Hiring Content Writers for Affiliate Marketing Checklist

If you are looking to hire content writers for affiliate marketing, you have too many options to choose from.

There are many platforms to find writers. Then there are hundreds or thousands of writers on each platform.

There are hundreds of content writing service companies that will handle the writers and writing for you.

If you are just starting out with your affiliate marketing website, it’s hard to know where to start.

So, the steps for hiring content writers for affiliate marketing looks like this:

  1. 4 questions to answer before you hire a writer
  2. Choose the best writer management option for your budget
  3. Take the short term to long term approach
  4. Test writers to find the best ones for your blog and business

To help you find hire the best writers, you’ll find these additional resources below:

4 Questions to Answer Before You Hire a Writer

Before you start hiring anyone for your affiliate marketing needs, you need to answer these questions first. These questions will help you narrow the best option for you.

  1. What is the topic you need writing expertise for (e.g. health, wealth, relationships, etc)
  2. How much money can you spend each month (e.g. $500 / m, $1000 / m, etc)
  3. What’s your post goal for each month (e.g. 12 posts, 15 posts, 20 posts, etc)
  4. How many words per post do you want (e.g. 1000 words, 1500 words, 2000 words, etc)

Choose the Best Writer Option for Your Budget

You have two options when it comes to hiring writers.

  1. Hire a writer on your own
  2. Hire a content service company to manage the writer for you

The biggest difference between the two options is the amount of time you will spend managing the content and the writer.

Hiring a Writer on Your Own

Hiring a writer on your own requires less of your money and more of your time.

With this route, you will need to:

  1. Choose the platform to find writers
  2. Find qualified writers for your writing requirements (e.g. topic area, expertise, turn around time, etc.)
  3. Go through an interview process with all qualified writers to narrow down to 3 – 5 options
  4. Test the select writers with test writing projects
  5. Choose your writer or writers that best fit your needs
  6. Finalize agreements with your chosen writer(s)
  7. Train your write to your expectations, topic area, tone of voice, etc.
  8. Manage your writer’s content schedule, questions, and payments

Hiring a Content Service Company

Hiring a content service company requires less of your time and more of your money.

In some cases, the content services can include posting the content to your affiliate marketing blog. And keyword research. Both of these can be a big timesavers for you.

With this route, you will need to:

  1. Choose the company you want to work with
  2. Make sure they have writers for your specific topic areas
  3. Buy a specific package option and agree to the payment terms
  4. Work with an account rep to manage your writing projects

The second option is less work for you. But you will cost your more money in the long run.

The Short Term to Long Term Approach

The recommended approach is to start small. Hire your own writer. Spend less money. Spend more of your time. Learn how the whole writer management process works. This is good for improving your scalability skills long term.

Once your blog starts generating recurring revenue, you can hire a service company. Then you will spend less time. And more money. Launch more blogs. Repeat this process. Make more money 🙂

Choose the Best Writer or Service For You

Once you’ve narrowed down a few options, now it is time to test them. This is the only way to know if a writer or content service company is good or not.

When you test them out, you will always get your answer 🙂

How to choose the best writer or service for you:

  1. Confirm they can write content for your niche/topic area
  2. Pay them for a test post to confirm the writing is good for your blog/business
  3. Budget for monthly plans or bulk rate options

As stated earlier, you will need to know your budget and how many posts/word count you want a month. This will help you identify the best writer that you can afford.

Best Training for Hiring a Writer

Where to Find Writers and Writing Services

Recommended Places to Hire Your Own Writer

Onlinejobs.ph
Good source to find reasonably priced writers who live in the Philippines.

Upwork
Good source to find english native writers.

Additional Places to Hire Your Own Content Writer

Freelancer
A well-known option to get help with creative services including content writing.

Guru
An option where you can see which writers are making money, and which ones are not.

Scripted
A membership network of writers. You join to get access to the exclusive writer community to choose from. The first month is free.

Not Recommended

Hirewriters.com
Another source used by some WA members. I tried Hirewriters. Hired one writer.

The writer wrote content too similar to the examples I provided. Almost copying the other content.

It wasn’t good original quality in my opinion. Be prepared to screen your writers well before you hire for a test project.

Content Writing Services

Recommended Companies to Manage the Writer for You

Brand Builders
Owned by three successful affiliate marketers. Brand Builders has 10 years of combined experience in affiliate marketing.

The team specializes in SEO content with backlinks. They can also build Done-For-You affiliate sites.

You’ll be in good hands with Brady and the team.

Additional Companies to Handle Your Content For You

Content Pit
Specializes primarily in writing quality blog posts that help businesses drive inbound leads and help affiliate marketers generate sales.

Content Refined
Includes keyword research, native English writers, an editor, and a publisher.

Content Powered
Focuses on writing long-form engaging content. 2000 – 3000 word count for each post. Content Powered comes with a handy comparison chart. You get an idea of how your options compare to each other.

The Hoth
A popular blog writing service that focuses on SEO optimization, high-quality content, topic ideation and unlimited topics.

Verblio
An expert blog and content writing service that comes with unlimited edits. You sign up to monthly a plan based on how many posts and word count you want.

Compose.ly
Specialize in different types of content writing. Blog posts, website content, white papers, product descriptions, etc.

Express Writers
A content writing team who can write for a variety of niche topic areas. Express Writers offers 3 different levels of content writers for you to choose from. The more advanced the writer, the higher price you pay.

Recommended Training for Your Writers

SEO Page Optimization Checklist
Use this on-page SEO checklist as a training material for writers. It tells your writer the exact steps they need to do to optimize your content. Use it for yourself to spot-check the work of your writers. (Make sure they are doing the steps needed.)

Recommended Training for You

If you are looking to hire your own writer, here’s really good training on how to hire from onlinejobs.ph. This is the same training I used to hire a content writer for this blog.

Best Training for Hiring a Writer

And the best training on this topic I’ve found yet.

2 thoughts on “Hiring Content Writers for Affiliate Marketing Checklist”

  1. Very helpful Kim! Thank you for this writeup. What’s your best tip on training our writers to write content for affiliate marketing? Do you ask them to include specific links or products in the article, or do you add them in after it’s already written?

  2. Absolutely James. Thanks for chiming in here.

    For training writers, I highly recommend going through this training yourself. You will see training video examples designed to train writers for what you want.

    As far as the full process, it’s completely up to you.

    Some affiliate marketers will recommend training the writer to do everything including publishing directly to the blog. I prefer to do my own posting and link management. I am particular about the content being similar to my own voice as if I had written it. Because of this, my writer gets my content to 75% of the way. I do the last 25% which includes SEO, images, adding in my CTAs, etc.

    The thing to remember is that training a writer will take a while. (2 – 3 months rough swag.) That’s why hiring a content management company can be worthwhile if you have the budget. You don’t have to do any of the writer training.

    If you do, I recommend training the writer in phases over a period of 2 – 3 months. And stagger your expectations over time, depending on how much your writer can handle.

    In every situation, I do recommend a “writer requirements” guide that gets submitted with every blog post request. These were originally designed for outsourcing with different writers across the places mentioned above like upwork and freelancer. But they are good in the beginning for full-time writers as well because they reinforce what you do and don’t want. You can ditch down the road, once your full-time writer understands your expectations well.

    Do you have writer requirements? If not, let me know. I’ll share one here.

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