Top 3 challenges of hiring freelance writers in India
Everyone's wants fresh content, but who's checking the recycle bin?
It's been an amazing few months here in Bangalore. I moved from New York expecting to deal with a bunch of challenges related to settling into the city but was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it happened.
While I'm still freelancing for an agency on occasion, I plan to do a lot of traveling across the country these next few months to try the "work from a beach" lifestyle out.
First stop: Goa! I've been fortunate to have met a few people like this in my travels and a couple of my new friends are actually full-service agency owners who regularly look for freelance writers and specialists to provide guest pieces on certain topics relevant to their clients. Since I'm a writer, I just thought I'd echo some of the problems that they've been voicing.
Recycled content galore!
Most freelance writers are not subject-matter experts and are just general writers. The problem with this is that these writers have to conduct secondary-research and then produce an original piece with this research. With work demands, most writers don't do the tough job of coming up with a thesis and use their research to support it. Instead, they simply parrot the content that exists on other sites. If you're a freelancer, try to avoid this. Your clients are looking for leadership.
Creativity
Prices are rock bottom for content writers, in general, these days because there are so many of them out there who are willing to take pennies just to publish anything. However, not all of them are very creative or don't do a great job in reflecting their creativity in their writing. Authority and creativity are two variables that help content stand out. If you're a freelancer and you're just churning out pedestrian content and charging rock-bottom prices per word, it tarnishes the reputation of the freelance writing community as a whole and makes it much harder for everyone to work with good clients. Shoot for quality over quantity and you can name your price!
Research
Not doing enough research! This is somewhat contradictory to the first complaint about writers producing to much-recycled content, however, this is slightly different. A lot of content writers quickly Google something or check out a Wikipedia article and summarize it. What they lack is the patience to conduct interviews, read a variety of publications, test their ideas and then start writing. There's a method to creating something worth reading and it doesn't involve using just the internet!
More from the next beach! (If anyone's got recommendations, I'm all ears!)
