Oh boy, aren't there any native english freelance providers?

You do get what you pay for. What's your budget?

I've had wonderful success with U.S. and British outsourcers on Elance.

Here's the rub, bub -

Freelancers living in English-native countries cannot afford
to eat ramen on the money they would make competing
with the people living in countries where $100 is a lot
of money.

Because these sites CHARGE freelancers for answering your
requests and making bids - and because most clients perusing
such sites are looking for low prices, it actually costs competent
native-English freelancers real dollars to apply for jobs they
will never get due to being lowballed by freelancers in
poorer countries.

Many have got a clue and moved on to marketing their
services in other ways.

Loren's got it in a nutshell FlashDriveDT. Sites such as those you list are used heavily by people wanting to pay chicken feed and the result has been to drive away many, not all but many, of the native English speaking freelancers.

You may want to try the Warriors For Hire section to see if someone from the U.K., North America or Aus/N.Z. can offer what you are after.

Nigel

The easiest thing in the world to find are native english speaking writers, since they've all been put out of work by the cheap offshore providers and the collapse of the profitability of the print media.

However, you have to pay more than Walmart/Retail/waiting tables which is where they all work so they don't starve.

If you are you willing to pay a native speaker, you should have no problem hiring one. Craigs list has thousands of "english majors" looking to pick up some work. Post a flyer at your local college.

I'd like to work for you . . . just sent you a PM

Chris-

Forum posting is quite a cheap method for building links, that's why. Not often you will see a British posting for 5cents/post or something like that. That is what I think.

I agree with the previous posters freelancers living in English-native countries are very finantialy very week just indian , pakistan banglades xyz and they cannot afford
to eat ramen on the money they would make competing
with the people living in countries where $100 is a big amount for them.

61 years as a professional writer, two best sellers, and $20 minimum per hour (and that's cheap) ... if I am interested in what you want me to write about. Why would anyone accept less than they are worth? Or work in which they have no interest?

trial/error! same with good writers. 9/10 you can simply forget. You need to hire a few and test them. And then keep ad NEVER drop once you find a reliable and good one. I have ONE writer where i still cant believe he's no native english speaker.

In the countries you mentioned, the value of US dollar is very high so they are willing to work for less money and they do lots of little. In the US though, people would rather work at Walmart and make $9 an hour than wait for a single project the whole day.

It's a pretty easy game actually. Post on elance, don't allow anyone outside of the USA to bid, and raise your cost up just a wee bit.

Go to Elance and choose your desired region!

Jamian

Wow, thanks all for the vivid discussion lol. I decided to go with odesk and it turned out that I got 15 bidders after a day, mostly from Philippines and India. At the very end I did actually get someone from Australia or something and yah, the pricing was a bit higher there (understandably).

Now I made my listing a fixed price, 50$ for 50 forums with quality posts, so I didnt have to go with hourly rates. I assumed 50$ would be quite a lot for people in Philippines or India (anyone have a clue?) and hence it should be sufficient motivation for good quality. And I have to say, I was actually quite surprised by the high quality *some* of the asian profiles and bid messages emitted, especially the english language. So I was actually able to find a guy in Philippines that had me totally impressed and lo and behold, his work has been excellent. As a matter of fact, I couldnt have done these forum posts any better myself!

So I think the most important thing here is that people should tune into their gut feeling and intuition when choosing a person, coupled with the obvious (how's the grammar, test results in the profile etc). And not be too prejudiced towards nationalities. Because in the end, someone from the US may be a lot less motivated for 50$ and may have poorer ethics than the odesk Philippino "freak". As GeorgeR suggested I will more than likely cling onto this guy now for my future projects.

You cant expect native english speaking freelancers to work for minimum pay. Thats why you always get inexpensive labourers bidding on your projects.

Any questions just let me know

Nick

I got a native English writer in the UK to write me three articles with three versions of each sentence for spinning. They were all about 500 words and she did it for $70. I thought that was not bad at all, that's like the amount of writing for 9 articles. Also, she did all the research and it was quite a technical subject. The results were in perfect English. This was on Elance.

lol. Indeed Indians are mostly the discusses due to their inefficiency of delivering on time . However Pakistani's do provide good service. I have been in touch with few of them.

I don't imagine you want to pay very much for this type of job. It's tough enough being a native English freelancer competing for jobs against lowballing offshore firms that actually pay the bills. There just isn't enough money in that type of job for people who want to make a living in the US ... can't speak for UK because I don't live there.