It can be very difficult to find freelance writers who create high-quality content, communicate clearly and proactively, and never miss a deadline.
And in many cases, you’re looking for a writer who also knows your industry and has a portfolio of content similar to the content you’d like to create — which makes the search even more challenging.
But you can improve your chances of finding that perfect-match freelancer if you know where to look.
So we’re sharing our picks for the best websites for finding expert freelance writers who'll create great content that drives traffic and leads to sales.
Upwork
Upwork at a Glance
- Writer specific? No
- Number of freelance writers on the platform: 10,000+
- Job listing fees: Zero
- Number of days job postings stay live: Indefinitely
- Transaction fees: 5% on all payments (plus a one-time contract initiation fee of $9.95 for each new freelancer you work with on the platform)
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: $59.95
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: $509.95
Upwork is synonymous with finding freelance talent. It’s used by the likes of Unilever, Microsoft, and Airbnb. And Time magazine even named it one of the most influential companies of 2022.
It’s no wonder that Upwork is one of the first places businesses of all sizes look for freelance writers. In fact, a search for “content writer” brings up 1,000 pages of freelancers to choose from (roughly 10,000 writers in total).
Plus, Upwork has refined the process of helping you create a job post that will attract the right people. It gives you the option of adding screening questions to your application, so you can more easily and quickly filter out candidates who don’t meet your hiring criteria:
Upwork also has a nice feature that suggests freelancers who have relevant experience when you push your job listing live. You can filter these folks by experience and rating and then invite as many as 30 of them to apply for your job as soon as it's live, kick-starting the hiring process.
When you hire a freelancer writer through Upwork, you agree to project milestones and then deposit the fee you’ve agreed with them into escrow. You can also set an entire project fee, which often makes sense for smaller projects like one-off articles. That money then gets paid out when you sign off on the submitted work (or after 14 days if you do not communicate with the freelancer). You can opt to refuse payment, but the freelancer can then file a dispute with Upwork.
Alternatively, you can work with freelancers on an hourly basis through Upwork — although we recommend that you avoid hiring content writers on an hourly basis and negotiate flat rates for each piece of content instead.
How Much Does Upwork Cost?
You don’t pay any upfront fees to post a job on Upwork.
Instead, you pay a 5% fee on all payments that you make to freelancers you work with through the platform. Plus, you’ll pay a one-time contract initiation fee of $9.95 for each new freelancer you work with. Upwork also takes 10% of its freelancers’ earnings.
Fiverr
Fiverr at a Glance
- Writer specific? No
- Number of freelance writers on the platform: 24,000+
- Job listing fees: Not applicable
- Number of days job postings stay live: Not applicable
- Transaction fees: 5.5% on all payments
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: $55
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: $550
Fiverr is the other big name when it comes to finding freelance talent. As a result, there are plenty of writers on the platform — a search for “content writer” brings up more than 24,000 freelancers.
What makes Fiverr different from Upwork is that instead of posting a job listing and waiting for the right freelancer to respond, you simply search the platform to find the right person for the job.
So if you’re looking for writers for your marketing or SEO blog, for instance, you can simply search Fiverr for “content writer” and filter for writers who cover that topic:
You’ll have to wade through a few off-the-mark suggestions, but you can find some great writers at great rates on Fiverr. There are a few things you can do to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff on the platform:
- Filter by “Level 1” sellers (people who’ve completed at least 10 orders and maintained a 4.2-star rating) and “Level 2” sellers (people who’ve completed at least 50 orders and maintained a 4.2-star rating).
- Apply the “Paid video consultations” filter under the “Service offerings” dropdown, even if you’re not looking for one. This clears a lot of inexperienced freelancers out of the results.
You can then message the writers who look like a good fit for your project directly through the platform. If you’d like to go ahead and work with them, you can place an order for their service directly through Fiverr. Once you pay a freelancer through Fiverr, their fee will be held by the platform for 14 days (or seven if they’re a Top-Rated Seller [TRS], Seller Plus Premium seller, or PRO seller). During that time, you can void the payment if you’re not happy with the quality of the work — although the freelancer can dispute that.
How Much Does Fiverr Cost?
Fiverr charges you 5.5% of the payment amount whenever you pay a freelancer — so about the same as Upwork. However, it also takes a 20% cut of everything freelancers earn on the platform. Generally, freelance writers change their rates to accommodate whatever cut the platform they’re listed on takes so their earnings stay the same. That means you’re likely paying a premium for writers you find through Fiverr.
Guru
Guru at a Glance
- Writer specific? No
- Number of freelance writers on the platform: 30,000+
- Job listing fees: Zero
- Number of days job postings stay live: Indefinitely
- Transaction fees: 2.9% on all payments (with no fee if you pay by eCheck or wire transfer)
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: $29 / $0
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: $290 / $0
Like Upwork and Fiverr, Guru is a generalist freelance marketplace. You can find more than 30,000 content writers on the platform — although that number shrinks to just 271 when you filter those results by freelancers who’ve worked with three or more clients through the platform.
As with Upwork and Fiverr, you can communicate with freelancers solely through Guru. And as with those other platforms, this is a double-edged sword: it means an escrow service protects your payments, but it also means that Guru charges you every time you pay a freelancer.
How Much Does Guru Cost?
Guru’s low fees set it apart from its competitors. You’re charged a “handling fee” of 2.9% for each invoice you pay. But that fee is refunded if you pay by eCheck or wire transfer. And Guru takes only a 9% cut of freelancers’ earnings.
ProBlogger
ProBlogger at a Glance
- Writer specific? Yes
- Number of freelancer writers on the platform: 36,000+
- Job listing fees: $80–$160
- Number of days job postings stay live: 15
- Transaction fees: Zero
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: $80–$160
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: $80–$160
The ProBlogger job board is exclusively for writing jobs. At the time of this writing, there were 36,432 writers looking for work through the platform, and this diversity increases the likelihood that you can find one who specializes in your niche or industry.
Unlike the platforms we’ve looked at so far, ProBlogger is just a job board. You pay a one-off fee to list your freelance writing job, which then goes out to every writer whose job alerts it matches. Candidates apply for the role through ProBlogger, and you follow up by email.
That means you’re not locked into using a platform that charges you — and the freelancers you work with — a fee every time you pay a writer. However, ProBlogger doesn’t offer you the payment protection that comes with Upwork, Fiverr, and Guru’s escrow services.
How Much Does ProBlogger Cost?
A standard job listing on ProBlogger costs $80. And a featured listing, which gets pinned to the top of the listings page, will set you back $160. All listings stay active for 15 days.
Superpath
Superpath at a Glance
- Writer specific? Yes
- Number of freelancer writers on the platform: 16,000+
- Job listing fees: $99
- Number of days job postings stay live: 30
- Transaction fees: Zero
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: $99
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: $99
The Superpath job board also caters exclusively to full-time and freelance content marketing roles. So your job ad won’t be seen by as many people, but the right people will see it.
Freelance jobs posted on Superpath are supposed to pay at least $0.10 per word or the equivalent thereof (which is a fair rate for skilled writers — you should be wary of writers who are willing to work for significantly less). So although the site doesn’t vet freelancers, this might mean that you’ll get fewer unqualified applicants who try to get jobs by offering the lowest price (you’ll find plenty of freelancers like this on sites like Upwork and Fiverr):
Your job listing will appear on the job board for 30 days, be included in Superpath’s weekly job roundup newsletter, and be posted in their #freelance-gigs Slack channel (which has more than 16,000 members).
How Much Does Superpath Cost?
Listing a freelance role on the Superpath job board costs $99. If you want to list a full-time role, a basic job post will put you back $299, a featured post that’s pinned to the top of the listings page costs $399, and a featured post that allows you to upload a video you can use to tell potential candidates more about the job costs $499.
We Work Remotely
We Work Remotely at a Glance
- Writer specific? No
- Number of freelancer writers on the platform: Unknown
- Job listing fees: $299–$448
- Number of days job postings stay live: 30
- Transaction fees: Zero
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: $299–$448
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: $299–$448
We Work Remotely bills itself as “the world’s largest platform for finding and listing remote jobs.” Since its launch in 2011, 32,162 jobs have been posted on the platform by companies like Google, Amazon, and GitHub.
Posting a job listing on the platform costs $299, and there are three upgrade options that can help your post stand out:
At the time of writing, there were 17 “Best” roles pinned to the top of the site’s “Sales and Marketing” category, meaning it could be well worth shelling out for one of these upgrades if you want your role to stand out.
We Work Remotely might not be the biggest freelance platform, but it gets you in front of a lot of talented writers. Freelancers on the platform receive daily emails highlighting all the new jobs that match the kind of roles they’re looking for.
At $299 a listing, We Work Remotely isn’t a great fit for short-term engagements. But if you’re looking for freelance writers to become regular contributors or to help you execute a long-term content strategy, it’s a great way to find one.
Your We Work Remotely job post will stay on the platform for 30 days. Something to look out for is that your listing will auto-renew at the end of those 30 days. So keep an eye out for the email reminder you’ll receive five days before the renewal date if you want to pull the ad rather than pay for another 30 days.
Content Marketing Communities
Content Marketing Communities at a Glance
- Writer specific? No
- Number of freelancer writers on the platform: Varies
- Job listing fees: Zero
- Number of days job postings stay live: Indefinitely (although new posts may quickly bury older posts)
- Transaction fees: Zero
- Total fees for a $1,000 project: Zero
- Total fees for a $10,000 project: Zero
Slack communities are also great places to find a writer. Post in the right one, and you’ll get your gig in front of an appropriate audience completely free of charge.
Top of the Funnel (more than 2,600 members) and Peak Freelance (more than 1,300 members) are two content marketing communities that are free to join. Each Slack group has a dedicated channel for posting freelance writing jobs that any member can use.
And because they’re Slack groups, you don’t need to pay to post a listing. It will be the newest post at the top of the jobs channel, and every active community member will see it.
This means you can get your gig in front of a few thousand content freelancers totally for free. So, posting in the likes of Top of the Funnel and Peak Freelance is a no-brainer alongside one of the paid options we’ve covered here.
Which Site Should You Use to Find Writers?
If you’re after a generalist writer to create SEO content, Upwork, Fiverr, and Guru are well worth giving a try. However, you’ll have to bake in time — and budget — for trial and error. In a video about his Upwork hiring process, Optimize podcast guest Brian Dean said you should expect only one out of five people you hire through the platform to work out, as that’s just the nature of the platform.
If you don’t have the capacity to test that many writers to find the right one — or if you’re looking for a writer that specializes in a particular niche — you’re probably better off going a bit further upmarket with a listing on Superpath, ProBlogger, or We Work Remotely. You won’t be locked into paying a fee every time you pay a freelancer you find through these platforms. Plus, 100% of the money you pay them will end up in their wallet, too.
No matter which route you choose; it’s well worth posting your job listing in content marketing communities like Top of the Funnel and Peak Freelance once it’s live. This will get your ad in front of another few thousand writers free of charge.
