For freelancers and those looking to hire freelance talent, with a special focus on freelance writing. Once I started writing, this got really long, so I’ve divided it up as best I can. This is part one, for clients looking to hire freelancers.

I’ll be very surprised if there’s only one edition of this. Every job teaches me something new that I can apply to work going forward. This is only my first attempt at writing such a blog post, so keep an eye on my blog for periodic updates as I find new things to share.

How to Hire a Freelancer

I don’t know all the best sites to hire freelancers, but I do know that Upwork has worked amazingly well for me, and it’s one of the top sites for a reason. They have all the protections in place for both freelancer and client; they handle the money; it’s been seamless for me. The examples I’m using are all things that came across my own feed, so they’re related to creative writing or editing, but I think you’ll find the points are going to hit pretty much any field, and they’re not entirely specific to Upwork, either. This is how the process works from our end, so I can tell you not to do certain things.

5 Basic Do’s and Don’ts

1. DON’T tell freelancers you need [freelancer type] able to [generic freelancer skill of that type].

Guess what. We already figured out that part, because you posted a job request tagged that way! This may seem backwards, not to tell people what you’re seeking, but I’m specifically talking about the use of generic words.

I recently ran across a post on Upwork that said the following:

Need Ghostwriter for a screenplay 7 pages
able to articulated story creatively

Yes. That is the entire post, copied directly from the site.

Now tell me, how exactly does a freelancer write a proposal to that? Proposals are like job applications to a regular position. We focus on the top skills needed, the most likely methods of working together, hurdles that might come up, or experiences we’ve had that make us the right people for the job.

The worst part? The client is clearly an active person, because they have over two dozen other jobs already completed, and all of them are like this. Short and grammatically incorrect, with no particular hook to latch onto. Clearly no one told them their job requests are crap, so they keep doing it, expecting to get good work from each one.

How about this one?

Looking for medium level Creative Writing specialist.

Again, that’s the entire post. That much is also entered in when you make the job request. We, the freelancers, are already finding the job based on the experience level and job type requested. (It’s like any feed aggregator these days, whether it’s twitter, Facebook, or an RSS aggregator. You tell it what you want to show up, and it displays things that match what you asked for.) As a freelance creative writer at an intermediate level, the fact the job popped up at all already tells me those details about it.

Don’t waste your time or mine. With the number of posts I get in my feed, if I don’t see specific keywords, I’m moving on. And just so you know, Upwork has a way for us to collapse posts in our feed so we don’t have to scroll as far. If it’s not related to our skillset, for instance. If I’ve collapsed a post, that’s it. I’m not going to go back and rethink it later. There’s simply not enough time in the day for me to do my work AND spend hours reading job requests. Time is money.

2. DO tell freelancers you need a specific [freelancer type] able to use a very specific skillset as related to aspects of your project, which you then must list.

Building on the last point, I need to know what kind of project you’re working on. This is important both in the big picture and the details. No matter what industry you are working in, there are a great many niches within it. I write, but usually I only write fiction, not website content, blog or social media posts, or research papers. So if you’re seeking someone to write a research paper or a blog post, I need to know that so I don’t apply. If you say ‘writer’ you’re going to get a lot of people with no relevant skills for the job because they fall into the same big industry/category but not your specific niche.

If you identify a type of freelancer, please also include the topic of the freelancing. A blog post on a new yoga studio in town is hugely different than a blog about a weight loss diet plan or a blog about new technological advances. A novel that is contemporary romance is wildly different than a fantasy novel. (Ghostwriting is different than me writing something and putting my name on it, too.) Even a contemporary romance novel is a broad category. There are five “heat” levels from clean romance to erotica, and not all romance writers write all five. And then you’re going to have to identify themes and the situation (enemies to lovers, office romance, pretend marriage, holiday fun, etc). Obviously these examples are based on freelance creative writing, but it applies across a lot of industries.

Make sure it is very clear who you’re looking for, what project or job that person will be doing, and list the skills they need to be able to use.

3. DON’T tell creative freelancers your idea is going to make it big, guaranteed.

Okay, this may only be for the creative sorts of freelancing. Writing a story, making a movie, and so on. The number of times I have seen someone post a request for a ghostwriter for “the next New York Times best seller” based on their idea, or someone seeking an editor for words they (a person who is not a professional writer) have written “to make it a best seller”… it’s really humbling how many people think they’re the next best thing. It’s a stereotype of Hollywood, certainly, where people go out trying to make it big and rarely ever do, but in this era of the internet, it’s not just Hollywood anymore. Your idea is only as good as you can make it.

Please. For pity’s sake. Do not wave a flag above your head that says you have no idea what the industry is like. No creative writer or literary editor is going to want to work with you if your expectation is the best seller list. Why? If it was that easy to be on the best seller list, we’d be there already! Don’t get me wrong, shoot for the stars. However, if you’re going to be unsatisfied with anything less than the best seller list, I don’t want to pour my time and energy into a project with which you’re unlikely to ever be satisfied.

Nothing is ever guaranteed.

You can have a great idea, wonderful presentation, and still have it flop for marketing reasons. Authors are brands these days, and your brand is going to be part of the equation. If you don’t pitch it to the right genre and audience, the quality of the book doesn’t matter because you won’t see readers that want that type of book.

This is the nature of the creative industry these days, when everything is driven by social media, algorithms that show you want they think you want to see, and everyone jumping on the bandwagon for something the next guy did or said.

4. DON’T hide the project details from your freelancer.

This is really critical, and of the utmost importance, especially for creative industries. I never want to see “project details will be given after you apply”, or worse, “more information after you have signed an NDA”. Yes, I am a ghostwriter, and ghostwriting comes with an NDA attached so that I get paid for my work but hand it over to someone else to put their name on it. Non-disclosure is part of the job. That doesn’t mean I’m going to sign anything without knowing what you’re hiring me for!

If you’re looking to hire a ghostwriter for a story idea that you think is so amazing you aren’t going to tell anyone anything about it, you’ve already failed. To begin with, it’s very unlikely that your idea is new. It’s something of an understanding in the writing industry that there are no new ideas, only new interpretations. More importantly, however, you have to tell the freelancer enough for them to know whether or not they can do the job! They also need to know enough to decide if they want to do the job. If you asked me to write gritty military fiction, I probably can’t. I’ve no experience with the military, aside from other fictional interpretations, and no amount of research is going to make it feel like my characters are the real deal. So I need to know the topic you want me to write.

These are the two very important factors from the freelancer’s side. Can I? If so, do I want to? If you didn’t tell me enough to answer those questions, I’ve ignored your job request and moved on already.

5. DON’T rush through your job request or any communication with potential freelancers.

This may sound like common sense, but I’ve seen it far too often for me to not mention this. If your request looks like you typed it on your phone with your thumbs in the dark, and hit send before even reading what auto-correct butchered, you look like an inept person that will be a headache as a client. Don’t get me wrong, typos happen. Broken sentences, words that were auto-corrected to something that makes no sense, addressing a response to someone other than the freelancer you’re in touch with, and other errors that quickly rereading would fix just make you look bad.

You may be the one hiring me, but if you don’t look twice at your work, I’m simply not going to apply because I don’t want to have that become a problem later. Especially if your lack of focus could make me do something wrong, or get blamed for not following directions.

More Insight to Come

Next week I’ll have the How-to post for the Freelancers, as well as those considering trying it. After that I’ll probably keep a list of things to post once I have enough material again, but if you have questions, please ask me! I will answer any questions I’m asked, both directly and in my next Freelancing article.