Urgent Need help: First time hiring a freelancer for articles

Hi,i need some unique articles for my blog.

I am doing this for the first time.

I was thinking can anyone please guide me about this process:

I am thinking about using oDesk,Elance,Freelancer


1)
How should I select the writer?

I see there are some new people too.They offer low prices but they have no reviews/ratings.
Can i try them?


2)
How will I know if a writers work is really good and not copied?


3)
If I am giving work to a new person,what is the maximum amount of money given/article?


4)
When I am giving work,How would I select the right person for articles?
some form of c.v./ezine listings/portfolio or what?


Please guide me.

regards,
james.

Hey James,

PM me, will help you out..

I started by using the Mechanical Turk to list specific Titles or Topics that I was looking for articles in. Requesting 300+ words, was able to get about 80% decent results from that at about $1/ea. Make sure you mention that you will Copy-scape them (even if you won't) and they must be Human Written. They will require modification and cleaning up before submission, but otherwise, it's a pretty easy way to start buying articles.

You could also look at one of the listings for Articles on Fiverr, $5 for an article, but it would allow you to get a feel for the ghost writer before offering them a more steady workflow.