How To Hire A Freelance Writer or Copywriter

Attention all entrepreneurs and business owners. If you are looking to hire great copywriters, this video is for you. Hey guys, it's Alex. And in this copywriting tutorial, I'm going to walk you through my six steps for finding great copywriters to join your team. Now, without a doubt, this is the number one question I get from my entrepreneur friends and mastermind members. Unfortunately, most business owners are pretty tight lipped when it comes to revealing who writes their copy. And that's because when you have a good copywriter, you don't want to let them go. Or why Copywriters seem like magical little leprechauns at the end of a rainbow and you can never find one. Well, we are kind of magical little leprechauns. Other marketers just don't want you cashing in on their pot of gold. But I promise there are great writers out there looking for you too. So hopefully this video helps both you entrepreneurs looking to hire writers and you freelance writers looking for amazing clients. Whichever side of the rainbow you fall on, be sure to hit subscribe below so you don't miss a single video from me. Every week I release a new copywriting tutorial for those of you looking to grow your business with crazy good copy. All right, now here are my six steps for finding a great copywriter. Step number one. Get clear on what type of writer you want. Not all copywriters are created equal. In fact, good copywriters, like doctors, have a specialty. If you don't know what you're looking for, you'll end up swimming in a sea of applications and creating way more work for yourself. And anyone you do end up hiring will be a total shot in the dark. So first things first. Determine the writer you need based on the following four criteria. 1. Niche. You want to hire a writer with relevant experience in your particular niche. So personal development, weight loss, real estate, finance, parenting, pets, business coaching, nutrition. You get the idea. Next, writing style. Determine if your brand voice is fun, educational, professional, cheeky, authoritative. This information is valuable for copywriters. Next, determine the type of copy you're looking for. Are you looking for content writers or copywriters? Will they write emails or sales pages or video scripts or social posts? Or all of the above? And finally, you want to determine the skill level you're looking for. You want your writer's skill level to match the revenue potential of what they'll be writing. So if you're just getting started and you haven't made any money and you have a small budget and you don't want to write your own copy? I'd recommend you start with a greener copywriter who can learn and grow with your brand. But if you have a more established offer and an existing existing benchmark to beat, hire a more experienced writer. You'll be able to gauge pretty quickly if that writer can increase your current conversions and what you can afford to pay them. Okay, so once you've gotten clear on the type of writer you need, it's time to move on to step number two. Write a Very Specific Job description. Now it's no surprise that to find a great writer you need to have a great job description and you want this before you start your search. Hiring for this specific of a role in your business means hiring for quality over quantity. It is not a numbers game. So if you put in the effort into writing a great job description, you will attract the right people in your job description. Include everything you define in step one so the niche, style, type and skill level of the copywriter you're looking for. This will help weed out the writers that are absolutely not a fit for you. Now in your job posting, be authentic and real. Describe your company culture, mission, vision and vibe. Copywriters are excited by purpose and personality. We want to feel like we're part of something bigger and not just creating offers that convert. So many business owners underestimate the power of this, and the most important thing to remember with this step is to set very specific application guidelines. If you don't do this, you'll have a bunch of unqualified leads and a lot of extra work on your hands digging through those trigger applications with canned responses. So always ask for a cover letter that explains why the candidate wants to work with you and why they think they'd be a great fit for your team. And ask to see writing samples or a portfolio of their past work. And I also like to include a small little instruction like Send in your application with a subject line copywriter application your name. This comes in handy when you're weeding through applications and want to see who actually followed instructions and read the entirety of your job description, I'll give you a hint most people won't. So if you want a sample of a copywriter job description that I wrote, just comment below and let me know and I'll be sure to send it your way. So once you have your job description written, just post it publicly on your website so that you can easily have it accessible in a link you can shoot over to candidates. And once that's done, you can head on over to step number three, Find prospects. This is where you get to go fish. Of course, it doesn't hurt to ask your friends or colleagues for copywriter referrals. That's a good place to start. But if you find it's a dead end, here's a few different things you can try. Post to local job boards or on college career boards to find English major grads looking for work. You can also search through Facebook for public copywriting groups that are full of writers that are looking for clients. LinkedIn is also a popular resource for hiring. Just search for keyword terms like copywriter or freelance writer and send messages to those who look appealing with a link to your job description. I've also actually stumbled onto a lot of writers on Instagram by searching for hashtags like Writers of Instagram or Freelance Writer. If you're unconventional, you just might find the gem where no one else is looking. And of course, you can and should post your job on popular freelance sites like upwork. A lot of freelance copywriters will already have an upwork profile, so if you get a contact outside of Upwork, you can always invite them to the job there if you want to manage everyone in one place. And don't forget to search through upwork's Freelancer database and invite specific people who fit the bill to apply for your job. Once you've collected a bunch of candidates, move on to step number four. Filter your candidates. This is where you put on those reading glasses and get to work narrowing down the candidate pool to the top five. I am a big believer on going off first impressions here. You do not have time to read every single word in an application or review every single portfolio. And the easiest place to start is to weed out anyone who didn't follow those instructions in your job description and apply with the proper subject line. That way, you're axing literally 90% of the applicants without opening a single email or message. Then, out of those who actually followed the application instructions, read only the COVID letters. If they didn't include a cover letter, they're gone. And if their letter isn't written, well, bye. I mean, you're hiring a writer, after all. They need to know how to write. I'll then look at the writing samples of no more than 10 writers and pick out who I want to interview from those who show promise and creativity. Now the next thing I do is video interviews on Zoom with each one of these candidates more to gauge personality and fit than anything else. I mean, I only want to work with people who I actually enjoy talking to regardless of their caliber of writing. And I'll be honest, I hardly look at CVs because names of random companies or educational institutions really tell me nothing valuable about them as a person or their specific writing experience. I'd much rather talk to them about this over a video call. So after the interview process, I narrow my candidates down to a list of five. And here's a hint. At this point, you usually have a pretty good idea of who your ace was, but don't decide just yet. So once you have your five writers, move on to step number five. Hire them all. I know, I know you're only looking for one writer, but at this point it's nearly impossible to know which one will be the best fit for your brand and business without doing a test. So come up with a short and simple copywriting project and hire them all to do it. Give every single writer the exact instructions and deadlines. So for example, once for a client of mine, I hired five writers at the same time and had them all write the same five email cart abandonment sequence. Sure, while we did spend a little bit of money testing them out and each writer did have a different price by the way, after it was all said and done, one writer clearly stood out from the rest. And now I have an amazing writer on my team and she wasn't even the most expensive. So when comparing writers, look for creativity first. If someone can write a great hook, they are 80% of the way there, in my opinion. It's really easy to tell the difference between creative and persuasive writers and those who just know common sales tactics and buzzwords. Another option is letting the data speak for itself. If you have enough traffic, why not split test all five pieces of copy and see who comes out on top? The writers you don't end up hiring long term will still be happy because they've been paid for their project. So simply thank them for their time and effort, then move on to step number six. Hiring your ace. So once you've found the writer you want to hire, it's time to negotiate bringing them on board. I highly recommend paying him or her on a project, project basis or monthly retainer, not hourly. And this is beneficial to both the writer who is getting consistent work and the business owner who can properly budget and plan ahead. Also, at first I don't recommend offering commissions as a percentage of sales, mostly because it's hard to track in complete isolation and sales can be unpredictable. A writer should be fairly paid for their time that way. If you don't get traffic to the offer right away. You don't run the risk of the writer being unhappy because they were promised a percentage of sales which is completely out of their control. Also, copy conversion rate is highly dependent on other factors like design or page load time, the quality of the traffic or shopping cart conversion. With that being said, once a writer you hire becomes an indispensable member of your team and a part of your overall brand, voice and business, a bonus structure based on sales is something you can revisit. Okay, there you have it. My six steps to Finding a Great copywriter. Please like this video below if you found it helpful. And next up, check out my video on the differences between copywriting and content writing as that will help you massively in your search for the perfect writer. You can watch that video right here and be sure to subscribe. I will see you next week with a brand new video. Till then, I'm Alex. Ciao for now. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.