How I Hired Staff Writers For The Location Independent Blog

I’ve had a couple of questions via both Twitter and email about the process I used to find the new writers I’ve just introduced on the Location Independent blog so I thought I’d share the information here rather than have to write it out multiple times.

Firstly, this is not the first time I’ve experimented with other writers on one of my blog; I have had a few guest writers in the past with some degree of success but as my plans for 2009 include making the LIP blog “the” blog about living and working from anywhere for all Location Independent Professionals (aka Digital Nomads) around the world, it was time to step it up and start paying for quality content from experienced writers.

Here’s the process I used to find the writers I hired:

1) I summarised the types of writers & the type of content I thought I wanted to add to the blog (this changed halfway through – but at first I was dead keen to find people who had a similar style to me).

2) I put the word out in my online social networks, focusing primarily on Twitter (knowing I have quite a few followers who are freelance writers). I also wrote to people who’ve emailed me in the past about guest posting on the blog and specifically targeted a couple of people already in my network who I thought would be suitable.

3) In response to any interest, I asked each person to send me the following:

• A sample post written specifically for the blog (if they were a new/inexperienced blogger) or a list of suggested on-topic articles they could write about to demonstrate their experience/credentials on this topic (for more experienced bloggers).
• Brief information about their previous experience of blogging and include links to other (ideally relevant) example posts they’d written.
• Their proposed rates.

4) Having received a range of articles varying in quality, I made a shortlist of people who I thought would be great additions. It was at this stage I realised that, rather than trying to replicate myself and find other writers with a similar style, the blog and readership would be improved with different voices and by leveraging the strengths of other writers with a different style.

5) I responded to each applicant with a yay or nay. To the “yays”, I then included further information about how we wanted the process to work (including the goals of the blog, the process for submitting/editing content, the rates we would pay per article, how to invoice us etc. etc.).

6) Upon agreement of this, I got the writers I wanted and am very excited to be able to provide a wider range of content on the blog.

The whole process took quite a lot longer than I expected or wanted it to, especially as I am very conscious of the lack of content going up there recently – but as the blog currently does not make a huge income, my attitude was very much “If I’m going to start paying a decent rate for content (at least in the blogging world), I want the content to be at least as good as I can write, if not better” – so finding the quality has been one of the most important criteria.

It’s still early days but I’m confident the writers I’ve hired will help grow the blog way beyond what I’d be able to achieve on my own. I’ll keep you posted!