The internet creates white an opportunity to hire (and fire) people to work remotely for your business, no matter where they are located, and this includes writers of articles for your website content.

With many businesses struggling to survive, this is a much cheaper option (in most cases) to hiring in the traditional sense. Also, you don’t have to pay by the hour either – you can set a target number of articles for them to write, and pay them per article – not for the time it took them to write it. So if it takes all day for your writer to write one article, you’re only paying for one article – not for 8 hours of “work”.

Today I’m going to talk you through how you can avoid hiring a dodgy writer to write articles for your website.

When you post a job on www.elance.com looking for a writer, it’s not long before you have several people bidding to write your articles for you.

But how do you pick a good one from a dodgy one? And does price dictate the quality of the work you will receive from that writer?

Having hired writers myself, I understand it can be difficult to work this out from a single bid, but the following pointers should help:

1. Read their bid thoroughly. Have they specifically mentioned certain aspects of your proposal in their bid, or does the bid look suspiciously like it’s a standard template they use for all bids?
2. What is the quality of the writing in their bid? Do they use good spelling or grammar, or are they terrible? A terribly worded bid should be enough to tell you to steer clear.
3. Review their samples – in fact, review as much as you can. Do they have a website? If so, what is the content like? If it’s great content, then that’s a good sign. Are their samples good? Another good sign.
4. If you send your new potential employee a message to ask them a question, what is the quality of their reply like? How quickly did they respond? These are indicators of what type of relationship you may have with this writer.
5. If you’re targeting an English speaking market, ensure your writer can write like a native English speaker. Have they mentioned this in their bid? Now don’t get me wrong, I am NOT racist. But if you’re promoting a product to somebody in the US, the UK or even Australia, if your articles are written in “broken” English, you’re not going to get a good response. This is purely a business decision and I have wonderful friends from all over the world who speak all languages, so please don’t shoot me down here!
6. To cover yourself, in your proposal, be sure to mention that you will not accept copied or plagiarized articles. Unfortunately, many of my clients have been burned by so-called talented writers who could not even write their own content!
7. How many ways can you contact your writer if you need to? This allows you to easily contact them if you have any questions or concerns. This should be highlighted in their bid too.
8. Do they guarantee their work? Many writers (myself included) guarantees that if you are unhappy with my work, I will rewrite your article/s for you. If I find I cannot meet my client’s needs, then a full refund is offered. No questions asked. I want this to be an easy process, no matter what the outcome.
9. How much experience do they have in writing about your topic of interest? The more previous experience they have, the better chances you have of receiving quality work, although this isn’t a guarantee.
10. What qualifications do they have? For example, if you’re a life coach and you require personal development related articles, a writer with coaching experience/qualifications (that’s me!) may be the ideal candidate.

And finally, if you’re still unsure if the writer you’ve hired is the real deal or not, why not get them to write you one article first, and if you are happy with this, then they’re free to write the rest for you.

None of these tips above will guarantee you a good outcome, but they will increase your chances of avoiding the truly dodgy (and yes there are a few out there) writers out there.

And as for cost vs quality, there is no hard and fast rule here, however most quality writers can charge more, purely because they are worth more – and they know it.

You will see plenty of $2 writers and $5 writers out there, and I’ve had several bid on jobs I’ve posted. But I want quality – and I really didn’t want to sacrifice that in order to get dirt cheap articles, which may not have been to the standard I wanted.

If you have any questions about choosing the right writer for you, or you would like more information on my writing services, please Contact me.

Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is basically the term for optimising your website so it appears in the search engine listings. Optimising your website can be done using several strategies, including article marketing, social bookmarking, keyword targeting, and so much more.

Many businesses pay literally thousands of dollars to online marketing professionals to have their websites optimised, but is this really necessary?

Well… it depends!

Let me tell you about one of my websites. I don’t have an “SEO strategy” in place, nor do I do any keyword research when writing my articles. I also don’t bother with social bookmarking, and I can honestly tell you that I’m not really out there promoting that site to anybody.

But here’s what I AM doing:

I am writing articles on an irregular basis and I am posting them on my website. I don’t post these articles often, but they’re targeted towards a specific subject that I am passionate about and that I know a lot about. And of course they fall under the niche my website is based on. Very relevant.

Sometimes I’ll post something to Ezine Articles, but lately I’ve not done too much of that. In fact, I’ve probably posted only one or two articles there in the last year. Purely due to a lack of time!

And guess what? My website is on Page 1 of Google for my targeted keywords! In fact, it’s on Page 1 for many search terms related to my chosen niche!

The reason I’m receiving this Google love is not because I have a specific SEO strategy in place. It’s because my website is loaded with quality, relevant content!

Whenever somebody is searching for a term that happens to appear in one of my blog posts, then there is a chance my website will come up in the search engine listings.

So my key piece of advice here is this: When writing your articles, target them so they’re written in a way that will answer somebody’s question or offer them a solution to their problem.

Write a series of tips or how-to’s.

For example, if you have a website on weightloss and you’re selling supplements, your blog posts should have articles with titles such as “How to choose the right supplement”, or “Which supplement is the best for weight loss” or other terms that somebody is likely to type into Google when looking for the right supplement for them.

Make sense? I hope so! And if not (or even if it does!), please feel free to post a comment below!

As a consumer, I’m more likely to buy a product from somebody that I perceive to be an expert in their chosen niche, than from another person who I perceive to know nothing about it!

In the past, I’ve purchsed products from people who I trust. And that trust is built with the each interaction I have with that person.

Not all of those interactions are in person, and in fact, most are in fact online via their website.

So let’s think about this for a second…

When somebody’s searching for information online, they either want an answer to a question, or a solution to a problem.

They come up to a website which has a really fancy sales page, but no real content and they quickly click away (well… I do anyway!).  But what if they’re taken to a blog which has article after article, that not only answers their specific questions, but offers them so much more?

What if this person is drawn to look at more and more of your articles, learning more and more from you?

Don’t you think that they’d start to perceive you as somebody who knows what they’re talking about?  Of course they would!

And don’t you also think that their trust in you and your products will grow, as they learn more from you?  Of course they would!

And don’t you ALSO think that they’re more likely to buy from you if they trust you and perceive you to be an expert??  OF COURSE they would! 

Your website (which I hope has a blog!!? – See my Blogs page for more info if you don’t) is your window to the world. It’s how more and more people are finding you each and every day as more and more people go online.  So it’s important that the content on your website offers VALUE to your readers.

If you’re not offering anything of value, they’ll click away.  But if you are able to engage them through your website content (articles) and help them in some way, then they’ll stick around, and they may want to learn more about you, your products and services and they might even buy from you – which of course is the goal here!

Now, if you don’t have time to write articles for your website, or if you’re just not “talented” in that area, then you can outsource this task.

I recommend posting at least three articles per week on your website, however this is sometimes not practical.  But I wouldn’t go less than one per week.  The more regularly your site is updated with new content, the more “Google love” you’re going to get, which of course can drive even more traffic to your website.  Yay!

Outsourcing your article writing can be expensive – if you don’t know where to look to find a quality writer!

But thankfully you can outsource this task, not pay the earth for it, and end up with quality, engaging content for your website.

All you’ve got to do is hire a good writer who charges a reasonable price (visit my Writing Services page today for my pricing), view their writing samples (my sample page is HERE), and get started!

If you have any questions about this article or anything else on this website, please Contact me or comment in the comments section below.

When building a website you are obviously doing so with the intention of attracting traffic to that website so that you can promote your products or services.

If nobody finds your website then you are going to find yourself with a whole lot of trouble!  What’s the point of having a website if nobody visits it?

For many business owners like yourself, the way to attract traffic to your website is either a bit of a mystery or it seems a little too complicated, but it really doesn’t have to be that way, although there are many strategies to help your website ranking in the search engines.  One such strategy is using backlinks.

Backlinks are essentially links to your website that are posted on other websites that you don’t necesarily own.  The more links you have pointing to your website, the better your site ranking, and the better your site ranking, the better your chances are of people finding your website in the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN (to name a few).

Creating backlinks is a time-consuming process and in order to achieve optimum results, the process of building links to your site sometimes needs to be an ongoing process to get your rankings up and then keep them there.

If you’re like most business owners, then you really don’t have the time (or the inclination) to spend hours upon hours in front of your computer first learning how to do it, then going and creating backlinks to your site.  So that’s where I come in and take over this tedious task.

For more information on how I can help you with Link Building, please Contact me.

As a business owner, if you are paying to have unique and original articles or content written for you, then that is what you should expect to receive.

What you must be aware of however, is that sometimes there may be small snippets of information throughout the written work that may match up with something else you have read before, but that’s not to say it has been copied.

When talking about specific topics, there are so many points of view out there, but some will be very similar and this must be considered.

For example, when I write about personal development and setting goals, I talk specifically about setting “SMART” goals as an effective goal setting strategy.  Most life coaches I know (including myself) also talk about these “SMART” goals, but we have not copied the work of someone else – we are just talking about what we know.

So if you have a means to check if the work you have been provided has been copied, bear in mind that you may come across small sections that may match up, but for the most part it should be unique and original.

For more information on how I can help your business to make its mark on the world, check out my Writing Services page.