Using Freelance Sites For Blog or Website Content

Using freelance sites for blog or website content makes a lot of sense in one way, but not necessarily in another. Let’s forget the negatives for a moment and focus on the issues involved even with genuine freelance sites.

Do you honestly believe that those making money from their blogs write all their content themselves? Of course not – large numbers of them use freelance sites or even the websites of individual writers.

The large media blogs use a model that you can learn from. They focus on marketing and promotion, while others do the writing for them. You can do the same, only on a smaller scale. That means you also do not pay as much as they do for their blog posts. However, should you travel down this road you must be careful where you access such writers.

Pros and Cons of Freelance Writers

Many article ghostwriters will offer to write 500 words for $5 or even less. Do not expect much for this – in fact many writers on inexpensive freelance sites such as Elance do not have English as their first language. They charge little and offer little in the way of grammar or use of language, but some people are fine with that.

It is becoming increasingly more important that the standard of writing on your blog is good. Google’s various Penguin algorithm updates are hunting out poorly written articles and blog posts, and those with little content of fewer than 400 words. In fact to be safe, your posts should be around 400 words plus. The more the better these days, and Google is likely to reward a post of 800 words more than one of 400 if the standard of content warrants it.

However, we are not concerned with word count here as much as the quality of your content. Increasing numbers of people who cannot speak or write competent English are trying to get traffic from the UK, Australia and USA and other English speaking countries. Because of Google’s algorithm updates, if you are one of them you can no longer do this if you do not have a good command of English grammar, punctuation and sentence construction.

This is where freelance sites come into play. You have two options: either freelance service sites which act as intermediaries between clients and writers, or go directly to the writer’s sites. We shall suggest a few of each in this post.

Online Freelance Services

Elance – Upwork

Elance and Upwork have got together to combine their efforts to find you the best writers for your blog or website content. You can choose your writers according to ability or price. Ability is a difficult thing to assess, and Upwork applies certain writing tests that freelancers can take voluntarily. What you may find is that the more tests they take and pass (no limit to number of free resits) the higher they might charge for their work.

However, notwithstanding that, Elance and Upwork are still good sources of writers. You must take care to choose those whose native language is the language you want used for your post. These sites tend to have large numbers of non-English speakers on their books. This is fine if you want your work translated to Mandarin, Urdu or Arabic. Not if it is intended mainly for the USA and UK.

Guru.com

Guru is similar to the above two services in that their freelancers apply for work that you post on the site. If you check out their previous work experience, and the writing proficiency tests they have taken, you can often find good writers on Guru.

Guru uses an escrow service known as SafePay, whereby you pay for your work in advance, and that sum is passed onto the writer if he or she meets your requirements. If not, your argument goes to mediation. If that fails it goes to arbitration. Fewer than 3% of Guru transactions go to mediation and less than 0.5% to arbitration. The vast majority of work is satisfactory, and of that is not, 90% is settled mutually.

Freelancer.com

Freelancer.com offers a wide variety of writers willing to look after your blog content. Their quoted prices range from $2. Like any other freelancing service, you must check out the quality of previous work carried out by anybody before you hire them. Generally, on such sites, the only way to do this is to read the feedback. Even then you must be careful, because some feedback might have been given in order to release the payment.

You can often judge potential quality from the price. You don’t expect as good an article or blog post for $2 as if you paid $12. However, you don’t have many options from such websites, so you either take a chance or you don’t. You may frequently find a great writer that offers you all you want, but you could also receive a post that you would not dream of publishing.

When using freelance sites for blog or website content you can be lucky or unlucky in your choice. The only protection you have is in the payment system each offers. Generally, you will find reasonable writers, because the site will not want to be continually returning prepaid fees to customers due to poor standard of work. However, such sites still have their drawbacks although many people use the same freelance site for all their work.

XPlace

XPlace is where you can find not only qualified freelance content writers but also other freelancers. Let it be Graphic Designing or CV Making, you’ll find the right provider at XPlace. It also happens to be one of the old and trusted platforms for freelancers and freelancer-seekers. Spread across 100+ categories, you can find thousands of freelancers at XPlace, especially because XPlace does not charge commissions from freelancers.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay XPlace even if you’re looking for jobs. As a client, you have two choices. First, you can post about your Project, in a detailed manner. Second, you can choose one of the freelancers from corresponding categories. If we take the Content Writing category, you can see available freelancers — along with details about their work, pricing and some other info.

One thing that we loved in XPlace is that the freelancer has a fully-fledged profile page. There you can find details about their previous work, expertise areas and reviews, of course. In a single look, you can be sure of the professional. Once you have confirmed the freelancer, you can invite them to your project or send them a message for further communication.

Last but not least, XPlace clients can get features like NDA Assistance and Urgent Request Fulfillment. And, it is completely free too, although freelancers can go for a paid membership, for better visibility and reach.

Hubstaff Talent

When compared to other freelancer websites out there, Hubstaff Talent is something unique: it’s completely free to use Hubstaff Talent for finding freelancer work as well as freelancers. So, it works like a free-to-use directory for those who seek work and those who seek freelancers. As a result, Hubstaff Talent has a huge user-base of more than 7000 Freelancers. That’s some amount you can rely upon.

The best thing about Hubstaff Talent is that it works fine for Agencies, Business Owners and Freelancers alike — they have a simplified method to follow. If you’re a blog owner, you can easily post about your Project. In a few days or so, you can receive possible requests and you can hire the right person for the job. Or, you’ve the option to search and find the right person from the collection of 7000+ profiles.

Profiles in Hubstaff Talent are quite detailed, giving you enough information. You can easily find Portfolio, personal details, industry experience etc. from the single page. In case if you did not know, Hubstaff is a very popular solution for time-tracking. So, when you hire a freelancer on an hourly basis, you have to pay for the actual hours of work — nothing more, nothing less.

So, at the end of the day, Hubstaff Talent is a totally-free solution for finding freelance content writers for a blog or other publications. When we checked, the collection was something amazing too.

Private Ghostwriting Websites

Another option available to you is to search for freelance or ghostwriters online. Some of the best writers use their own websites, and do not rely upon freelance websites for their business. Google a keyword such as ‘article services‘ or ‘article ghostwriting services‘ and you may come across some good writing services that can take care of your blog posts and content in a very professional manner.

The reason that individual sites tend to provide a better and more professional writing service is because that is their job. That is the work they do! They are not reliant upon freelance sites for their work. If they were, they would never make a living because they cannot compete for $2 jobs!

If there is one thing you can be certain of it is that any website that makes a living from article or blog content writing will be professional and carry out a good job. Otherwise it would not be in existence, and the writer would be seeking work from a freelance website such as one of those discussed above!

Using Freelance Sites For Blog or Website Content: Summary

If you are using freelance sites for blog or website content you must be aware of the vast range of capabilities offered on such websites. You can find the best and the worst of writers and it is up to you to distinguish between them.

You must also keep in mind that while many non-English native speakers may not be able to provide you with a blog post written in perfect English, you may find them very useful for translating your post into their language for publication in their country.

It is often better to look for individual ghostwriters on their own websites. You can find a good selection of American and UK writers in their own country’s version of Google. The Scots tend to be excellent writers, as do some Americans and the English. However, it all depends upon what you are willing to pay. You tend to get what you pay for in this business. There is a massive difference between the quality of a $2 and a $15 article.

Freelance sites can offer you many different services, ranging from graphics design to an entire 50,000 word eBook on some form of medical research. It is your job to find the best of these for you. You might find such a service on a freelance site such as Elance or on a private article services website. Many people claim that it is the service that matters, not the cost, but they would be wrong. It is the quality of service that matters and the cost might well be significant.