How to Effectively Hire a Ghost Writer

 by: Matt Bacak

In today's busy world, whether your business is large or small, it is easy to become over whelmed with day-to-day tasks. Suddenly you realize that you need to update your web presence content or you need to have a processes and procedures manual on-hand in case of key personnel being out. It just becomes too much to handle! Or perhaps you need to produce articles to promote your business, but writing simply isn't your forte. What do you do? It's simple; hire a ghost writer to assist you in performing your writing tasks.

Professional, well-qualified ghost writers can be contacted via any number of freelance project posting sites such as www.guru.com or www.elance.com, and others. These freelance project posting sites permit a buyer who needs writing projects completed, while maintaining all rights to the material upon payment, to post a project description and allow “Work for Hire” freelance writers to bid on your project. You can set the time length during which bidding is permitted and even request samples of the writers' work for review.

When posting a freelance writing project for bid on any project posting site, you should strive to communicate facts clearly so that service providers can bid accurately on your project.

• Establish exactly what length, in number of words or pages, you are requesting to be written for you.

• Define exactly the content and purpose of your requested project. Some examples of content types are web content, search engine optimized web content, magazine article, resume, processes and procedures manual, how-to report, ebook, or white paper. The type of writer that will bid on one type of job may not be well suited to another type of project.

• Define format requirement. These requirements include exactly what format you want the data should be delivered to you as a final product such as MS Word, plain text, or rich text format.

• Determine precisely the deadline for delivery of your final products. If you have an exact need date for your material, state that date in your project description. Those writers who can not meet your deadline will simply not waste your time reading their bids.

• Communicate any other requirements. You may want content to have bulleted points, or to have margins of 1.5 inches on every side. Any requirements that you desire in your final product should be stated in your project description. Most freelance writers, upon accepting your project award, copy your exact project description into their information files to ensure they are working to your specifications.

The online freelance project posting systems allow you to review the portfolios of the writers who are members of that system. You can select based on criteria such as previous feedback, length of time on the system and other factors to view a selection of service providers' information. You can then select a few service providers which appear to fit your needs and invite them to bid on your project, if you wish.

Keep in mind when reviewing service providers' feedback reports that no one makes everyone happy all of the time. If a 5.0 is a perfect rating, and a writer has over 20 projects on which they have received feedback, you can expect at least one client to have not given even an exceptional writer a perfect score. Be realistic and look for service providers with a feedback rating near the top as well as those at the top of the ratings.

Once bids have been placed on your project, review those bids. It is wise to identify which service providers bidding on the project included in their response your exact project requirements. If you stated that you desire 30 articles written and the bid stated the provider will write 15 articles for you, it is clear that they did not read the project description. That kind of inattention to detail when bidding can indicate a general lack of attention and your project deserves to be treated with care. A good service provider will tell you in their bid exactly what services they will provide for how much money and within what timeframe. If those key items are not contained in the bid, move on and review the ones that have clearly responded to your request.

If you request samples of work from the service providers bidding on your project, you can expect to receive anywhere from one to two articles per bid to as many as ten articles attached to bids. Read at least one sample from each bid to learn about that writer's style and tone. If the sample style fits with what you have in mind and their bid reflected care and precision in bidding, you should add that writer to your “short list”.

As soon as you have honed the respondents down to three or four bids that are from reliable providers, choose based on price and turnaround time that best suits your personal needs. There are many, many wonderful freelance writers working in the global marketplace of the Internet today. Let them relieve you from some of your job stress by writing documentation and content for you!