Outsourcing is easypeasy (Part 2)

I realized the other day (and after a couple of comments on the post about outsourcing that it’s all very well talking about outsourcing your work to other people when you know how to go about it, but what about those folks who don’t have a clue where to start?

So I thought I’d offer a quick few words about where I think you should start getting a team of people together you can trust…

Lets talk articles for a start… 

One thing I want to say before I go any further, is get into the habit of paying folks a decent amount for what they do for you. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying pay peanuts and get something a monkey has done (Well words to that effect,) and I can appreciate money is often tight especially when you’re first starting out and you need a lot of articles etc for your site.

But paying $2 for a 500 word article for instance just isn’t going to work because by the time you’ve checked it for plagiarism (and you should),  or if you’ve hired someone who’s first language isn’t English , then you’ll spend so much time rewriting it you’ll find you might as well done it yourself in the first place..

Tip use Copyscape to check for plagiarism, it’s an excellent tool and the couple of dollars it costs after your free tries is well worth the worry of being sued for plagiarism later on.

Another tip Don’t fill your site with crappy articles, Google don’t like it, and neither will your visitors. Content is king!!!

When I first started using writers back in 2005 I was paying my main writer $8 a 500 word article, her usual price was $10 but because I was giving her 50 a month to write, she agreed to the lower price. (It was a win win for both of us), so if you find a decent writer and you can offer them a decent number of articles, see if you can come to a similar agreement.

At the moment I’m not using a lot of writers (Which will change in the not too far distant future), but if and when I do, I’ll probably pay them a minimum of $12-15 per 500 word article. When I was article writing a couple of years ago I was charging $25 per 500 word article and getting the biz)..

Places to look for article writers include

the Warrior forum aspiring writers often have deals on where they are looking to build their client list and will offer their services for a certain amount of written articles for a very low price. (I’v met a lot of my writers on the Warrior forum). Check out the WSO section and also the for hire section. Be careful though, I never pay fully upfront to someone I don’t know, In fact I never pay up front for a service from anywhere. (I’ve been bitten too frequently)..

Offer to pay them half upfront and the rest on delivery. If they don’t accept that, then move on and find someone who will. It goes without saying that if you’re happy with the work they do then you pay them the rest. Don’t try and stiff them and not pay the rest, Karma is a bitch and will bite you in the ass!!

Other sites you can use include Odesk, Vworker (formally Rentacoder) Fivver (be careful with fivver, I’ve had some bad experiences) and lots of other places I can’t even think of at the moment.

Rentacoder used to be one of my favorite places for finding writers and the best thing about them is yes you do pay upfront, but your money is held in escrow until you’re happy to release it. I can remember I found a guy on there who used to write all my health related ebooks I offered on a membership site back in the day for just 80 bux a book! he was an American living in Thailand where the cost of living was practically zilch so could afford to do it.

Once I had a group of writers I liked, I gathered them round me jealously and refused to share lol (I’m not so mean now)…

Anyway I think that’s all I have to say on the subject of finding article writers today, I feel a caffeine fix coming on…

I’m going to discuss how to find a decent coder for my next post