How to Hire Freelance Writers from CraigsList

Craigslist has become synonymous with freelance writing jobs. It’s a great way to find a cache of writers with various different skill sets very quickly. However, as with any public medium, you have to take the good with the bad. For every qualified freelance writer, there are five unqualified ones. Following is how to select the best ones for your project.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Create project timeline. The reason you want to create a project timeline is to see what’s due when. If you have five projects due within the next week, tracking them will help you stay on top of deadlines.

2. Decide which projects you need help on. Projects differ in the skill sets needed. Deciding which projects you need help on is crucial to hiring the right writer.

3. Writing your ad is perhaps the most important step in the process. Keeping your project deadlines and requirements in place, be very specific in your ad. At a minimum, you will want to include: (i) deadline; (ii) rate of pay and payment procedure (eg, PayPal); (iii) type of work; (iv) specific respond-to address; and (v) a sample request. Remember, the more detail you give about the job, the better chance you have of recruiting the most qualified writers for the project.

4. Weed through responses. If you’ve done your job as outlined in Step 3, it should be fairly easy to weed through responses. Skip requests that ask for more information; say they don’t have the type of experience you’re looking for “but …”; and who don’t comply with the requests you made in your ad (eg, provide a sample). This will take care of 90 percent of the responses. Of the remaining 10 percent, choose one or two you feel the most confident about, and contact them.

5. Outsource project. Choose the writer who gets back to you first and outsource the project. If possible, outsource work to at least two freelancers. That way, you get to test the skills of two at the same time. If all works out, when you get in a pinch again, you’ll have at least two go-to sources. When you hire freelance writers from CraigsList, you’re growing your writing business. Someday, you may get to the point where you don’t even touch the work, you just pass it along. This is where you can make some real money in this field!

Tips & Warnings

• I always advise contacting at least two writers—even if you only need one—because one might not get back to you and/or not be available for what ever reason.

Resources

• Criagslist.org
• Freelance Writers & Outsourcing: How to Decide What to Pay

[jrai]

on 3/9/2009 Sorry, it's all garbled up there. It's at http://www.thesuperlancers.com

[jrai]

on 3/9/2009 Hi-I think I’d add TheSuperlancers to your list here. Craigslist is great, but I don't really get too many good programmers there for a good price. Just me, though. I’d like to see a list of places you use, this is my main one besides Project4Hire.Anyway, here’s that one you missed: http://www.thesuperlancers.comTons of cheap coders and designers, markerters, writers, whatever, but more programmers than projects for now so it’s probably a good time to fish for new coders and designers. I do. ;)Hope that helps!Jay