Plenty of businesses of all sizes turn to the freelancing industry to hit business goals within shorter timelines. But what are the benefits of hiring a freelancer over a full-time, in-house content creator?

Freelancers save you money as compared to in-house staff. They’re more flexible, affordable, and convenient—especially if you require top-tier talent that would otherwise take years (and thousands of dollars) of internal training.

This guide covers the benefits of working with freelancers, how much money they save, and how to find them.

Table of Contents

  • Why are companies choosing freelancers over full-time employees?
  • How to measure the amount freelancers save
  • What should I look for when hiring freelancers?
  • Build your content team with proven industry experts

Why are companies choosing freelancers over full-time employees?

Why are companies choosing freelancers over full-time employees?

Here are the five top reasons companies choose freelancers over in-house marketing teams:

1. Find surefire talent

The freelancing industry—AKA the “Gig Economy”—is brimming with seasoned experts who can fill any skill gap in your business. Just head to a trusted freelance marketplace, search for the talent you need, and start hitting those content goals.

Reputable platforms like ClearVoice have a diverse pool of content experts for different roles, such as:

2. Get results faster

Outsourcing work to freelancers is faster than recruiting, training, and managing in-house content creators. Freelance work can be arranged in a matter of days, whereas hiring full-time employees can take months.

The time savings make freelance content marketing ideal for mid-market and enterprise businesses in competitive industries.

3. Ensure content quality

Professional freelancers are more than willing to share work samples to demonstrate their content skills. Freelance marketplaces also allow you to inspect performance reviews and ratings from previous clients.

Here at ClearVoice, we vet freelancers through their portfolios, published works under their name, experience, and rates. We also confirm their identity with a thorough interview process.

4. Reduce risk

Working with freelancers doesn’t require a long-term commitment. If they fall short of your expectations, you can find someone else for the job within days.

The same can’t be said with an internal content writing team. In-house content writers are harder to replace. Investing more in retraining them is actually less expensive than firing and replacing them if they constantly underperform.

5. Save costs

Finally, working with freelancers is substantially more cost-effective than building and maintaining an internal content team.

With freelancers, you only need to pay for the content they deliver. But if you hire full-time content creators, you also need to cover their employment benefits, paid time off, taxes, office expenses, and training—regardless of their output.

How to measure the amount freelancers save

How to measure the amount freelancers save

First, calculate the costs of hiring, managing, and paying in-house content creators. This depends on multiple factors, like your recruitment strategy, the state of the job market and local regulations.

Calculating your Cost-Per-Hire

Get the sum of the internal and external costs that relate to recruitment. Divide it by the total number of new hires within the same period to get your Cost-Per-Hire.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) the average CPH is around $4,683 in the U.S., the average CPH value considers data from businesses in multiple regions and industries, including food service, construction, communication, and professional services. Various organization sizes are also considered, including small startups with two to nine employees and large enterprises with over 5,000 employees.

Paying for overhead

Measure the amount you spend on subscriptions, tools, professional equipment, supplies, utility expenses, and other necessities to get production from your in-house content creators.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) may invest thousands in SEO tools, plagiarism checkers, graphic design software, and high-end computers for onsite writers. The costs can be lower or higher depending on the demands of your content marketing strategy.

Nevertheless, expect to pay at least $1,000 to integrate one, full-time content creator into your team (including the annual costs of software subscriptions).

Paying for salaries

HR professionals report content creators—largely pertaining to content writers—have a median salary of $40,925. For more specialized tasks like video editing, median salaries shoot up to $59,309.

Looking at the costs of recruitment, full-time employee overhead, and salaries, you may spend upwards of $4,600 per month with an in-house content creator. Remember, this doesn’t include bonuses, taxes, and additional benefits. Not to mention that full-time content creators get paid the same amount even during production slumps.

Paying freelancers

Working with freelancers, on the other hand, is more straightforward in terms of costs. You don’t need to cover their equipment, taxes, insurance, and other costs.

Some freelancers get paid an hourly rate, while others prefer to charge per word. For example, 60% of freelancers get paid anywhere between $1 and $80 per hour. That’s an average of $40.50 per hour if they can finish a 1,000-word article in five hours, you only need to pay them $324 for the task.

For the same project, intermediate writers who charge $0.26-0.50 per word may bill you for $380.

Comparing the costs of in-house vs. freelance writers

Based on our computation above, here’s a table that shows the cost comparison of in-house vs. freelance writers.

 

(Full-time writers get paid the same amount regardless of their output in any given month, thus, the table shows $4,600 regardless of the number of articles written.)

Apart from cost savings, outsourcing content creation allows you to generate more articles faster.

Rather than waiting for one full-time writer to create multiple posts, you can distribute your content budget among multiple freelancers and significantly speed up your campaign’s timeline.

How to measure the amount freelancers save

What should I look for when hiring freelancers?

Here are seven things you should look for when hiring a freelance content creator:

  1. Proven expertise in your industry. Have they worked with companies in the same industry as yours?
  2. Responsiveness. Do they respond to your messages in a timely fashion?
  3. Specialized expertise. Are they skilled in creating the content types you need?
  4. SEO knowledge. Can they incorporate SEO elements into their writing (keyword optimization or internal linking)?
  5. Brand voice alignment. Does their writing style complement your brand voice?
  6. Professionalism. How well do they handle revision requests and criticism?
  7. Content tools. What tools do they use in their content creation process?

Build your content team with proven industry experts

Ready to bolster your content team? ClearVoice’s network of thoroughly-vetted experts will meet your content demands and more.

Our platform also offers help with managed content production development to ensure content production translates to business results. Visit us, fill out your information, and plot your roadmap to content marketing success today.