Outsourcing Article Writing
ByI’ve been dragging my feet a bit in relation to restarting my internet marketing outsourcing project. Partly because I wasn’t successful last time and partly because I now realise my expectations were way too high.
For example, John Jonas of Replace Myself recommends that you start off by giving your worker just one task to begin with. He describes how he works with content writers by expecting them to write 1 or 2 articles a day and then submit them to article directories.
No wonder my first worker disappeared. I told him I expected him to work up to writing an article in 45 minutes. After 2 days he hadn’t produced anything. I can see that that gap would have seemed enormous to him to be able to close.
Something else John Jonas said that really struck home was “Some people, after listening to my initial presentation, think that hiring someone in the Philippines is a magic bullet for their business. They think this is some magic talent pool of people who are going to fix all their problems.” Although I didn’t think an outsource worker would “fix all my problems”, after listening to John Reese’s presentation back in May, I definitely thought it was going to be a hell of a lot easy than it turned out to be.
John Jonas spends more time emphasising the learning aspect of hiring someone overseas to work with and that it takes time to learn how to manage them and the systems you will be using.
So this time around I will have to be more patient. Last time I was looking for someone who was good at English and had some SEO and WordPress experience. This time I will focus primarily on the English skills since article writing will be the first thing I need to have done.
Currently, it’s relatively easy to get good enough articles written for $5 each so I could be losing money when I start out. If my worker writes 2 articles a day that’s $50 worth a week which works out about $200 worth a month. Chances are I’m not going to find someone with good enough English for that rate so I really need to look at this as a long-term investment.
I won’t know until I try though so I’m off to find 20 potential candidates to email.
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Great post. Very honest assessment. Let me share my experiences with article writers. Definitely go for a full time worker, not a part timer. They take it more seriously when they are full time.
Make sure they understand that all writing needs to be ORIGINAL, not copied and slightly reworded from other articles.
If you are doing submission to directories, I think you should expect about 4-6 decent articles per day. Articles that go to directories do not need to be as amazing as stuff you put on your own website. The main value is backlinks.
If you are having your writer write content for your own site, then emphasize the importance of quality.
You absolutely CAN get great writers in the Philippines. Today I’m interviewing 2 candidates. One woman who is a new graduate. Perfect grammar, and a good writer from what I see so far. The other is a gentleman with 10 years experience as a journalist. His stuff is great. He really GETS writing. He will certainly cost me more than average, but I bet he’d be worth it if there is a fit between us.
Food for thought.
(P.S. I totally agree that you can ALWAYS teach them wordpress, or send them to some training videos. Teaching English is next to impossible)
Thanks for sharing your experience with outsourcing article writing. It’s encouraging to know that someone who’s had a lot of experience with this thinks it’s well-worth doing. I’m just in the process of getting some stuff together so I can start a trial on Monday. I’ll be reporting how it goes . . .