How To Hire A Good Freelancer

As part of my link building service experiment I chose four services with the thought that I would write the content for each service.

It worked fine for a few months.  I would write 8 short articles with unique content for Build My Rank, then spin those articles to create the articles for UAW and 1WayLinks.  Link Aloha doesn’t need content, so that was no effort at all.

But I got sick of write 150 word posts over and over again and quickly realized that it wasn’t a good use of my time at all. 

In the hour or two it took to write those 8 articles that were only useful as backlink fodder I could have cranked out some real useful content for one of my sites instead and expanded my money making sites.

So I set out to find a freelancer to write them for me.  Luckily for me, with the global economy being what it is it’s not hard to find someone willing to do the work at a very low price.  See my article on why it’s hard to make decent money online for an analysis of why there aren’t really many online work at home job opportunities.

However, the global economy works both ways and in this case it’s to your benefit.  There are many sites out there where you can find and hire a freelancer.  My absolute favorite for this sort of thing is Freelancer.com.  My goal?  Get 100 BMR articles written for $1 each.

Make An Exact Set Of Requirements

First, spell out EXACTLY what you want the freelancer to do.  In this case, I wanted 100 BMR articles of minimum 150 words each.  Make a list and post it.  For example, mine said things like:

Must pass Copyscape and be accepted into BMR.  Needs to be understandable and readable English, does not need to be a work of art.  I give you 10 keywords, you write 10 articles on each keyword.  Must provide at least 10 articles a day until all 100 are complete, No links or BMR submission skills necessary, since I like to do my own.  Must be in CSV format, etc. 

Make it a nice long list of requirements and put everything you are worried about in there.

The Hidden M&M Technique

You ever hear about singers and bands who demand extraordinary and bizarre items, such as a bowl of M&M’s backstage but with no Red ones?  Are they crazy?  Do they do it just because they can?

No.  They do it to test their concert venue management.  In this case, they have to trust that the show organizer who runs the stadium or concert hall pays attention to details.

A typical concert requires hundreds of different items to be exactly right.  From the power requirements, to the weight of the lights, to the stage construction.  Skimp on the details and the show might be over from lack of power to drive the amps.  Really skimp on the details and people could get seriously hurt or worse.

So many bands and singers hide little odd details in their contract.  They might have a list of food to be available backstage in one section that includes M&Ms, but in the middle of the section about the power requirements would sneak in a rule saying no Red M&Ms are allowed backstage.

That way the singer or band manager knows that if they see any Red M&M’s in the bowl in the dressing room, they need to review EVERYTHING on the list to make sure they didn’t also forget or miss five other items that could literally bring the house down.

So how can you use this?  Hide a specific instruction in the middle asking anyone who applies for your job to do a specific task.  In my case I hid this in the middle of my requirements “Send me a private message stating ‘I understand these requirements’ exactly”

And you know what?  I received over 50 replies to my simple $100 Freelancer.com posting.  And only 5 of them sent me the required private message.  And of those three of them had fairly good grammar in their replies.  So I chose two of the three and gave them both the assignment.

And now for around $200 plus some small fees I had 200 Build My Rank articles that were all accepted on the first try.  Sure, they weren’t going to win any Pulitzer Prizes for literature, but they got the job done in the end.

Remember, put your effort where you can add value and outsource the rest!