Outsourcing Your Content

Can You Create All of Your Content Yourself - or Do You Need Outside Help?

Whether you need help depends on your goals and circumstances. Do you have another job, or too many other demands on your time? How much do you like writing? And how much money can you afford to spend on outsourcing your content?

If writing doesn't come naturally to you, you may be slower at it than someone who loves it. Of course you'll get better with practice, but you may be wiser to outsource at least some of it and get on with doing other things yourself.

Outsourcing doesn’t mean you've given up or failed. You're still in overall editorial control. It’s still your own unique original content as far as your visitors are concerned. Outsourcing simply helps you work smarter and achieve a better result for your visitors in the end.

Decide What You Want to Outsource

Deciding what to outsource is easy if you have a publishing schedule in front of you. You can see exactly what you have to do over the coming weeks and decide what you should delegate.

Here are some things you should take into account when deciding what to outsource:

How much money do you want to spend? As a rough rule of thumb work on around $10 dollars per 500 word article and create a monthly budget. Assume your feature articles will be around 750 words so allow $15 for those.

Are there any topics you have to cover yourself – for example where the content is highly specialized or where your own opinion is needed in the copy? You are unlikely to get good results from outsourcing unless you pay a lot more. Outsourced content generally needs to be easily researched and written.

How quickly do you want your content – it will take time to write up your project brief and list it with agencies. Writers may require a little lead-in time to produce the finished article.

Are you prepared to re-write from a basic article or do you want the finished thing ready to load on site?

Is there a series of articles with a theme that you could outsource as a whole to a writer? Examples might include: a top tips series of posts or a series of ‘how to’ articles.

Watch the ASC Video Add New Users to WordPress and cPanel to enable other writers to post to your blog.

Select the Best Sources

Generally you are best to approach professional freelance agencies so that the contract you enter into has a degree of protection.

Three of the best sources of freelance help which includes professional writers are:

Also, if you're in the U.S., consider trying Amazon's Mechanical Turk, where you can order quality custom content that's ideal for blog posts - often for a dollar or less (yes, really!).

All of the above offer a range of features to clients. Whatever source you go for, watch out for the following features:

Good information about the freelancers – jobs they have completed, testimonials, numbers of jobs, dates of most recent jobs, location and mother-tongue, rates charged, specific areas of interest/experience.

Ability to publish a job brief on the site with help to put it together.

Guidance on rates.

Protection for payments – some form of Escrow system where the fee is held pending successful completion of the job.

Ability to communicate directly with selected writers if you want your job brief to go only to those with the right kind of experience.

Take a look at these sites, register at the ones you like the best, and run a search on other sources of freelance help to see what else is available.

Simple Steps to Successful Outsourcing

Even if you use a good professional freelance agency – and we definitely think you should, at least to start with – outsourcing can be something of a minefield. Generally new publishers tend to learn by their mistakes in outsourcing.

Here are some tips to assist you in getting it right from the start:

Only use professional writers who have experience of writing for the web.

Get examples of copy they have written and evaluate it with your most critical hat on. Good writers will provide this.

Don’t give one writer lots of articles to write up front. Better to choose two writers and give them a test article each to start with the promise of more to come.

Negotiate a deal for articles in bulk – once you have evaluated the quality of the writer.

Write as detailed a job brief as you can manage – you will need it if the writer falls short of your expectations and you don’t want to pay for the result.

Include a cut-off for applications for the job in your brief.

Don’t pay if the writer doesn’t deliver what you want. Tell him/her exactly what is wrong and where it differs from the brief. They either have to rewrite for free or back out of the job.

Use an escrow system for payment so you and the writer are protected.

Never pay upfront for a job.

Never use a writer whose first language is not English.

Be suspicious of very low rates (anything under $5 per article) – you may get very low quality copy. Be prepared to pay more for original, high quality work. Remember this is what your visitors want – bland copy turns people off.

Set a definite delivery date and monitor progress.

Keep to your side of the contract and be courteous and professional at all times – most agencies ask writers for rating of clients.

Even if you think you would rather write all your own content, as a professional web publisher it’s worth dipping your toe in the freelance pool to see how it works and what you could get out of it.

If you’re successful, maintain your relationship direct with your freelancers and keep them supplied with work on an ongoing basis using your publishing schedule.