Successful Subbing — Ten Tips for Outsourcing Your Writing Work

By Dana Prince

For most busy freelance writers, there will come a time when you might consider getting some help juggling your writing workload. Things come up, volumes get heavy, and there may be a time when you just don’t have the expertise to write on a particular subject. Know someone who does? Want to find someone who can help you? Sub-contracting writing work out on occasion could help you tremendously. It could also go horribly wrong (I’ve witnessed public arguments between writers who have tried to work together) so be careful!

I have writing friends that sub for me and friends that I sub for. At one point I had a writing team of over a dozen people across four countries. These days I have just a few trusted team members and this model works for me because I can service clients without having to write on anything and everything and I don’t have to turn work away too often because I can usually turn to a team member who has room in their schedule for an extra project when I’m slammed.

The reason I scaled back from a team of twelve to just a handful of trusted writers was that with that many people, it became an administrative nightmare for me. The writing work I was subbing was at bulk rates so it just wasn’t profitable enough for the number of problems I was encountering. If someone forgot to bill me and billed me later it would throw my billing into a state of confusion. If a client didn’t pay quickly, I had to answer to people who were waiting to be paid. If someone didn’t turn work in, it’d fall on me. Managing several people made it really time-consuming and I’m afraid it got to where it wasn’t very profitable. If there were quality or plagiarism issues (which I did have to deal with on occasion), it put my business and my reputation in jeopardy. There were times I lost money and I once lost a client due to something a team member did. But, it wasn’t all bad. It was a definitely learning experience. I reorganized and created a model that worked much better for me and for my customers.

Here are some tips from my experience and from scenarios I’ve witnessed with other writing teams that could help you, should you decide to get help managing your writing workload:

1. Check the samples of the person you plan to sub to. Just because you’re writing friends from a blog or forum doesn’t mean their writing style will suit your needs.

2. Allow a time buffer in case they turn the work in late or it requires extensive revisions.

3. Make sure there’s enough money in the project to pay someone fairly and compensate you fairly for the time and effort it will take you to process the order.

4. Invest in a Copyscape Premium account. For just a nickel per search, you can protect your client and your reputation by checking the work for plagiarism instances before you hand it over to your client.

5. Try someone out on a low profile project with a long deadline in case it doesn’t work out.

6. Thoroughly check the work before turning it in until you know you have formed a partnership with a writer who needs little to no checking.

7. Solidify all terms of the subcontracting agreement up front. Consider writing up an agreement with your terms such as work format, payment time lines, your anti-poaching policy, etcetera. Get the other writer to agree to your terms before trying them out on a project.

8. Google the person you are planning to sub to. Read up on their online reputation and check their samples. You can learn a lot about someone’s professionalism and work ethic by Googling them.

9. Be really careful about constructive criticism with someone “working” for you. Writing talent is a very subjective thing! Feelings can get hurt and you don’t want to create an online vendetta. (I haven’t had this problem but have seen it happen with others and it can get ugly).

10. If it looks like it will be too labour-intense to facilitate a project and you really don’t have the time or the expertise to do it well, consider just forwarding your client to the writer directly. You may arrange a finder’s fee with the writer or simply gift the referral to them out of the goodness of your heart.

If you have any tips to add from your subcontracting experiences, please share! (And if you’re thinking about subbing out writing work, read Sharon’s 2008 post about How to Work with Other Writers, too.)