Freelance Writing Is An Unreliable Industry
Ever since my interview with Chris Bibey I’ve been anxious to learn and get involved more with freelance writers. Fortunately, a few projects have come up over the last few months that have required a lot of content to be written. This was an excellent opportunity to try my hand at hiring freelancer writers.
Programmers and designers who work freelance have a sometimes deserved reputation as being a bit flighty and unreliable. Well, I’m here to tell you that freelance writers have earned the same reputation with me after this experience. I’m not going to mention any names but I’ve hired about half a dozen different writers so far and have only had success with three of them. The others either took the money and ran, never to be heard from again, or they were so slow in getting the finished product to me that they caused delays with my projects. For the most part, I was pretty unimpressed with the quality of work I was finding regardless of the price.
To be fair and balanced I decided to see what life was like on the other side of the transaction. I found someone looking for articles to be written about WordPress. I offered my services for $0.015/word and they agreed. My first article was accepted and I was paid promptly. They were happy enough with my work that they asked for a second article to be written. After the second article was written they said they weren’t happy with the topic (it presented a conflict of interest with the site they would be posting it on) so I agreed to write a third article instead. The third article was written and delivered. I never received a reply on the work and was never paid. It was like they totally vanished off the face of the planet.
So I guess the freelance writing game is tough from both sides. Both buyers and sellers alike can be disappointing and let you down. My suggestion, at least from the buyer standpoint, is to stick to someone like glue once you find a writer that is reliable; no matter what their price is. The money you spend on the writing might be higher than most but the time you’ll save will make it worth it.
Like yourself, I went through several trials and errors with finding a good Ghostwriter for content. It was either a timezome gap, communication gap, and yes, the broken english gap, that can make it a trying experience at best!
I don’t recall where I stumbled upon the folks I currently use, but for the past several months the quality and timely delivery of content from them has been top-shelf!
I don’t want to spam your comments with their website (I their website, when it is actually just a 1-2 man show) but if you want a good reseource, I would be glad to turn you on to them. Just shoot me an email…
Mark
Mark - The Niche Store Builder’s last blog post..Knowing your Niche Market is the First Step to Selling!
Comment by Mark - The Niche Store Builder — May 19, 2008 @ 10:59 am
I was really fired up about this topic before I went and tried writing for pay a bit myself. I should also mention I did all of this on one forum/freelancing site so your mileage may vary depending on where you conduct your business.
Of the three writers I was happiest with one of them had very, very broken English. It was pretty trivial to go through their work and touch things up though. I think in the end, for what I paid, that content was probably some of the best I found.
Comment by Link — May 19, 2008 @ 11:18 am
My best success has been after I developed a relationship with the freelancer. Start small ( single articles) and increase the size of your projects ( paying for 10 articles and more. Not all freelancers are worth it.
See my review of a freelancer at GetaFreelancer.com
I paid this guy $3000+ to do something 5+ months ago and hardly heard from him for months afterward.
http://diarist.com/reviewing-maestros-getafreelancer-com
Marcel’s last blog post..Free ArticleWanted.com articles on handsets, cellular phones gadgets and mobiles
Comment by Marcel — May 27, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
Hey there! In the interest or trying to salvage the reputation of freelancers… =) Not all of us are unreliable, dishonest, nor horrible at English. The company I work for has over 50 native English speaking freelance writers on “staff (they’re IC’s). In fact, just about all of the writers are American. It has taken a lot of time, but that set of writers has been slowly built up. We test every one of them, and we personally monitor their work. Nothing reaches the client without first being edited and Copyscaped. Problem is, a lot of companies aren’t willing to pay more for top notch content. It just goes to show that high quality will rarely have the cheapest price.
Comment by Jennie — May 28, 2008 @ 6:59 am