You can’t just go to eLance and pick people to help you blog. There is a lot in the equation. Blogging is actually very complicated if you want to be successful at it. There are many metrics and analytics to consider. The value of a good blog post is based on how many readers it gets, and how many more regular readers you develop. To turn a one time or two time visitor into a regular reader of your blog might be based on more than one really good article. It might be based on consistently good articles which appeal to the reader. However, if you have a few really good articles or a few really unattractive ones, that might make the difference between having a regular reader — or not! Another factor is SEO benefit of the blog post. Some blog posts attract a lot of traffic from Google, while other ones might be popular with your regular readers, but wouldn’t show up well on search results.
Freelance bloggers do not generally care about the long term success of your blog, nor do they care about the “analytics.” That is your problem. They just want to collect their fee and pay their bills. As a manager of hired hands, you need to know who is worth it and who is not. Freelance bloggers typically want to charge an enormous amount for each piece they write. Unfortunately, the monetary benefit they create for you might be far less than their fee. To get a blog popular, you need more than 1000 pieces. If you pay $100 per piece, you will have paid $100,000 just to get your blog regular traffic which might help your site be a little more popular. Hardly worth even $5000. It is easy to lose all your money hiring the wrong people at the wrong price. You need to understand what makes your blog tick, and find people who can do it for a price that is sustainable.
Have someone write a few pieces. See how much traffic each piece gets after ten days. Measure again after sixty days. See if it gets many clicks from Facebook or Twitter. You can use that figure to compare to articles written by you or others on staff. Also, have your new writer submit several pieces over a two-week period. See if your general blog traffic goes up in a noticeable way in that period or right after that period. That will indicate if your exciting newbie got you some new “regulars” to come to your blog. If your experiment delivers positive results, you could test them over a month or two and keep your eyes on the growth. Remember, that some weeks your blog might have a good week. But, if your new writer is any good, then every week will be a good week.