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How to Find, Hire and Manage Rockstar Copywriters
SEM News Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Published: Apr 08, 2009 - 12:34 pm
Story Found By: RyanCaldwell 1039 Days ago
Category: SEM
My experience tells me that this post is spot on: the best writers are going to be the ones who are passionate workaholics. And the most important thing to keep in mind is that there need to be structures of accountability: either a performance based pay or a monitoring service like oDesk.
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from Garrett 1039 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Great article by Loren Baker - excellent advice and a good experience-based comment thread starting there too.

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from crimsongirl 1039 Days ago #
Votes: 3

The word copywriter in old-school advertising, meant a person who wrote persuasive words for an ad. The copy they produced was usually pithy, to-the-point, memorable, and short. Short enough to fit on a magazine or newspaper ad. A hundred words, two hundred. There is a need for that kind of writing on the web, too, and many web publishers do employ copyrighters, especially e-commerce sites.  Other websites, including the ones I publish, need longer expository articles. I tend to look for writers, per se, not copywriters. In fact, I often have to stress with new ones that I don’t want a persuasive or advocate tone. Baker mentions Craigslist and Odesk. I’ve used both and they are indeed good places to look (there are other services similar to Odesk that are also worth checking out.) Craiglist ads bring a ton of emails, often from prima donnas who want more information before they will tell you anything about themselves. Odesk contractors are more up front and eager. For both, the publisher must choose with scant information, so it’s something of a crapshoot. It is worth paying decent wages for a good writer, but finding that good writer isn’t always easy. Unlike Baker, I do pay for the first article, but I make sure it’s a small assignment, so I’m not out too much money if I don’t like the product. Then I can go back to the good writers for further assignments.  I also tend to prefer lump sum payments (which you can do on Odesk and Elance) to hourly arrangements. Many people offering writing services really aren’t as good as they seem to think they are, and with the rising unemployment rate, there might be even more hacks in the market.

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from Ros 1038 Days ago #
Votes: 1

The "Never pay for your first article" tip is rubbish. Expect to pay a 50% kill fee if you commision an article and then don’t use it, or a normal price if it’s good enough to publish. Treating writers badly from the start isn’t a good way to find the Rockstars amongst them.

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from howie5 1005 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Is the Craiglist site mentioned here a valid and legal website?

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