AP 0727: Is Fiverr a Good Place to Find Writers?

AskPat 727 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 727 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today, we are right at the start of November 2016, closing up on the end of the year and I'm super stoked that we are still here together. Thank you for listening in.

All right, now here's today's question from Dan.

Dan: Hey Pat, Dan here, I have a question about using Fiverr for content. I'm not really good at writing so I wanted to know what your thoughts are on getting help on written content. Just let me know. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Dan, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it. I think it's actually help a lot of people, because I know a lot of people who also struggle with written content. So don't feel like you are alone here, first of all. Second of all, there's also other types of content too, so if written content is just not your thing, and I'll talk about how you can find written content, or get written content help, in just a minute, but there's audio content and video content. So if you're comfortable being behind a microphone or, better yet, being behind a video camera at the same time, there's other ways to create content that seem to be and are perceived to be of higher worth, because it's videoed to you, and if you're building a brand, if you're building a personal brand especially, it's something you definitely want to do.

If I was starting a business today and it was a personal brand, I would definitely start on video. And I know that I wasn't comfortable on video when I first started out, but I know the benefits of it now. And I would hopefully, kind of step out of my comfort zone there, because as most of us know, all the most awesome things happen outside of our comfort zone. Now, in terms of written content, which I still feel is very, very important to have, it's almost necessary, especially when it comes to search engine optimization and being found in Google. I mean Google doesn't read the words, or listen to the words that we say in our podcasts, and yes there are transcriptions for those things, but they don't put them up in the search engines like they would for written content on your site. So written content is still really important.

For me, when I first started out, I struggled with it big time. But you know what, I just kept writing every single day, and I've written multiple times a day and I've gotten used to it, and I've just gotten better. So if you're struggling right now and it's something you really want to do, you can just do it. It's going to be bad, it's gonna be terrible, it's going to be a struggle at first. But just continue to practice in daily, make it a habit, and over time you're going to find just automatically you're gonna get better, like with anything else you do every day.

Another thing is, you can hire people to help you write. Now, should you hire people on Fiverr to help you write content that you're going to post on your behalf, on a website? I wouldn't recommend doing it. Fiverr is a site, for those of you who don't know “F-I-V-E-R-R.com,” where you can hire people for different tasks, and it's very difficult to find quality stuff there, amongst all the things that are being offered for, how much? $5. That's why it's called Fiverr. And yes, you can have multiples of five. They've done that, but to find a good writer, something that is going to be in your voice, and the way that you want it to be, it's going to be very difficult.

So there's a couple things I can recommend to you. There's another site called Upwork, Upwork.com. Which, if you have a little bit more money to spend, it's going to be a more than five dollars, definitely. But you're going to get higher quality articles. I've hired people on Upwork.com before, it actually used to be called Elance, and that's when I worked with them, but then they changed their name to Upwork.com. So Upwork.com, you can post your job description up there, and then different people from around the world are going to say, “Hey, I'd love to do this for you, here are my qualifications, here's my portfolio.” “Oh no, I'll do it for this much, and here are my qualifications.” So you actually get people to kind of . . . you know, sort of like an auction like fashion, bid on your job. And you get to choose the ones that you like best, which is really cool. So that's an option.

You can also hire writers. There are job boards for example, at the Problogger.net job board. There are people who are looking to write for bloggers all the time there, and that's a great spot where people who are used to writing online, which is a little bit different than other kinds of writing, they're just really great at it. So you can check out the Problogger job boards, at Problogger.net. My good buddy, Darren Rowse owns that website and I know that job board does some real good stuff for people.

You could also hire college interns and find people on Craigslist who just want to, you know, include stuff on their resume. And yeah you might not have them for a long, but you know, you might get lucky and find somebody who can then become a content writer, who you can pay or you can do services for them in exchange, kind of a pro bono approach. There's a number of different ways to do it, you can even find people who may be experts in your space that you're getting into, and have them write guest posts. So it's kind of a win-win, where you feature people on your site, but they're getting exposure to your audience, in exchange for an article that they write. So those are some different ways that you can get written content on your website.

And the last thing I would say, kind of going back to my initial point, was with audio. I use an app called Rev, “R-E-V” on my iPhone, I believe there's an android version too. And this is an app where you can record your voice. And when you record your voice, it records it like any normal voice recorder would, however once the recording is over, you have the option to transcribe it. And a human being on the end at Rev will transcribe it for you, so that's a great way for you to take some audio. Maybe you're in the car, you're at the gym, or on a walk or something, and you just have a number of thoughts that would be useful for this particular audience that you're serving. Why don't you just record it and then transcribe it? And that way you don't have to actually sit down and write it, and I've found that I've been able to write, you know, six or seven times faster, by quote “writing in that way” and using transcriptions and using Rev.

So hopefully that's helpful, Dan I appreciate your question and I'd love to see what you do with this. So thank you so much, I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, and for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thanks so much, I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day, by Chistina McAuliffe. She says: “I touch the future—I teach.” She's an educator and she's basically saying, “Hey, if you teach, you are helping shape the future.”

So for all of us out there who are on websites, teaching, vlogging, podcasting, trying to make the world a better place, truly you are helping to shape the future, and I thank you for what you are doing, we are in this together and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye.