hey what's going on this is the Doug
show my name is Doug Pennington and in
this episode I'm gonna talk about where
I hire writers and kind of the process I
go through I'll give you a couple tips
as well I just got back from Costco went
shopping in the middle of the day here
and the the cashier was acting like he
was given a survey I guess he was given
a survey he actually was writing this
stuff down but he said hey let's say
let's say you moved to a neighborhood
and it's not so nice and you need to get
a security system because it's not
exactly safe the security system is a
little expensive so you can't afford it
but there's different animals that you
can get which animal would you choose as
your security system it's either a
pterodactyl or a dragon so let me know
I chose a pterodactyl in my mind the
pterodactyl would be a little more
effective because they would be able to
like chase any anyone that like broke
into your house or whatever but
apparently dragons were in the lead so I
guess it depends on like you know where
in the house or outside the house the
you know the dragon or pterodactyl would
be stationed and I guess technically I
guess dragons could fly I don't know I
guess it depends on the dragon all right
let's get to let's get to the topic for
today
[Music]
and this is about hiring writers and
thing is I I didn't have a very strong
like writing background I didn't really
enjoy writing or reading just in general
and when I first started blogging and I
started my first niche site I really
didn't know what I was doing I hadn't
written anything in recent years other
than like like business documents and
stuff like that which is completely dry
and just very factual at least the stuff
that I was doing and I can't I remember
like sitting down for the first time to
write the first blog post on my first
site and it was pretty exciting
like I set up the site I put a theme up
and all that stuff I knew what what I
was going to write about but then I just
like didn't know what to do and fast
forward three years and I was able to
publish like a crazy amount of content
and in particular stretch I published I
guess it was like 1.3 post per day for
about five months straight which is
about something like 200 articles
something like that and during that time
that's when I proved out the key word
golden ratio concept on a large scale
again publishing about 200 posts I spent
roughly $4,000 on the content I didn't
write any of it myself
spent about 4,000 on the content and had
like a content editor a Content Manager
drafting the post for me and that sort
of thing and at the same time I was also
able to like develop templates to use as
well as like testing the templates and
refining them and by the way if you want
to get a hold of those templates you can
go to a niche site project comm and
click the green button there's a big
green button there enter your name and
email and then you'll get an email from
me with a link to download the templates
I also put link in the show notes so
anyway I'm going to talk about my go to
freelance marketplace to hire writers
also mention a couple of dedicated
outsourcing solutions that are I mean
basically it's a
tenth agency and they'll take care of
everything for you of course that comes
at a cost but I'll get into more of the
details in a minute and I'll give you a
big tip on working on up work without
getting like kicked out or having any
issues hiring people there's a couple of
little gotchas that you may not realize
if you're just starting to hire people
and up work I also talked about why I
don't like two of the bigger content
marketplaces out there which have tried
and then also give you a couple ideas
for like rarely used sources of writers
alright so a couple of things I'm going
to mention I'm an affiliate for so I'll
be more specific whenever I get to those
parts so I go to up work most of the
time it's my preferred method to hire
writers and even if you're not planning
on hiring a lot of writers or publishing
a lot of content it's a great place to
like get experience hiring contractors
and working with freelancers I mean it's
just very common and at some point you
may want to like scale and publish more
content like I talked about before and
it's it's much easier to do if you have
a little bit of experience working on
the platform and it's not is easy to
hire a virtual assistant of VA as it
sounds and well just just about anybody
talking about hiring a VA I know I first
heard about it probably like from the
4-hour work week or maybe smart passive
income or some podcast or something but
it's always a little bit harder to hire
someone than you think it will be in
fact if I want to hire say five writers
I probably need to hire 10 to make sure
I get five good ones now sometimes it
works out better sometimes it works out
worse but the point is there's a little
bit of there's a little bit of waste in
the system and if you if you hire a
couple people maybe one or two we're not
going to work out so working with
freelancers isn't necessarily
hard but like any other skill it does
require some practice and some learning
from your mistakes and you have to go
into it with an open mind and really
like a mindset of being flexible it can
be really challenging to sort through
all the proposals once you put out a job
posting and figure out who is a good
candidate but once you have like an idea
of what you're looking for you'll be
able to sort people out pretty quickly
now don't get kicked out of upwork a
couple people have emailed me in the
past and they they said they didn't
understand why they got kicked out they
they said that they use my template and
then changed it just a little bit but
never feeling that change tip more than
a little bit so the big thing is to not
mention Amazon or reviews and your job
listing I think it triggers some sort of
automated like Terms of Service
violation and I think like back in the
day Amazon sellers used to hire people
to write fake reviews on Amazon and I
believe if you use in quote Amazon or
quote reviews then you may be triggering
something on the system on up work and
at that point your job posting will
probably be deleted and I think if you
do it like more than once or twice
they'll just close your account and they
they don't really work with you so well
so I would say follow my templates add
your own personality but don't mention
anything about like Amazon product
reviews or similar words I usually just
say like a ghostwriter for a blog and
then later on when I give like specific
instructions then I can tell the writer
that they're writing reviews and not put
it in the job listing so I mean my other
tip for working on upwork or any other
freelancing platform is to not to accept
more than one excuse now sometimes
things happen dog ate your homework
maybe their child gets sick or there's a
delayed flight or
car accident who knows things do happen
and your freelancer may be a little bit
late to finish something for me if they
tell me ahead of time or as soon as they
have an idea that it's going to be late
I'm a lot more flexible if a freelancer
is late to complete work due to some
uncontrollable circumstance I'll
generally assume that they're telling it
the truth if it happens again then I
usually end the working relationship the
thing is if a freelancer is late and
they didn't tell me ahead of time I know
immediately that I should probably end
the working relationship so if they they
send me a message it says something like
I'm sorry I'm late submitting the
article my child was sick three days ago
so I've been behind I don't really want
to accept an excuse because they should
have let me know as soon as they knew
that there was going to be an issue now
I know there's some circumstances beyond
their control so I have a little bit of
flexibility but I've definitely been
burned a lot of time so I'll accept the
excuse like once and then after that no
more so if someone's late ones
I'll probably accept a reasonable excuse
if they had a valid reason for not
letting me know like I said if it's
something that happened like completely
out of their control they were in a car
accident their family's been in the
hospital or something like that okay
I'll let that go we'll figure out a way
to work around it if there's something
else in the future it's just not gonna
work out it's all in the working
relationship and there's just too many
other people that you could hire alright
quick rundown of the pros and cons for
up work generally up work is going to be
cheaper for the quality of a writer
compared to the other marketplaces in
general you'll probably be able to find
a very good writer at a bargain price
additionally you could also find lots of
writers very quickly this is probably
one of the biggest pros coming up here
the client payment protection policy is
really good
so you only have to pay for actual work
that's done additionally there's escrow
protection so whenever you hire someone
you pay the money and immediately goes
into escrow which is a holding account
where the freelancer doesn't get that
money until you accept the work you get
the work you accept the work and you
could have you know some protection
because of that the some of the other
options I'll mention later you don't get
that protection you pay you would pay
ahead of time potentially
and basically you have no recourse if
there's any issues cons for up work it
can be a little hard to create a great
job listing
although the templates that I provide
are pretty helpful to get you there I
mean you just need to tweak a couple
things and put it in your own words
other cons include just a little bit
overwhelming because there are so many
freelancers out there so if you put a
job listing out there you may end up
with like 20 proposals and it can be a
little time-consuming if you're not
effective and weeding out the people
that you don't want to work with all
right if you could weed people out
quickly then you're gonna be in pretty
good shape
another kind is a lot of freelancers are
like brand new and they're just dipping
their toes into the freelancing waters
they're trying to see if they want to do
it more so they might flake out in fact
I've had this happen a couple of times
where I hire someone they maybe send a
question they send a message or two and
then they like disappear and I never
hear from them again and basically you
can get a refund on that but of course
you've wasted some time there and
finally you know freelancers can make
excuses flake out or disappear even some
people that I've worked with that were
great for a little while they may be
like flaked out after some amount of
time who knows why maybe they got a
full-time job maybe they moved you have
no idea a lot of times if that happens
they just disappear and you never hear
from them again so again I like up work
a lot if you do want to get a hold of my
templates and stuff if you
free to check them out it's really good
at least as a starting point there are a
couple dedicated services out there the
bigger ones that I've heard of and the
people asked me about most often are
texts broker and I writer and they focus
solely on content so it's like a
freelancing content marketplace and they
pair up freelance writers with people
that need content like you it's pretty
much it's pretty much like taking some
of the guesswork out of hiring people on
up work and you can basically submit
your article titles with some details
maybe some outlines if you want to
provide that and they have lots of
people dozens and dozens maybe hundreds
of writers out there maybe thousands I
have no idea they have tons of writers
out there like looking at the job
listings and they could pick what they
want to write and they write it and the
amazing part is because there are so
many people out there that can pick up
your gig you can have a lot of articles
written in like a 36 hour period I mean
you can have this stuff written really
quickly you'll need to check text broker
for the latest pricing but within the
last couple months of like 2019 there
were in 2019 but within the last couple
months some of the pricing have been
around 1.3 cents per word up to 7.2
cents per word and they have like a star
rating system now this is Tex broker
specifically and in general I find that
Tex broker and I writer I don't know the
quality wasn't really great for the
prices I was paying and the interesting
thing specifically with like Tex broker
they use a star system so that 1.3 cents
per word was for the two star writer
level and four stars was 2.4 cents per
word and then five star is 7.2 cents per
word so it jumps up like 3x which is
kind of weird and
opinion from four stars to five stars it
goes up 3x the point is when I've used
text Brooker I think I got like the four
star and it wasn't that great I mean it
wasn't that good for the prices I was
paying and to jump up to five star I
mean you're paying three times the price
which seems insane considering like the
quality that you may or may not get so
overall I didn't really like text broker
and I stopped using them a few years ago
I tested them for a little while and I
do encourage you to test if you haven't
used you know certain services you don't
have to take my word for it you could
check it out on your own which is always
the best test see how a service works
for you all this stuff is just my
opinion of course as far as I writer I
never really liked the the content that
I saw for my writer now I never
personally used a writer however a lot
of some of the work and collaboration
that I've done with other people they
used a writer so I saw a ton of their
content out there and it was not great
to be honest with you it's just not
great so just in general I believe those
dedicated type services such as I writer
and text broker are pretty darn
expensive for the quality that you're
gonna get now
the huge upside of course is they're
gonna basically do the the vetting of
the writer so you don't have to the
writers are there so they take like a
big step of the process out of your
responsibility and that's I mean that's
why it's more expensive now I'm gonna
tell you about a couple other a service
here called content refine and this is
oriented towards either affiliate
marketers or content marketers and this
is a service that I am a an affiliate
for so if you use content refine then I
would get a commission which I
appreciate it helps me you know pay for
hosting pay for this microphone and some
other stuff like that and in general
content refined they they will just do a
better job than a service like text
broker or I writer and Alex
why now it is relatively expensive tot
use Tex broker or sorry t Hughes content
refined because of the level of service
that they do so the huge upside is the
content is excellent and it's a full
service like service situation so
content we're fine we'll even do keyword
research for you if you don't want to so
if you do the keyword research maybe
using the keyword golden ratio then you
can get a little bit of a cheaper price
but if you want them to do the keyword
research they'll do it for you
now a really cool thing about content
refined is they use a very high-end tool
called market muse and market Muse helps
the writer and editor use the optimal
number of keywords and LSI or Lane
semantic index and keywords it's a super
expensive tool and it's very powerful
and really it's made for content
agencies or huge publishing companies
that are you know putting out a lot of
content I think it's it's upwards of a
thousand dollars a month
for like the most basic package again
you have to be publishing a lot of
content to really make it worthwhile or
be a Content agency like content refined
another cool thing with content refined
is they get the images for you and they
will even draft and format the content
in WordPress they have different
packages available like four eight and
twelve post so you could ramp up however
you want to and they assign you a
project manager so not only do they you
know take care of hiring the writers but
they also assign a project manager to
keep everything organized so you don't
have to interface with several different
writers you just interface with one
project manager which is fantastic I'll
hit some pros and cons for content
refined so the pros are it's a
white-glove service so you don't have to
worry about anything you just hire them
they do the rest they take care of
everything now if you do hire one of the
premium companies like content refined
you can
even have them upload and draft your
post in the WordPress so it's totally
hands-off if we are thinking about like
Tex broker and I writer they don't have
that level of service so just want to be
clear about that further you could hire
a lot of writers pretty quickly without
having to deal with them directly and
basically the service pays and plays the
project manager in the situation so you
don't have to do it
the other cool thing is it takes care of
one of the cons from up work which is if
a writer disappears or flakes out or
something like that you don't have to
deal with it the service will deal with
that so that that's pretty that's pretty
significant in my opinion the cons for a
service it's more expensive for the
quality of the content just in the
general sense so some sometimes you may
have some outliers but generally it's
going to be more expensive sometimes the
quality isn't that great even if the
star rating indicates the content should
be better and that mainly of course
applies to Tex broke or an eye writer
it's sometimes hard to tell and this is
a separate con but sometimes it's it's
hard to tell if native speakers are
writing the content in the worst cases
and this is one of the main reasons why
I didn't appreciate using Tex broker eye
writer I'm pretty sure it was like
non-native English speakers writing the
content so you would you would see like
awkward phrasing sometimes the grammar
would just be off but a lot of times
it'll be awkward phrasing where it just
doesn't quite sound right and the last
con that I'll mention here is that it
might be harder to provide a template
for the writer if you're using a service
and it does depend on the service so
with I mean maybe that's maybe that's
better for you if you just don't want to
worry about it however I'm a control
freak and I I want to give the writer
the template that I want him to use I
want him to follow my format so
depending on the service they may be
more flexible or less flexible in in
doing that so check out kind of content
refined if you do want to get sort of
white-glove service and have a project
manager assigned to you so you don't
have to worry about so much all right
I'm gonna get into a couple of less
common places that you can hire writer
now I haven't actually done this next
one but I think it would be a really
interesting experiment if someone had
the the time and desire to check it out
so Craigslist now there's lots and lots
of traffic for jobs and gigs within
Craigslist and it's just a matter of
posting a job and then sorting through
the proposals now as you probably know
Craigslist is organized by city so you
could hire people from anywhere and that
actually may be a huge Pro cuz you could
put in the job listing the headline you
could say it's like a remote gig for
four writers which people like nuts
having to go to an office or meet up so
I would generally this is how I would
try it so I would probably find like a
mid-sized city maybe a couple of them
and test out your job posting I would
probably use my up work templates that I
I mentioned before and tweak them a
little bit you know it's not up work so
you got to tweak it a little bit but you
could probably keep the main pieces of
content I think it'd be important to
post these and then test it see what
kind of responses you get so the pros
for Craigslist is it's probably gonna be
a lot cheaper for the quality of writer
that you can get now you may be able to
find an awesome writer at a bargain
price and I'm pretty sure you could find
lots of writers really fast the big con
for Craigslist is you're probably get
some spam messages anytime I've posted
on Craigslist I ended up with some some
interesting spam usually it was some
sort of you know prince or princess from
some faraway land that inherited a lot
of money and they wanted to work with me
and they you know pay me a lot of money
or some kind of
a scam like that but some of the other
cons would be there's no freelancer or
client protection like an up work
so you're basically hiring you know
someone off the streets you're probably
paying them like via PayPal or some
other online transaction so you know
depending on what you're using to pay
you may have a little protection right
so if you pay via PayPal you potentially
you know would have some protection to
get a refund and dispute things if you
wanted to
however it's probably gonna be a little
bit messy and in those cases you would
you know it's a little bit of a gamble
and finally the other obvious con is it
would be overwhelming to try this
because there's so many freelancers so
many gigs or so many cities and
localities and just a ton of places that
you can post on Craigslist so you would
have to be you know kind of organized
however you know one pro that I didn't
mention since there are so many cities
and there are so many gigs out there you
probably could hire tons and tons of
people so I mean it's almost limitless
all right I'm gonna need to talk about
one more idea and this is to hire
friends and relatives now when I first
started I tried to get my wife Elizabeth
to write an article for one of my certs
first sites you know and it didn't
really work out well I mean she tried
but we we were like we don't know what
we're doing and I remember it was a it
was a tense day but in an enough one can
held alright but yes my wife doesn't
really work with the insights at all at
this point in time I did hire my sister
however she wrote like a couple articles
for me happened to be a topic that I
knew she was interested in so she had a
good time writing and she took some
pictures and stuff like that and it was
a pretty cool blog post and I think she
had you know a fun time doing it I think
she only wrote like one or two though so
either she didn't have much time or it
was like just not a good economical
decision for me
but I was like hey let's try this out
like I said test things see how you like
him
and most of us know someone in our
family or a friend network that's
interested in like earning a little
money on the side or learning about
internet marketing and this website
stuff that I'm doing or just like doing
a little extra work for like some
spending money so it's really a matter
of just like asking around and you'll
almost certainly find someone that wants
to write with you or write for you and I
have a good friend who was able to get
his mom to write for him since she was
retired and she had free time and an
interest in the specific topic so ask
around you'll probably be able to find
someone the pros would be you probably
get a pretty cheap writer especially if
you're like hiring one of your parents
or something for the quality of like the
writer so it could be pretty cheap for
the quality of the writer you may be
able to find a you know a really really
good one for for cheap so you can
potentially help someone out again and
your family or a friend network that
wants to make money on the side and
that's pretty cool and they could
potentially partner with you to lower
the cost in exchange for equity and the
site so this would be like you know if I
had my sister write like a blog post
every week or something like that and
then she would be like 25% owner on the
side or 50% or whatever we decided so
you could work out a deal like that
potentially some of the cons would be if
it doesn't work out and you hired
someone in your family then it could be
like a contentious situation so just be
careful of have to be careful if you
hire your spouse for example II for
example you may not be able to give
feedback very well or the person may not
accept feedback so I'm not saying that
happened with Elizabeth my wife but you
know it could happen like some people
just you know they don't want they don't
want to be corrected and depending on
the dynamic so
say let's say my my dad was writing some
articles for me or something you know
maybe weird if I'm like hey Dad
you know you're misusing commas can we
try and clean that out let's let's try
and do a better job there sport so you
just have to keep that in mind because
feedback is good like it should be a
two-way street you should want to get
feedback yourself you should want to
give feedback and it should be a mutual
you know exchange of feedback so keep
that in mind and especially free for you
so you will have to make sure that
you're able to receive the feedback as
well so I'm just again just keep all
this stuff in mind if you're if you're
working with family and friends you have
to be a little more like empathetic and
like think further ahead so that that
covers it like I said I usually go to up
work that is my go-to for hiring writers
and you know it can be challenging to
hire people but at the same time for me
personally it just happens to be one of
the areas that I had a lot of experience
in not necessarily hiring freelancers
but in my corporate job I interviewed
over like a hundred people or so looked
at even more resumes than that and I
just had a lot of experience on the HR
side like working like with people
hiring folks and all that stuff when I
got to this side hustle stuff that I'm
doing and affiliate sites and hiring
people and up work I was able to you
know take some of the stuff that I
learned from my corporate job luckily
and translate it over so I can very
quickly you know posted post a job let a
bunch of people put in their proposals
filter out you know 75 80 percent of
those people within a few minutes and
then you know narrow it down and hire
however many people that I need in a
pretty quick fashion so that is one of
the reasons why I don't have like
full-time people on staff or anything
like that I would much prefer
to hire freelancers that I could spawn
up a team pretty quickly and the
dismantle the team and you know
everybody wins
you know the freelancers got to work for
you know a short amount of time they
have great flexibility you know that's
one of the great things with freelance
economy it's flexible for the client the
person hiring folks and it's also super
flexible for the freelancers so we could
do a couple articles do a couple gigs
and if we don't want to work together
anymore
hey we could just stop working together
it's not like we have to hire someone
full-time or anything like that so if
you have any questions on the content
side hiring writers or anything like
that give me a shout you can shoot an
email over to feedback at Doug dot show
all right thanks a lot for listening to
this episode and I'm excited because we
got a couple good episodes coming up
episode number 12 is going to be how
many posts to launch an Amazon affiliate
site the interesting thing with that
show is it's a little bit shorter than
normal
a lot of the shows have been close to an
hour over an hour this one's you know
sort of in the middle and this episode
number 12 it's gonna be a little bit
shorter so let me know what you think of
that and then the next two episodes are
the most popular type of episode so far
that is success stories so we have Helen
coming in on episode number 13 she is a
former social worker and she put a lot
of time over the course of about eight
months into a single Amazon affiliate
site and grew it from just about nothing
all the way to three thousand dollars
and beyond per month episode fourteen is
Evan and he has a site that he grew from
1,500 to 2,000 dollars per month and he
grew it up to 4,000 per month by using
the keyword golden ratio so stay tuned
for those episodes really excited to get
those out and if you're new to the show
please consider subscribing if you liked
the show
leave a review it would really help me
out and I would
love it thank you
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