WE’RE HIRING: Remote Freelance Writer, & What A Proper Writing Gig Looks Like


We’re hiring!

We’re seeking a great freelance copywriter with a good understanding of how search engines work, works remotely and unsupervised. Our pay rates are in the top 10% of the market, our working environment and ethics are second to none. We don’t do rush jobs, everything is meticulously planned and executed. We pay invoices super quick, usually within 7 days of invoice. We enjoy frequent get-togethers (paid for by us) with the rest of the team. If you are interested then write me a short story on why you think you’d fit in.

And here is the background, told by one of our long-term (3 years plus) copywriters and how he found working with us. I asked Joseph to write this to heklp us recruit another, first-class, copywriter.

Joseph’s Story

If you’ve somehow managed to, like me, make a living out of being a freelance writer, then you’re probably used to hearing how incredibly lucky you are.

I mean, just for starters, you don’t have to be stuck in some bleak office day-in-day-out but can travel the world or stay at home, working from cafes and bars or never getting out of bed and your pyjamas.

Pretty damn good, right?

These are all just perks though; where the real fortune comes in is from the fact there’s a million and one other so-called writers out there who’re scrimping and striving and doing everything they possibly can to make it work like you have. And at any moment, at the drop of a hat, without so much as a sorry or a goodbye, your clients could hire one of them to do your job at probably a much better rate.

But the thing is, they don’t.

Could it be luck? Sure, like everything, there’s some luck involved, and you no doubt feel fortunate for where you’ve got to. But at the same time, you know you wouldn’t have got there without skill, competency, and sheer hard work. And what’s more, you know that these things are so scarce among people today, never mind just writers, that when a client finds and recognises them, they’re not going to so easily let them go.

From Job Board to A Proper Writing Gig

Finding this balance in which there is a high level of mutual respect between writer and client is a rarity. And in many ways, it’s understandable; when I first started out, with no experience and never having heard of a user persona, tone of voice document, or keyword strategy, I was definitely lucky to land any gig.

But after a while, it soon became clear that if things didn’t change, what should be just a step on the ladder would turn into a perpetual cycle of job boards, rude clients, and boring and poorly paid gigs that would go round and round until I burn out and die, or worse, return back to the office job.

As a writer, working under such circumstances does nothing for your skill and creativity. It’s the antithesis of learning and growth; you’re focused on churning out words and sentences and paragraphs as quickly and unconsciously as possible, and actually doing a good job is the last thing on your mind.

It’s why there’s so many terrible writers out there — how could they be anything but, living their lives constantly worrying where the next paycheck will come from, each week losing as many clients as they pick up, waking up every day to snarky emails and unfair or impossible requests.

So, to avoid falling into this pit, I knuckled down, gaining some quality experience and actually stopping to study SEO and digital marketing and learn the basic rules of grammar. Soon enough, I picked up a gig with Connected UK that helped me flip the script.

Connected UK was the UK’s first specialist WordPress agency, and more importantly for me — living up a mountain in Peru at the time — it was equally as pioneering in ditching the office and operating completely remotely.

The reason why it was so pioneering was that, unlike many companies that hire freelancers and other remote contractors, Connected’s move to a ‘Remote First’ company wasn’t just to save a healthy sum on internal staff and premises. It recognised early on that freedom to work where and how you want is a powerful force in our new digital world. And so it adopted a remote and agile approach to harness that wealth of creativity, get access to the best talent, streamline its processes, and maximise its quality, not quantity, of output.

What this essentially means for a freelance writer is mutual respect. If you bring the right tools, skills, and attitude to the table, then you’ll be justly rewarded with an environment in which you have the autonomy, stability, and competence to forget all the usual BS and get down to what being a freelance writing should be all about: Writing.

The pay is pretty damn good too.