You want to get quality content for your web site by hiring a freelance writer? Great! Why don't you follow these examples that are regularly implemented by even some very notable web publishers, and see what kind of unpublishable junk you will receive from illiterate mudhut-dwelling amateur pinheads instead of the quality content you want?

Pay by the hour - Sure, it's great to pay your employees by the hour, so that you make sure that they put their noses to the grindstone and you get your 8 hours work for your 8 hours pay. Now can you tell me how you're going to get your hour's worth if your writer is in Spokane and you're in Tampa? Hourly payment is an impossibility in freelance web writing as it's usually done at the writer's home. What is an hour's work anyway? I can sometimes get "in the zone" and crank out 2,000 finished words in an hour. There are other times when I'm lucky to finish 200. So if you're paying me $20 an hour, does that mean that I'm getting 1 cent a word or 10? Paying X cents per finished word is the only acceptable way of contracting a freelance web writer.

Pay fractions of a cent per word - Oh yeah, you'll get someone to do your project for you, and they will deliver incomprehensible blather that has likely come direct from an article spinner, a Third World word factory, or some zit-faced kid who writes in IM Speak. If you want to pay less than 2 cents per word for relatively simple, straightforward material and less than 5 cents per word for anything that requires research and summarization, you'll get unusable trash that will drive traffic away from your website, not attract it.

Pay on completion - A couple of years ago, I was negotiating with a person to ghostwrite their 400 page novel. We had agreed on workflow, scheduling, total payment, and everything else except the timing of the payment. The person insisted on paying me in full upon completion. Would you work full-time for two months for a total stranger in another country on the promise that you'd get paid when you're done? You wouldn't, I didn't, and any quality freelance writer won't either. On any job of more than a few dollars, agree on a tranche payment schedule where a deposit is paid in advance and then a pro-rated portion of the payment as predefined amounts of work are turned in.

Ask for a sample - Due to the fact that the field is so competitive, freelance writers regularly apply to dozens of positions a day. They can't provide you with "500 words on the benefits of asphalt recycling" just for you to see if they can write. Otherwise, they'd do nothing but write samples and not pay the rent. Professional, quality freelance web writers do not work on spec. Period. An existing, published (online or print) writing sample in a roughly relevant field should be more than sufficient to prove their ability or lack thereof. Also keep in mind that many of these "writing samples" are asked for by scammers who then steal the content, publish it themselves, and never pay the writer a cent.

Hold a writing contest - This is actually a variation of the "Ask for a sample" mistake. I'm surprised at how many high traffic web publishers think it's a great idea to have a "writing contest" to choose their next blogger. Naturally, they publish the entries on their pages and avail themselves of scores or even hundreds of pages of free content just to choose one out of them that will actually get paid. Of course, you could have the sheer chutzpah to ask the writer to pay a "contest entry fee" which would definitely cement your position in the highest echelons of bozohood.

Write like an ignoramus - You'd be surprised how many freelance writing job posts are written in grade-school dropout English. Any quality freelance writer is not going to be interested in dealing with someone who spells it "riting." Don't laugh. I've seen it... and much worse.

Ask for bids - Unless you're on a formal freelance writing bidding site, don't ask for writers to bid on your project in your ad post. Any quality freelance web writer won't even send in a submission as they will immediately understand that the job is going to go to some foreign contractor who bids bottom dollar and then ends up paying his impoverished sub-contractor writers 10% and keeps the other 90%. If you don't know what your budget is, don't ask a freelance web writer to make that determination for you.

Don't specify a word count - You want "an article on Boeing 787 hydraulic pumps." OK, is that a short newsy blog post on the latest problem with them, or a comprehensive technical overview that will run 5,000 words or more? There is going to be an enormous disparity in the time and effort each one takes, so you have to be ready to appropriately compensate the freelance web writer for each.

Be unclear - A freelance writer has to balance the jobs they take on against the time spent to do them. They don't have time to try and figure out what you want as they know that if they guess wrong, they won't get paid. In the Boeing example, is the audience aerospace engineers or lay readers? It's going to make a huge difference in how its researched and written.

Post your ad on Craigslist - It's hard to believe but even large online companies are starting to use Craigslist. You shouldn't. Why? Not because of the "stigma" of being so cheap that you post on free Craigslist, but because any "good" jobs are immediately flagged and removed. Why (again)? That way the first people to see the job eliminate their competition from seeing the ad so they have a much better chance of landing it. It takes a few unique flags to remove an ad from Craigslist, but that's easily done with buddies and/or proxy servers. If you want to place your job posting for free and not have it vanish after fifteen minutes, place it on any of these quality and extremely well-read freelance writing job sites:

http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com/jobs/currentjobs.htm

http://www.freelancewriting.com/

http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/

http://www.performancing.com/

http://www.wahm.com/jobs.html

http://writersweekly.com/