Guide: How to Hire a Freelance Writer for Your Business

Creating and publishing content on a blog is a challenge for most business owners as it requires a lot of time and effort. Taking out such time can harm other operations of your business that you’re responsible for.

Ideally, you want to be more focused on promoting high-quality content rather than creating it. A great way to do that is by outsourcing the content-creating process to a freelance writer. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know before hiring a freelance writer and how you can do so for your business.

Why You Might Want to Hire a Freelance Writer for Your Business

It’s very important to let an expert writer produce content for creating a successful blog for your business. Ideally, you need to be publishing more than 15 times a month, and doing that yourself is highly unlikely, especially if you’re also responsible for running and managing other parts of your business.

Blogging is also important for the SEO of your website as you want your web pages to rank higher in users’ search engine results. Creating SEO-friendly blog posts is crucial for increasing organic traffic on your website and an expert writer will help your business achieve that.

Hiring a freelance writer not only frees up time by outsourcing your writing but also allows you to launch a new blog website quickly. Since you don’t have to write the content yourself, an expert can do it in a timely manner for you. You also don’t have to worry about constantly coming up with fresh content ideas and the quality of your content. If you hire a freelance writer, you’ll more likely improve the quality of your content and grow your brand’s market authority by publishing high-quality content consistently.

“If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.”

Creating SEO-friendly blog posts is a great way to encourage more people to visit your website and an expert can help you do exactly this. They can research high-priority keywords and create engaging content that helps attract more site visitors to your blogs. As a result, it helps improve customer loyalty and retention for your business.

Why You Should Hire a Freelance Writer Instead of a Guest Writer

All business owners have the same question in mind when hiring a freelance writer: isn’t it better to hire a guest writer? That’s not always the case as going for the free option might harm your blog’s growth in the long run.

First, let’s understand what we mean by the term guest contributors. These are the people who will write content for your blog post completely free of cost and in exchange for their name being published on your website. It’s a great way for writers to get their names out there and present themselves as professionals.

Although guest posts are a great way to create and publish content for your blog without having to worry about paying anyone, the quality just isn’t there. This is because guest posts aren’t necessarily always consistent with content quality and quantity as well. For instance, you could have more or less content as it’s not in your control to create content on demand.

However, this does not mean that guest writers are not experts at what they do.

But, generally speaking, most experts look for guest posts on top blogs, so the chances of an expert writing for your blog are pretty low. In addition to this, you also need to consider that since guest writers aren’t paid for their work, they will have a hard time fully committing to creating content for your business, compared to freelance writers.

On the other hand, freelance writers propose a better option to create and effectively run a successful blog for your business. It’s their business also to create quality content for their clients. This ensures that you won’t have commitment issues with your writers.

You can also hire freelance writers on a longer-term contract, unlike guest contributors. This way, you don’t have to worry constantly about finding writers after every other blog post you publish. In addition to this, if you hire a freelance writer, they’ll create blog posts worth publishing on your brand’s blog website. This is because an expert writer will create SEO-friendly, engaging content that’s consistent with your brand’s messaging.

How to Hire a Freelance Writer for Your Business

Let’s review the steps you need to follow to successfully hire a freelance writer for your business and ensure you find the right expert for your blog.

Step #1: Consider what you need

The first thing you need to do is consider what you need from a freelance writer. You need to ask yourself questions like do you want them to create blog posts for you? If so, how many each month or week? This will narrow down most of your options when you decide to hire a freelance writer.

You also need to consider if you want the writer to pitch you topic ideas or if you want them to create blog posts from your list of topics. It’s also important to decide the type of articles you’re looking to publish on your blog website. For instance, you might want to create reviews, tutorials or how-to’s, comparison pieces, roundups, and cornerstone content. Despite the type of content you want to create, you need to effectively communicate with your freelance writer as a way to help them better understand your needs.

Additionally, it’s also important to consider if you want the freelance writer to do extra work, other than what will be the normal workload. This could include writing marketing content, creating infographics, and other content for your business.

Step #2: Decide on a budget

The second most important thing when hiring a freelance writer is deciding on a budget that both of you agree on. Establishing a working budget when hiring a freelance writer is important as it’s a clear indication of whether you can afford a specific freelance writer or not.

Ideally, you should have a number in mind when making an offer. For instance, if you want to create a 1,000-word blog post, you’d at least want to offer a few hundred dollars for it. You don’t want to lowball and lose the writer’s interest, so make sure it’s a fair price.

Paying a competitive price when you hire a freelance writer can help motivate them to perform at their best. You can expect the writer to output high-quality content as you’re giving them an incentive to work better.

Step #3: Determine business goals

You also need to establish the relationship you want to keep with your freelance writer. You need to consider whether you want your writer to access your blog website and let them publish blog posts directly. With modern website builders, such as WordPress, you can create author and editor user roles on your business’s website. This is an easy way to let your writers access your blog from the back-end and publish articles directly in a timely manner.

You also want to decide if you want the freelance writer to research and suggest blog post topics to you. This is important for maintaining and following your business’s guidelines. Guidelines are important for ensuring content quality is top-notch and follows your brand’s tone of voice. To do this, you can create a style guide and share it with your freelance writer. This way, you don’t have to explain everything in detail when you hire new freelance writers to create blog posts for your business.

You can develop a content calendar for your business that gives freelance writers a better idea of time deadlines. As a result, it helps ensure your content strategy is successful and all operations run smoothly without any delays.

Step #4: Find experts in your industry

When you decide to hire a freelance writer, it’s important to find the right expert for the job. This ensures you create high-quality content and get full value for your money.

Finding an expert in your field will allow them to create content that’s more relevant to your business and your audience. They will have a better understanding of market trends and the audience for your topic. This way, your content also “sounds” like it’s coming from your brand and not a ghostwriter.

Ideally, you want to wow your readers with the quality of content you publish on your blog. However, it’s also important to make sure your sound is natural and gives your audience the content they expect from your brand.

Additionally, an expert in your industry will also improve your blog’s ranking in SERPs and help attract new readers. An expert writer can create high-quality content that perfectly caters to your audience while ensuring it’s fully optimized for search engines.

Pro tip: Ask for a trial

Before you fully commit to hiring a freelance writer, make sure to ask for some samples of their work. A good starting point is looking at the writer’s portfolio and reading their published work on their website or other top blogs.

This will give you a better understanding of how the writer works and help you determine if the specific writer is the right writer for your business. For instance, it can help you better understand the writer’s “process” or the steps they take to create content and see whether they are a good fit for your business or not.

You can also let freelance writers produce paid trial blog posts for your business. It’s a great way to “test-drive” to see how they work and whether it’s manageable for you to work with the freelance writer.

Bonus: Where Can You Find Freelance Writers?

Now that you have a better understanding of how to hire a freelance writer, let’s talk about some of the places where you can find freelance writers for your business.

• Marketplaces. Most new freelance writers use popular marketing places such as Freelancer, Upwork, or Guru to connect with clients and find paid work. You can find some experts at such marketplaces but usually, it’s one of the cheapest options for hiring a freelance writer. As a result, the quality of your content can suffer and so will the growth of your blog.
• Content mills. Content mills are also a great place to find freelance writers but you shouldn’t expect writers from content mills to produce high-quality blog posts. They are familiar with producing similar-looking content that most other companies might already use. Ideally, you want to create content that’s unique to your blog website so that your brand stands out from the rest of the competition.
• Social media. The popularity of social media websites gives freelance writers a place to express themselves and showcase their skills. It’s not recommended but it is always an option to find a freelance writer by looking at their social media profiles.
• Content marketing agencies. Creating top-notch, high-quality content is what content marketing agencies are designed to do. Investing in a content marketing company and letting them create a content strategy for your business is always a great idea. The only downside is that you have to pay a hefty price, even if you’re just starting out.
• Your favorite blog. Since you might already be reading blog posts on high-authority websites, finding a great writer there is much better and preferable for most business owners. You already know how they work and the quality of content they can produce, hiring them as your freelance writer is a no-brainer, especially if you can agree on a mutual working budget.
• Developer or website designer. You can also ask the person who built your website or developers that you work with to recommend a freelance writer. Since they’ve probably created many other websites similar to yours, they will definitely know writers that could help you create content for your newly created blog website.
• Google. If you’re looking to hire a freelance writer that’s local to you, Google might be the best option for you. This helps prevent time-zone complications with your writer and ensures that you find a writer that can be of value to your business. You can see the top links on the first page of a Google search result and list the potential writers you can hire to create content on your blog.

Conclusion

Hiring a freelance writer for your business can be a challenge, especially if you’ve just created a new blog website or this is your first time outsourcing writing work for your business.

You need to consider a few important things such as your brand’s requirements, your budget, and your major goals when you decide to hire a freelance writer. We’ve covered everything you need to know when hiring a freelance writer for your business. Hopefully, now you’re in a better place to take the next steps.

Also, be sure to check out our How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Content Writer? article for further reading.

What are your go-to places to find freelance writers for your business? Let us know in the comments box below.