Finding decent Phillipino writers ?

odesk.com - tried there??

Try outsourcing companies from the Philippines who offer this kind of service. You can get $1 per 100 words article. What is your contact info? I can forward you into a right track!

Guys my personal email is gareththomasnz AT yahoo.com

I found a Philippines classified site and contacted about 20 people yesterday.

To no avail - they want too much money. Average wage over there is $200 per month so why am I being asked for similar $$$ that I would pay a student here ?

I must be using the wrong approach.

I am a member of odesk, freelancer, linkedin, etc. The problem is that I want to minimize costs - I know there are hundreds of Philippino's that can do this work for a real good price & still be happy. Its just - how to find them ?

My next strategy is to actually place a request in the classifieds (newspapers) rather than answering adverts of writers.

I am running a project request on freelancer at present, as for odesk i will try it but I'm not paying a high hourly rate to someone in a country where the average wage is $1.50 per hour.

Also I'll clarify how I do a book...

First I know my main market and am doing individual books on niches with this market.

I do keyword research.

I run the questions extraxtor tool and get hundreds of questions people are asking about the niche.

I check books on the niche and the structure & subject headings of those.

I check the main websites and the navigation structure of those.

If applicable I check Ebay & Amazon again for navigation structure.

Then I mind map all of this data to determine the main area's of interest.

This is the mind mapped into the chapters and sub topics. I then output this from the mind map application and I have a "table of contents".

Once I have my chapters and sub topics I do a search for public domain information.
Foreign language also and similar.

The I just scour the net for information on each topic. Now I can make a version of the book made of other peoples writing.

This in turn must be rewritten to create the finished book. Chapters and sub topics all remain unchanged.

Each book is 200 pages & 40,000 words approximately. But this is a rewrite and requires no research or illustration as I do that stuff.

For this reason I want to pay $200.

What I am thinking is I may try is to break the entire project down into the topics. Then rather allocating a 200 page book to one person it will be 40, 1000 word rewritten articles to a number of people.

$200 does not sound like much for a 40,000 word book BUT $5 for rewriting a 1000 word article actually sounds generous (think Philippines)

There is also the added security that no one can then simply keep the project and market the book as their own.

I think I will now try this approach - its also a good way to screen a large number of writers while still actually achieving something.

Gareth:

If you can't find what you're looking for on oDesk, I think you may have taken a wrong turn somewhere. That's been one of the best places to find that sort of thing. I love the ability to test and interview the contractors there, to read their ratings, to look at their portfolios, etc.

It takes a little time and effort, but if you go through the process, you'll probably find exactly what you need AND you have a chance to create a long-term business relationship because I find that many of those folks are seeking just that.

Yeah I have not tried Odesk yet - there are so many of these sites now.

Anyway I will try my segmentation plan as it makes sense. I will gather workers from everywhere possible.

Maybe you could try contacting local universities directly through a professor or some student. I've heard this method previously from another warrior who says he gets really good outsources from contacting a professor of a school being able to get student writers.
Keep us updated on how you found your solution please

hmmm.. are you sure you can get decent work completed for less than $1.5 per hour? Unless you stay in Philippines, I don't think you can go anything than $200 per month.

I spent over $1000 on Filipino writers in last few months and my conclusion is: Hire americans instead.

Some writers were ok but they don't always read as well as they could, and misunderstandings are common as a lot of knowledge that I take for granted were concepts they had never heard of.

It does take some searching around, but you should be able to get some idea of their writing abilities pretty early on based on their portfolio, then a test project you give them and then during a 2 - 4 week probation period.

Don't waist time with just one during the probation period...take several if you can keep them busy. It's a no risk situation. If they do the necessary work as asked, you get what you need, if they don't, you don't pay. That's how I've cut the turnover dramatically in hiring for both me and a few clients I did recruiting for. Run them in parallel, make sure they have some training and clear instructions and it will work itself out.

Make sure you systemitize the process, so if they do flake out, you take what you have, improve on it and copy paste and do it again.

Good luck Gareth

FYI, It should be FILIPINOS not Philipinos.
According to Wikipedia:
SOURCE: http(colon)//en(dot)wikipedia(dot)org/wiki/Filipino_people

I have no idea. My partner found a few writers but most of them began flaking except for one faithful worker. But its a little hard I can say. Only my partner knows the tricks of how to hire.

Never pay them upfront. Set the first month test pay to be $150 per month. And if quality is good, increase payout based on their work. And then have them do it.

To get that 150, they must write 150 articles(5 a day)

There are several problems with article writers:

* Many have no writing style
* Many have no common sense
* Many have poor grammar
* Many cannot spell

This is not a Filipino problem ... I have the same problem with US writers. Granted, the problem is much bigger outside the US (except Canada & UK) because even if they speak english there, it is not "American" english. Canada, eh? The UK? Great writers... you just may have to tweak some of the language a little.

Now, I look at it this way:

I can pay someone in the Phillipines $3 to write a 500 word article, or someone in the US $10. More often than not, the quality here is so much better. The time I spend on bad articles, trying to rewrite bad articles, scrapping bad articles, hiring new writers, etc., eats up all of the cost savings on those $3 pieces.

Is that to say no one in the Phillipines can write? Of course not. But after 6 months of dealing with writers, here is my strategy:

1 - I'll post a job on eLance or another site
2 - They MUST provide me with a sample along with their bid (you'd be shocked how many samples are utter garbage)
3 - I hire articles in blocks of 12
4 - I set 3 or 4 milestones of 4 or 3 articles each (depending on my confidence level)
5 - They MUST send me the first 2 before proceeding
6 - If they are crap, I end the job there, pay for the first milestone, and that's it
7 - If they are "OK" I make suggestions on how to improve, and 90% of the time the writers do what I suggest and make great improvements
8 - If I'm comfortable after the first 2, then I tell them to do the next 10 but still deliver according to the milestones
9 - If a writer is late, they're politely scolded and told they will not get any more work. They all have the same canned excuses. Funny, I should Copyscape the excuses....
10 - If they did great work but late, I give them one more chance.

Look, there are lots of talented writers. I prefer having good ones to go back to and I'm building Excel models where I track all articles, which network they went to (such as eLance), which writer got it, when it was ordered, when it came back, score on a 1-10, time to do revisions, re-score on 1-10 for the final result, etc... It really helps identify good writers.

Oh, and one other tip: Over-Order. I've been so disappointed the last 2 months that I always hire 2 people for the same project. One flakes out, starts and doesn't finish, you name it. You would think the people working on elance are the sickest bunch of people. I think 5 of the last 20 I hired were late because they were in the hospital....

So if I need 12 articles this month on topic X, I order 24. If both come through, great, I've got my content for next month. If one flakes, no problem, the other comes through. If they both flake? It can still happen, but covering yourself is the way to go.

Just my Sunday rant. Go Jets !!!