A Friendly Advice to an Indian Ghostwriter

You were sneezed upon. You were cheated. Your work was stolen. You were not paid for the work you've done. And that already happened to you even before you've come to the Internet. Now it repeats all again online.

You know what? It shows.

A month ago on one of the forums I've read a post by an Indian ghostwriter complaining about his life. "Employers" requesting samples for their own topic and never awarding the project, just throwing collected samples into their own PLR packs. Employers who say "I don't care what the articles are as long as they have keywords and on the topic." Employers who are arrogant, rude, or simply don't pay.

These are all valid problems, however, you may be able to alleviate some of them by changing what you are doing. After all, you know, freelance employers also have a pet peeve of two about freelance writers to share... And here are a few hints from a seasoned 5-star rated Guru.com employer, who paid 100% of posted projects with a lag time of 1 day only. Yes, I am using ghostwriters. Not for this site, not for ViralMarketingEtc.com, never for my books, but I use ghostwriters for purely commercial projects, where I have better things to do and nobody to do them. I am also using freelancers for editing services and graphics work.

I worked with freelancers and outsourced teams in India, China, ex-Soviet Union, Canada, UK, and United States. Each of these regions have their own specific problems and issues to deal with, and they are often very characteritic, typical for one region and rarely happening in another. So, here are a few common mistakes made by Indian freelancers that you may want to avoid in order to be treated better and build more robust writing business.

1. Language

Many people in India pride themselves in the fact that English is essentially their native language. It is. In fact, occasionally Indian usage may be more proper than an American one. However, language skills are not the same as communication skills. Here is an offer composed from sentences taken out of REAL offers that I received:

See my point?

• Be clear. It's not the Twitter, you are not limited to 140 characters.
• Think what you are saying. I understand that you are curious about my requirement to produce articles, and wonder why on Earth anybody would want THAT?... Also, I see that you are interested to discuss a simple project, and killing even more of my time, because you clearly have not bothered to read the full page description, that required me an hour to put together. But how telling that improves your chances to get the job?
• If you are bidding on a writing or editing project, it's not ok to have spelling and grammar errors in your bid description.
• Watch for exaggerations and that dangerous word "very" - a typical Indian freelancer pitfall.

2. Attitude

Groveling is a bad idea. I understand that the cultures are different, and in some cultures it may be a required sign of respect to a prospective employer. However, in the American culture groveling means that you know, that you are not good, and you are trying to hide that.

Don't be rude either, and I don't mean using a coarse language, that's assumed. A clear example of being rude is submitting your first results and sending three messages in a row in one hour "I am waiting for your feedback." Do you really think your customer eagerly waits in front of the computer logged on to Guru or eLance site and having nothing better to do? Guess what? A lot of them may still have their 9-5 jobs and that's why they awarded you the project based on price! Your customer may be just not available for the nearest few hours.

Of course, I realize, that you may had bad experiences in the past. You may be nervous, scared, and suspicious, because others cheated you before. However, that does not help. Yes, you have to defend yourself, but that should not come from emotions, it should be rational. Use escrow. Don't do work until the project is awarded and money is deposited. But once this is done, be open and friendly. It's not fun working with somebody who looks at you with suspicion, why would anybody hire that person again? That's just a real bad experience for your customer.

Some people find it hard to do, but the best way to avoid throwing nervousness and suspicions on your customer is not being nervous and suspicious. Openly put in place reasonable safeguards (like using escrow), then just accept the risk beyond that and be comfortable with it. You have precautions in place, you have certain ways to fight back, that's it. Don't drown yourself and your customer in negative emotions.

3. Take directions, understand what your customer wants, then deliver it

Sounds trivial, but in my experience a lot of freelancers just don't take time to read the project description. Even fewer freelancers really bother to understand what does the customer really needs.

Did I mention the complaints of an Indian developer on one of the forums? One of his complaints was that some customers say "I don't care what the article will be about as long as it's on the topic and contains requested keywords." You know what? These are the great customers. They give you leeway, freedom to write the way you want and what you want, and they tell you exactly what they really want. You should not complain about it, you should be grateful for that. Have you ever worked for a customer who is picky and made you rework the articles many times? Was it really better?

A customer, who just sets topic and keywords, does not really care what you will write about. Don't be a drama queen, you are not writing for him, you are writing for those, who will read your article. Just understand what your customer really wants. He will use your writings in the article marketing, he needs a lot of articles on the topic with right keywords and written in decent English, and he wants that cheap, that's it! That's why he hired on the price point. Is it so hard to deliver?

And, once you submitted a few first articles, pay attention to what your customer says. Think about it. He already awarded you the project, he thought that everything is clear. If he has to talk about that in the middle of the project, that's probably some serious blunder that you did. He may not ask you to fix what you already wrote, but don't repeat the same mistakes going forward. If you ignore his feedback like that, at best he'll never award a project to you again.

That also comes to taking feedback. Understand, feedback is good. Feedback means that your customer trusts you, he believes that you can deliver. It's when he stops giving you feedback and decides to fix your writing later on his own, that's when your skills are really questioned beyond repair point. So, don't get defensive when you get feedback, after all everybody makes mistakes. Feedback is how you can improve yourself and shine. Welcome it, thank for it (again, without groveling.)

That said, I am talking about the feedback given on the private board and personally. Freelancer sites also use a misnomer "feedback" for the public rating system, that's different.

4. Build the reputation, competing on a price point will not get you too far

When you start, you have to compete on the price point. You simply have to be cheaper than others, because you don't really have other demonstratable reasons to hire you. And here is the catch. You give a customer very deep discount, and then you think, "Oh, at this price he should not really expect a great work!" And then you cut corners and produce mediocre results. Guess where it gets you?

Some customers will be pissed off, some will just shrug their shoulders and admit that they've got what they've paid for, but what's in it for you? Will they give you a great feedback? Will they rate you well? Unlikely, right?

So, you end up competing with other starving authors at the same discount price all over again. Is it what you want?

Whenever you do a discount project, it's not your goal to continue at this discount price ad infinitum, you want to get to the point where you can charge more. To do so, you have to do the job at that higher level. If you do $3/article project and give the quality of $3/article project, that's not a discount, right? If you want to move to $5/article space, you have to deliver in $5/article space, then you get feedback matching $5/article, and then you will begin getting $5/article projects. And if you will deliver $10/article quality there, you will be able to move to $10/article projects, but not the other way around.

I am not saying that you can grab a bunch of $3/article projects and deliver $500/article quality, that's just not practical. But always over-deliver, and you will be able to get more the next time. Or, you will be stuck forever in the discount price.

Also, overdelivering is what gets you repeating customers. I know, it does not get under your skin until you bid on hundreds of projects without any response, and then you do a great work, and that customer starts to come to you again and again, opening private projects specifically for you. So, if "repeating customers" does not ring a bell for you, I guess, you will have to learn it a hard way. But once you learn it, you will see why you have to do a great job each time, whether it's done at a discounted price or not.

5. Follow the etiquette

And here is the last small thing that is very hard when you are nervous, suspicious, and distrusting. Follow the Internet etiquette: the side that gets money have to leave feedback or rating first. That's the old rule followed by people who get it on eBay back in 1997, it's the same on freelancers sites. Once the payment is released, leave the public feedback for your customer. If you want his business back, that has to be five stars.

I know, it's scary. "What if he will give bad feedback for me?" Well, did you do a good job? You should have. If you did not, maybe both of you should not leave feedback for each other. But otherwise, if you want his business back, help him build your reputation. And if he wants you services again, he will leave you a great feedback too. That's how it works.

Of course, there are some stupid people who just don't get it, so yes, there is a risk. But what do you want? Do you expect them to take the risk of leaving you great feedback and receiving some "objective" crap? There is much more freelancers, who don't get it, than employers. Employers know what rating is because they look at it to pick the winners, freelancers usually are just happy to get the project.

Just understand that the best way to get great feedback is NOT withholding your feedback and threatening to retaliate. It's doing such a great job that your customers will be happy to leave you great feedback on their own.

I hope these five points will help you to succeed online and, hopefully, improve overall reputation of Indian freelance writers, which currently is not that great. Frankly, I am only using Indian writers for the projects where quality requirements are really low. I have to reserve higher quality (and higher paying) projects for the writers from US, Canada and UK, because I simply cannot get good quality from Indian writers. And my best and highest paid projects go to the writers with whom I already worked before, who over delivered, and whom I trust to do a good job. If any Indian writer will be able to get into this group, I will be happy to work with him too, but so far, none did.

So, good luck! I wish you success.

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