Renegade Freelance Writing Tactics: Be A Proxy

You'll never hear this advice from the more established freelance writing help sites. Keep this on the down-low. And I am not responsible for suspensions due to following this advice. Although, I never had any problems, but I wanted to give ya'll a heads up. Just read the sites ToS, and if it doesn't mention recruiting writers for off-site work is a no-no, you should be good to go. That's my unofficial disclaimer, so let's get on with what I'm talking about.

I started freelance writing in my free time years ago. The very first thing I realized is that there are many writers from non-English speaking countries who can write English better than most people I went to High school with. However, most of the more lucrative freelance writing sites exclude them from eligibility on the simple fact that they're not from America or England. The cartoonish light-bulb sparked above my head. What if I was to provide a proxy for these people, taking a small percentage for editing and submitting their articles to sites where they weren't allowed to write because of their nationality? It worked and here's how.

             Establish Yourself As A Regular Contributor To Job-board Sites – The first step to take as a proxy is to get accepted to job-board sites that pay well and exclude non-citizens.These sites include MyAms, Scripted, TextBroker and others.

2.       Learn The Pay Structure – Figure out what the job-board sites pay per article, and determine what you can charge as a proxy. This includes price for submitting, price for editing, and price for providing your service as a proxy.

3.       Find Writers On Freelance Sites – I used Freelancer.com to find writers who were non-American and looking for a way to submit to the sites I represented.

4.       Create Easily Understandable Instructions - I created a nice PDF for my writers. It explained any writing conventions such as keyword usage and format. I also explained my pricing for submitting their articles as a proxy and what they could expect to earn.

5.       Setup A Reliable Payment Method – Paypal doesn’t work in all countries. Moneybookers is the accepted means of payment in many nations. Use both.

6.       Pay Your Writers Regularly – You’ll not keep writers long if you don’t pay. Setup a weekly or monthly pay schedule. I found that paying a day or so after the job-boards pay was easiest.

7.       Edit, Edit, Edit – None of this will work if you don’t proofread and fix the non-native English speakers work. Remember, you’re paying a percentage of what is already a small amount. These writers are going to pump out work as fast as possible. It’s your job to fix any grammatical errors before submitting them to the freelance writing site.

As the title says, this is the renegade writing method. It works best when you’re first starting out and need some decent income. However, there are countless non-American writers out there just looking for what you can provide. As long as you pay and are not overly demanding on their writing ability, you can make this technique work. The key is to utilize the freelance sites, such as Freelancer and Elance, to find what you’re looking for. If you’d like me to go into more about this subject, respond in the comments below. As always, I hope you find success in freelance writing.