HireWriters Review: Best Content Mill or Scam to Avoid?

If you're an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you know how important it is to get your message out there. After all, content is the foundation of every good website, but writing your own high-quality content takes a long time - especially if you don't have the time or resources to spend doing it yourself. But instead of spending hours and hours on research, writing and editing, why not just hire an expert writer?

This post will tell you everything about HireWriters - what they are, how they work, their benefits (or not) and more. By the end of this post, you should be able to tell whether HireWriters is a suitable content provider for your business or not.

I've been working in the content marketing industry for over 7 years now. As a result of this experience, I've seen some great services come and go. However, because of my passion for writing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and because of my thorough research on the topic, I wanted to share with you an unbiased review of "Hire Writers". Check out my honest review below.

1. What is HireWriters?

HireWriters.com is essentially another content mill. That is, it's a service acting as an intermediary between clients who want their content written and the freelance writers who do the grunt work. In addition to writing articles, they offer other services like: Blog Posting, Ghost Writing, Copywriting, Email Auto-responder series and Proofreading/Rewriting articles.

HireWriters also claim to have thousands of native English-speaking writers.

2. How Does HireWriters Work?

If you're looking to use this content outsourcing platform for your next article writing project, it's easy to use. Here's how step by step:

1) Register

Clients can simply register, deposit $10 and post their writing job(s).

2) The Job Post

This is where you order articles and content.

Each post has different sections for you to enter information:

Project Description: Potential writers will see this when browsing through the list of available projects page. Enter a brief description of the content, for example: “niche name + articles”.

Article Category: Obvious really. Select the most relevant category.

Article Length. The length of a piece of content directly influences how much you'll pay for it.

Language: Select from only two options: English American or English-British.

Writer's Time limit: Choose from 6 hours to 10 days.

Writer Skill Level.

You get to choose from different categories of writer based on their 'apparent' skill levels. From Beginner to Expert Writers. Like article length, this directly correlates with how much you pay. The higher a writer's skill level, the more you pay, but it should mean you receive better quality content.

There's also the option to "Invite Writers to Private Job". HireWriters allows you to add your preferred writers to a "favorites" list. So, you can invite these preferred or favorite writers to your job.

Article Quantity: 1-100

Article Quantity: Professional, Friendly, Funny, Review Style or Other.

Keywords: Enter one or more keywords that the writer will include in the article, to create keyword-optimized content.

Special Instructions: You can extra, more specific instructions here.

Minimum Price Per Article: A higher price is likely to attract more writers. Maybe even better-quality writers though not guaranteed.

3) After Submitting Your Writing Job

As soon as you submit the job, any suitable writer on the job board can accept and start working on your job. This could happen within minutes.

4) Reviewing Written Content

Once the article is written (usually within 1-2 days), you can then review it. You have up to 72 hours (about 3 days) to review the writing project. After this, it's automatically accepted. If you're satisfied, you can accept the article, and download it in different forms: Microsoft Word, .txt, HTML or spun.

If you're not happy with it, for example if you find a grammatical mistake or two, you can have the writer make some changes for you.

5) HireWriters Pricing:

To get a better idea of pricing, here's a quick example. For an Article Length: 1001 - 2000 words:

Article pricing table:

Pricing is an interesting subject. Taken from another perspective, you can get an idea of what freelancers charge for 500 word article here.

3. Is HireWriters Worth It?

HireWriters Advantages

• Provides a straightforward way to find affordable (though not necessarily cheap) article writers online to write decent content.
• An army of writers: There are multiple levels of writers, from expert level to low-level writers. So, there's is no end to the amount of content you can have written.
• You get to choose what type of content to get: You can easily order a wide array of content types like travel blog posts, business blogs or even press releases.
• You can track all your orders in one place: All posts are filed neatly into an orderly dashboard. You can easily manage all past orders for each writer, edit past orders which were not posted at the right time, and even remove any of the content you don't need anymore.
• There is a built-in plagiarism checker tool, which allows you to check for duplicate content.
• You can be as "hands-on" or "hands-off" as you want: HireWriters provides you with access to their own in-house process of content creation; so, you can have your content edited, revised, and posted all within a few clicks of your mouse.

HireWriters Disadvantages

• The quality of content for lower tier writers is pretty much garbage or fluff content. Clearly non-native English, poor spelling and grammar, not understanding simple instructions. The list goes on. Unless, what you're looking for is cheap content that can only be used as Inexpensive filler content or unusable content. The alternative is to pay more, but then there's still no guarantee you'll find a US-based writer, or anyone who can piece together quality 'readable 'content at an affordable price.
• You have to pay an upfront deposit of $10 before you can post any writing jobs on the platform - i.e., before you know whether the service is any good or not.
• There is NO way to have your deposits refunded. Say you're not happy with service, and you have $50 in the account. There is no option in their system to get your money back. If you are going to deposit any of your hard-earned cash, then always use PayPal as your main payment method. Because the only way to get your money refunded is by raising a PayPal dispute.
• HireWriters customer service is a nightmare. Say you inquire about getting your deposit back, HireWriters support is pretty much useless when contacted.
• There are some scathing, negative reviews about HireWriters' services online. See the Complaints section below.
• HireWriters doesn't allow clients to see writers' samples or previous work, before hiring them. So, you could be hiring a non-native English-speaking writer, with poor English grammar and comprehension - and you'd never know.
• You can't exchange any kind of personal contact information via their messaging system.

4. HireWriters Complaints

Is HireWriters a Scam?

This is where it gets a bit tricky and a little more complicated.

Yes, HireWriters is a legit company which allows you to outsource your content creation. Though, like some online writing platforms, customer reviews criticize it for being a scam or being spammy.

Clients new to this freelancing platform are needed to pay an upfront fee of $10 before hiring a writer. This is to prevent scammers from posting fake jobs and then withdrawing money from the writing job afterwards. But as mentioned, it's difficult to get your money refunded.

There are also multiple reports of complaints from writers that they've either been underpaid or not paid at all and had their accounts terminated for no valid reason. A common complaint is if a writer earns more than $500, they close your account. These guys are just trying to make a full-time income from writing.

5. HireWriters Alternatives

If you're looking for an alternative reliable content writing company to HireWriters, some good options include sites like textbroker but better, for example: WriterAccess, Constant Content or Contently.

6. Conclusion

If you're looking for "cheap" writers on this particular freelance writing platform, best of luck finding decent quality ones. You'll spend hours trying to convince the low-level writers to re-write their "output". Or worse, you'll waste your own precious time proof-reading and editing it to create anything barely usable.

If you value your time and money, you may want to try and pay more for an excellent writer - or look for an alternative content writing service.