer who can identify areas for improvement demonstrates their attention to detail and commitment to delivering high-quality work. Beware of writers who only praise your content without offering any constructive feedback, especially if you are looking to enhance your blog’s quality.
• How do you know whether a fact is from a credible source? Assess the writer’s ability to distinguish between credible and unreliable sources when researching and incorporating facts into their articles. Research-backed posts are vital for any blog, and being able to identify credible sources such as research articles and scholarly publications ensures the reliability and accuracy of the content. Inquire about their methods for verifying the credibility of sources, differentiating them from personal blogs or affiliate sites.
• What other services do you provide? Ask the writer about the additional services they offer besides writing. Knowing their other skills and services allows you to assess the quality of their work through the intersection of their various capabilities. For example, a writer who also offers copywriting, eBook writing, or landing page design may provide a more comprehensive and versatile approach to meet your content needs.

Scrutinize writers properly

Once you get a huge list of applicants, it’s time to filter out mediocre applicants.

As you may have witnessed in the previous section, if you have asked quality questions, it will do a good job of filtering outthe mediocre applicants without much effort on your end.

You need to look at the following aspects before considering to outsource blog content.

They should have:

• Quality content
• SEO knowledge
• Quick turnaround time
• Social proof (whether they have published on popular blogs)
• Motive (to deliver quality content apart from money)

The last aspect, “motive” is really important. People always don’t work for money. Good writers won’t sacrifice their passion for money. So, you need to find writers who are truly passionate about writing in your niche or else the quality will be junk.

The writer who writes only for money without having any superior motive won’t stick long enough and won’t deliver quality work.

If you are paying anything above $25 – $35 per 1000 words, you need to always find writers who have true passion for writing in the given niche.

How to get the best of blog outsourcing?

This is a must read section.

Go through this section carefully to get the best out of blog outsourcing.

Let’s dive in

Content Style Guides and Content Templates

Style guide is a document containing content rules.

This guide helps all writers working for brand to be consistent when it comes to style, punctuation, usage of words, capitalization, so on.

There’s no hard and fast rule to follow a syntax for content style guide.

Content style guides are common for the entire brand/blog.

1. Which English to use American/Britain?
2. Consistent spellings for some words with various spellings. Like eBooks vs EBooks vs e-books. I advise writers to stick to one variant
3. Whether to capitalize heading texts?
4. Typical size of the paragraphs.
5. How to source relevant resources?
6. How to make use of formatting tags?
7. How to cite images?
8. Whether to use the serial comma or skip the last comma?
9. So on.

I have separate Content Templates for my informative posts, review posts, comparative posts, of a single blog.

In those templates, I describe:

1. The elements to include in the introduction
2. How to structure the blog post for that type of topic?
3. Common questions to answer in the specific section
4. In what instances you need to put the bullets or numbered lists?
5. Tips that are particular for that content type.
6. Do you expect them to create a comparison table for some kind of blog posts?
7. How to start the introduction for specific types of posts?
8. Where to include the call to action buttons/links in those posts?

Optimize for SEO

As I have discussed earlier, getting content written that’s SEO friendly is very important. You need to make sure that the writer is knowledgeable when it comes to SEO. He needs to know the formatting strategies to keep the readers hooked on to reading your content.

He also needs to know the art of keyword optimizing the article in a natural way, by sprinkling related keywords alongside the main keyword.

If he is not sure about SEO, particularly on-page optimization, you can give him a good on-page SEO guide or prepare a PDF guide relevant to the niche you are working in.

Before assigning any topic for the writer, you need to provide them these things when it comes to SEO.

• Focus keyword
• Keyword usage
• Related keywords
• Bullet points
• Formatting rules
• Outbound linking rules
• So on.

Even if the content writer is not familiar with SEO optimization, you can negotiate the deal, and you can handle SEO optimization on your own.

Collaboration tools

Having good collaboration tools in your workflow is very important to get the most of your freelance writers.

You can make use of tools like Trello, Slack and Google Docs to collaborate with your writers. I generally keep my editorial calendar in Trello, ask my writers to submit the Google Docs link as a comment in Trello once they finish writing the article.

You can make use of Slack for communication with the team that you outsource to.

I’ve heard people making use of only Gmail for collaboration, it’s just a waste of time, energy, and when the project starts rolling, you lose track of the milestones.

Validate topics before writing

Before assigning topic to the writer, you need to research the topic properly.

The main advantage of writing your own content is that while writing the article if you come across the fact that the topic you are writing about is useless, you can discard the draft without even completing the writing process.

But in case of outsourcing content creation, the writer does the job of writing, and your job is to just outsource the work and you are out of the scene.

Before, outsourcing an article to a writer, you need to first thoroughly validate whether you really need an article on this topic.

At the first impression, article idea seems pretty legit. So, it’s quintessential for you to prepare an article outline or at least do a mental visualization of what to expect in the article before outsourcing it to the writer.

Prepare outline for every article

Majority of the ideas come only when you research the topic yourself.

Without including an outline of what you expect in the article, you are sacrificing the quality of the content to a very large extent.

I committed this mistake where I just gave the blog post idea or the title, and that’s it.

Content outline

You need to make use of tools like Workflowy or even simple Docs to provide a brief outline, along with some notes to your writer. Treat outline as a skeleton of your blog post for which your writers need to attach strong muscles.

Along with the outline, you need to also include some notes, where you describe special things they need to consider when writing that particular blog post.

You should include things like target audience (including their FAQs), keyword usage, keywords, things to exclude, research tips, and special article-specific instructions in your blog post outline.

Providing this kind of outline prevents you from ending up with irrelevant article.

If you don’t have time and resources to prepare an outline, you can ask your writer to submit the article outline, then you tweak it according to your taste, and resubmit to get the final draft done.

Treat first article submission as a first draft

No content is perfect. There’s always a room for improvement.

Asking for edits, refinement and proofreading after the first submission is very crucial if you are working with medium-rated writers paying below $40 per 1000 words.

Investing some time going through the content, and giving constructive feedback to the writers about their work is worthwhile and gives a significant boost in quality for your current and as well as future articles.

When giving feedback, you need to be extremely specific, make use of screenshots, annotations, etc. If you are using Google Docs, make use of “comments” features to pin-point the section of the article on which you are giving feedback.

Have a video call regularly

You can hop on a quick Skype or Hangouts, to get to know about the writer. This is really important. It helps you develop that humanly touch with the writer.

You can also use screen sharing feature to explain what you expect from them. They will also get their doubts clarified instantly.

You or your writer may say , “Let’s chat by text!”.

But, the sad thing about text messages is that it lacks human connection, thus leads to less commitment, and it in turn leads to low quality work. Ask any companies that run solely with a remote team, whether it be Buffer or companies like Automattic (founders of WordPress) video calls are their secret tools for excellence.

Added to that, in text chats the expression of the ideas and concerns are limited by the speed of your fingers.

Hence, having regular video calls is very important to ensure that your freelancer will stay committed and delivers top-notch content by understanding what you expect clearly.

How to lower the cost for your blog outsourcing?

Listen.

Minimizing the cost involved in getting content written for your site helps a lot for you to get more content created for your blog

Look for university students

You can make use of LinkedIn (Job title – Student) and other portals to find university students who are passionate aboutwriting for your blog niche.

I came across a student from Alaska, who was writing for my fitness blog at $7 per 1000 words. She could not continue working with me, as she had exams.This maybe a downside.

You can also consider reaching out to university faculties or the principals and express your interest in hiring some of their students as writers for your blog.

However, if you are looking for people who are niche experts, this may not be an option for you many times.

Ask them to write only 90% of your target word count

Suppose if I want an article of 1000 words, I usually ask my writer to write only 900 words and pay for it.

Why?

I can add the remaining 100 words so as to fit my brand’s style. I can add human tone, pun, questions, and add some chunk of text to make content more engaging and to keep readers hooked in.

If you want the article to best suit your brand, you need to add some additional texts, to make it extremely readable.

Make a long term contract or pay for bulk orders

Who doesn’t like to see huge cash flowing in at once?

Every writer likes to have some security or certainty about the coming months. Instead of paying for articles, gig-by-gig, you can consider paying for bulk orders in advance. With this, they’ll get a commitment to work and you can feel free to negotiate and make it a sweet deal.

But if you are hiring some writer, without any referral this can be quite risky initially. To make it safe, you can implement this strategy after working with the writer for a couple of months.

You can also consider hiring a writer who has good online presence, FB profile, and proper blog/brand online so that there are slim chances of him running away looting your money.

If they are sure that you give them ongoing work, they will be happy to write their heart out and aim for continuous improvement.

In addition to paying for bulk orders in advance to provide security and certainty for the writer, you can also consider creating contracts that lead to commitments and require signatures.

You can look out for some free contract templates.

Or you can also use Canva or even Notion to create a contract PDF and share it with the freelancer.

This helps establish a professional agreement between you and the writer, ensuring a clear understanding of expectations, deliverables, and payment terms. Contracts provide a sense of commitment and can protect both parties involved in the outsourcing arrangement.

Compensate in another way

In addition to monetary compensation, there are other ways to creatively compensate your freelancers and keep them motivated:

1. Provide additional clients: Offer your freelancers the opportunity to work with other clients or projects you may have. This not only increases their workload but also exposes them to different experiences and challenges.
2. Access to premium products: Grant your freelancers access to any premium products or services you own. This could include software tools, online courses, or exclusive resources that can enhance their skills and knowledge.
3. Network access: Introduce your freelancers to your professional network, which can open up new opportunities for collaborations or future projects. Networking connections can be invaluable for their professional growth.
4. Community inclusion: Include your freelancers in any relevant communities or forums where they can connect with like-minded professionals. This fosters a sense of belonging and provides them with a support system.
5. Consultancy services: Offer your freelancers the chance to consult with you on specific projects or provide input on strategy and planning. This recognizes their expertise and allows them to contribute beyond their writing duties.

By implementing these additional forms of compensation, you can create a mutually beneficial relationship with your freelancers, encouraging their loyalty and dedication to delivering high-quality work.

Wrapping up

These are some of the ways by which you can hire and manage good quality writers.The quality of the work mainly depends on how you project yourself to your writer. You need to always look for a win-win scenario.

If you are paying less which the writer thinks is too less, then he may eventually lose interest in writing on your blog.

Hope you found these strategies on outsourcing blog writing helpful. If so, make sure you share this post with your community.

March 28, 2018