Outsourcing Trouble

Maybe they found out about AC and took your scraped articles to start their own venture
Just a guess :tumblewee

I would actually run them through Copyscape now Shawndellah and get them submitted in case they do decide to use the content somewhere else,

It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong, it's just part of the weeding out process that's necessery before you have your final team in place. Like I've talked about in my thread, part of getting your rewriters in place is having bidders start a project, but then decide to turn flakey on you. That's why you want to be running multiple ads/accounts at a time so that you have more rewriters to choose from if this happens.

I had some great rewriters work for me that did the same thing, but again, you can't really look at them as being your longterm hire until they've proven themselves over a period of time. Just keep your ads running, take whatever content you can from the people that will flake out, and then over a period of time you will be tucking away the "gems" one by one.

Like I talk about in my thread, it took me 4 weeks to come up with the rewriting team I have now, 3 of them have been with me for a full year now.

Good luck!

Thanks so much! I had been running the work through copyscape and dupefree. Then submitting. I guess I'll keep working the program like your thread and book say to do. I am just so frustrated! I want to pull my hair out.

I'll get so excited with a really good batch. Send off the next batch to them and they're gone! Grrrrrr. But as you say, they didn't prove to be the long-term. Thank goodness for the multiple ads and a steady stream of these quick deserters! LOL That's probably not the right word. Ha, ha.

You've really turned my AC investment around Redtide!

Cool deal, glad it's helped. It does take patience, but again, I went into it really wanting to make it my full time business/income, so the patience factor didn't bother me much. I guess it was because I was keeping my longterm goals in mind. (Plus, it didn't hurt that I was coming from a crappy and very physically demanding job before starting with AC.)

I actually found setting up my AC business a piece of cake in contrast to what I was coming from.

Shawndellah said:

I find several good writers. I get in the first batch and pay them their money. I send them the next batch to rewrite ---- Then poof ~~ I hear nothing back from them. This is so frustrating.

I'm not sure what it is I'm doing wrong. I'll gladly take suggestions. I read the threads and didn't see this part covered anywhere. If I'm duplicating, I'm sorry. It's not my intention.

Click to expand...

keep open lines of communication. If you don't hear from them, cancel the job, give them poor feedback, and repost the job....

oh, and personally, i never give my rewriters too many files....

OP - I feel your pain. I've gone through about 25 people and haven't gotten any to stick for the long term. If they decide to contact me at all, I'll usually get an excuse such like there was a family emergency...or somebody died (it's amazing how many people die the day they start a new job).

A couple things I've been implementing that has helped me:

- Everything has a 24 hour deadline. I let it be known if they can't do it in 24 hours they are cut from the team unless they let me know otherwise.

- I've stopped paying for test assignments. I used to pay my writers if they completed a test assignment as a measure of good faith regardless if I decide to hire them, but now they have to do one test assignment on spec. It will cut down on your response rate, but I figure if you can't do 1 assignment for a full-time gig, you probably can't do any.

- I let it be known in my ads that good people for the job will find the work easy, but those that are unqualified will have a really hard time with it. This cuts down on the number of crappy test assignments I end up getting back.

- In lieu of resumes and writing samples, I ask people to bid by answering 4-5 questions about themselves. You can gauge a writer by how they answer the questions rather than some canned cover letter or sample articles that could be stolen. It saves time having to wade through resumes and such.

- They get paid every two weeks after they write and everything gets cleared. It's also amazing how many people still flake after a week or so and leave money on the table, but whatever, I end up getting some articles for free.

- I try to be as open to questions as possible, match assignments to the strengths of my writers, but still firm. You'll be amazed how many times a simple "Any progress?" email yields a response with an article.

- Take an interest in their interests. I like to ask questions about what they like and what their goals are during the interview process. It helps me match them to what I think they would be good at.

- I ask them what their salary requirements are. I then try to give them that, or implement how they can get a bonus for articles that meet certain criteria.

That being said - for those of you that have had more luck keeping someone long-term, anything you do to keep them around longer?

@erskinem: Nice post and terrific advice. I really liked the idea of asking them questions about themselves instead of submitting a sample article. Very clever on multiple fronts.

I have the same issue. I go through about 50 writers before I find one that stays.

You just have to learn to keep a flow of new writers coming in while your starting up. you get 0-3 articles from most of them, out of that 50 1 stays, so you still got a good share of articles for your money (normally ill say I'm paying half price for a "trial" article to save myself some money for the extra trouble)

from there you can slowly build up a team of trustworthy writers until your good as gold

I know as a writer, I have had issues with buyers who say they want a billion articles but they want you to give them the lowest bid based off the fact they will have "lots of work for me" They get my first few batches then tell me they won't be needing me, etc..

I feel for you though..

@erskinem, that's great advice and it's nice to see that you have a system that seems to be bringing you success. I had tried once with a buyer a plan of every 2 weeks, and I completely got messed. I was writing 13 articles a day for 6 days a week. Never once received my payment. So this must be on some heavy trust on your part, so well done!

@OP, really awesome writers who believe in what they are doing are out there. You just have to be patient and it will eventually make the connection. It's like a romance relationship... A whole lotta dating before you can start mating!