Web Copywriting
How to Hire a Website Copywriter
Portfolios are the least reliable part of the decision. What separates a good hire from an expensive one is mostly visible before any writing happens.
Most people hire a copywriter by looking at samples, which is understandable and close to useless. Samples show what a writer produced with a particular client, a particular brief and a particular amount of access — and you cannot tell from the finished page which of those three was doing the work.
What a Portfolio Actually Tells You
It tells you they can write competently. That is worth confirming and it is rarely where projects fail. It does not tell you whether they asked good questions, whether the client supplied the objections or the writer dug them out, or whether the page converted.
A more useful version of the same request: ask for a sample and then ask what the brief was, what they pushed back on, and what they would change now. The answers separate writers who think about pages from writers who fill them.
The Questions Worth Asking
- What do you need from me? A writer who wants only a brand guide and a sitemap will produce copy that could belong to anyone. The right answer involves your customers.
- How do you handle a page you disagree with? You want someone who will say a page is arguing for the wrong thing, not someone who writes whatever is specified.
- Who actually writes it? Worth asking plainly, particularly with agencies. Subcontracting is not automatically a problem, but you should know before rather than after.
- What does the revision process look like? Agree the number of rounds and, more importantly, what a revision request should contain.
- What would make this project go badly? An experienced writer has a specific answer — usually slow access to people, or a stakeholder who appears at the end.
The most predictive signal in the whole process is how many questions you are asked before a quote is given. A quote produced from a page count alone is a quote for typing.
Specialist or Generalist
Sector experience is worth less than people assume and occasionally costs something. A writer who has produced copy for nine firms in your industry knows the conventions, which is useful, and has usually absorbed the conventions, which is how you end up sounding like the other eight.
What genuinely transfers is experience with the kind of decision your buyer is making — long, considered, multiple stakeholders, or fast and self-serve. That shapes a page far more than the sector does.
Test Small, and Test on Something Real
A paid test on one real page tells you more than a portfolio and more than an unpaid sample. Give a genuine brief, a genuine deadline and access to one real customer conversation, then judge the questions as much as the draft.
Unpaid test pieces are worth avoiding on both sides. Good writers with work decline them, so you end up selecting from those who are available rather than those who are good.
The most expensive failure is not a bad writer. It is a good writer given no access to the business, who then produces exactly what a stranger could produce — and gets blamed for a briefing problem.
What You Have to Supply
Whoever you hire, the outcome depends on material only you have: who buys, what they push back on, what you say when asked why you rather than a competitor, and which claims you are willing to stand behind. A writer can shape all of that. They cannot invent it, and the ones who try produce the generic pages everyone complains about.
Before you brief anyone, it is worth being clear on what a copywriter needs from you and on how website copywriting is priced. If you would rather start with a conversation, that is what our website copywriting service opens with.
Questions
Questions about this article
Still unsure about something? Talk to a specialist — no script, no sales pitch.
It varies with how the work is priced. Per-word pricing makes comparison easy — ours is $12.95 per 100 words — while per-page and per-project pricing bundles in the research, structure and revisions, which is usually the larger part of the work on a website. Ask what is included before comparing two numbers.
For a small site, typically a couple of weeks from brief to final draft, with the writing itself a smaller part of that than most people expect. Our own turnaround on a page is around two business days once the brief is settled; the schedule usually stretches on the client side, in research access and review rounds.
A freelancer gives you one consistent voice and a direct relationship, which suits a small site. An agency or in-house team gives you cover when one person is unavailable and a wider range of skills, which matters on larger projects and ongoing work. Neither is better in the abstract.
Agree in advance what happens. A reasonable arrangement includes revisions until the work meets the agreed brief — which is why the brief has to be specific enough to be measured against. "I do not like it" cannot be actioned; "this does not answer the objection we agreed was the biggest" can.