Sunday, June 15, 2014

The Secret To Finding The Perfect Freelance Copywriter

By Sally Delacruz


No matter what type of business you have, at some stage you might need some good copy. This could for instance be text for your website, for advertisements or for brochures. Unless you have the time and excellent language skills to do it yourself, it's helpful to employ the services of a freelance copywriter. However, copywriting is a very competitive industry and you'll need to know a few tricks to find a quality freelancer who is right for your project.

Many people now use specialized online job sites for freelancers to find people who can work on their project. Because the internet has made it possible to instantly communicate with someone almost anywhere in the world, you may find that the right person lives in a faraway country like India or the Philippines. You may even save some money by outsourcing the project to someone from another part of the world.

The quality of your advertisement will determine the quality of the people applying for the job. Copywriters who are great at their job generally ignore advertisements that don't tell them exactly what will be expected of them. They also avoid projects that don't offer a decent, market-related rate or ones where the employer has unrealistic expectations of how much time the project will take. If you need the copy to be in a different language, use that language for your advertisement to attract candidates who can actually speak that language.

It's very likely that you'll receive many proposals from interested freelancers. A process of elimination will make it easier to create a shortlist of potential employees. Start by checking the quality of the language used in the proposal, because a badly written proposal will probably mean badly written copy for the project too. Promising to complete the project within a time frame that's not realistic or quoting a very low rate often means that the person is not a very professional or experienced copywriter.

Be open-minded about candidates' nationalities. Someone who lives in a country where English is the official language does not always make the best copywriter. Often people with excellent English writing skills live in the most surprising places and often they're expats from countries such as the USA.

When you've compiled a list of possible candidates, take the time to look at their profiles. Again, a badly written profile should tell you that the copy you'll get will be of a low standard. The person's resume should tell you what their field of expertise is likely to be and the samples in their portfolio will tell you about their writing style.

Before making your final choice, see what other employers have said about the freelancer. However, don't fall into the trap of looking only at the overall rating. Specifically look at the number of negative reviews and what the issues are that have been raised in these reviews. The way that the person reacts to any negative review is a good indication of their personality and their professionalism too.

It's a gamble to use any freelancer that you haven't used before. To prevent losing too much when your choice turns out to be the wrong one, leave sufficient time for reviewing the completed project and finding ways to fix problems such as bad quality or missed deadlines. However, your gamble may also pay off in the form of a freelancer who'll be an asset to your business.




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