Freelance Writer

Optimist is looking for freelance content writers with experience writing about web hosting and WordPress topics.

We’re looking for folks who aren’t afraid of wp-admin, have hands-on experience tweaking or building WordPress sites, and can find their way around a hosting dashboard. Bonus points for experience with command line, working knowledge of PHP, and other relevant skills.

(You don’t need to be a full-blown developer, though.)

Our ideal candidate is not only well-versed in the intricacies of content marketing for B2B and SaaS companies but also possesses:

Hands-on experience creating or editing WordPress plugins, themes, and sites

Experience troubleshooting WP issues like WSoD

Strong familiarity with the inner-workings of WP, like the the folder structure and common errors or issues

Extra credit for experience on marketing/SEO topics as they relate to WP. Like, how to optimize site speed/performance, popular SEO plugins (and how to use them), or how to set up robots.txt and page-level crawl directives

To be a fit, you’ve likely tinkered with WP for years and built/managed your own websites. You can generally read and understand PHP (even if you can’t write code). HTML/CSS is very easy for you to understand. You’ve possibly held a web admin or WP-specific role as part of an agency or in-house team.

We need a content marketer who brings a trifecta of skills and experience:

Mind-blowing content writer

Keen marketer with SEO knowledge

Kick-ass communicator and collaborator

MIND-BLOWING CONTENT WRITER

First and foremost, your role as a freelance writer with Optimist is to be a world-class content writer. This means you’re able to research and write god-damn-that's-good content on a variety of industries and topics.

But we aren’t just looking for someone who can string words together. Content marketing is about more than usage and mechanics — Optimist writers understand the business goals and strategy, and how content drives growth.

This means you’ll need to be able to:

Understand the reader’s needs and empathize with their challenges.

Identify and explain market trends.

Construct a narrative that connects the reader’s needs to the proposed solution (the client's product/service) and compel them to take action.

Dig into the client’s product and build your own product knowledge in order to showcase the product’s features in content.

Adapt quickly to client voice, tone, and brand guidelines.

We're looking for people with:

Experience writing blog content for B2B and SaaS companies.

A portfolio of content and testimonials to support your background as an SEO expert.

The ability to deliver near error-free, publish-ready content (without the need for an editor).

KEEN MARKETER WITH SEO EXPERTISE

Clients hire us to do more than just create great content — they want growth.

Most of the strategies that we execute for clients are driven by SEO. Our writers have a working knowledge of how SEO works, how to apply SEO best practices without sacrificing content quality, and how to balance the (sometimes competing) content marketing goals to create just the right piece for both the audience and the marketing goal.

If you’ve read this far, hopefully you understand SEO. So we won’t belabor these requirements.
But generally, writers are expected to:

Understand and apply SEO best practices, including formatting (H2 tags, meta descriptions, SEO-friendly headlines, etc.).

Create content tailored to search intent and different audience levels.

KICK-ASS COMMUNICATOR AND COLLABORATOR

Writers at Optimist play a critical role that goes beyond just creating great content that's optimized for goals and SEO.

Because of our unique collective model, we champion ownership over everything. But that also means that we expect and need ownership from each member of our team.

As a freelance writer with Optimist, you'll be expected to:

Provide screenshots for product walkthroughs to accompany your post. Designers will take these raw screenshots and create finished graphics.

Check into Slack and Asana periodically to keep up on any updates or changes.

Communicate with Optimist PMs on hand-offs and editing.

Self manage your time and communicate with your team when it comes to questions or issues pertaining to work tasks.

OUR HIRING PROCESS

We want you to know what to expect after you send in your application. If things look promising:

You’ll be contacted via email with a trial project (subject, brief, and deadline expectations).

If you are able to accept the trial, you’ll be added to our Slack, Asana, and any other resources you need access (client guidelines, etc.).

You will be asked to do a minimum of two paid trial projects.

Once you pass your trial projects, we’ll sync up on your availability get you set up with some ongoing client work.

YOU’LL GET PAID

We ask freelancers to invoice by the hour and pay competitive rates starting at $65/hour, which increases every 6 months accordingly:

$70/hour after 6 months

$75/hour after 12 months

$80/hour after 18 months

$85/hour after 24 months

Note: These rates are subject to change as we are likely moving to a flat-rate structure in the near future.

FAQs

Is there a minimum number of hours I need to work each week?

Nope.

We do try to give you an idea of your workload (about how long a piece should take, how many will be due, etc.) but you're not required to hit any quotas as long as you make your due dates.

We do ask that you don’t take on more than you can handle.

Are there certain hours I’m required to be available?

No, not really. It’s ideal if you can check into Slack at least once a day on a working day just to answer any questions your team has or get any updates you need. We’re spread out across the globe so everyone keeps different hours.

We do occasionally (rarely) try to get on team calls, but not everyone can make it and we record what we can so everyone can catch up.

For the most part, we try to communicate async with Looms and Slack.

Once I'm working with Optimist, can I still take other clients?

100%. Yes. Optimist is an experimental freelance collective, and we want you to live your best #freelancelyfe. We all have non-Optimist clients, hustles, and businesses they run outside of Optimist.

How can I be part of the Optimist “team”?

Essentially you are! Or at least, an extension of the “the team.” Right now Optimist is focusing on staying pretty small and we don’t want to overpromise a lot of work for people that we don’t have, but we love to meet new writers and build our community so when the time comes we need to add to our team, you’re already on “the bench” so to speak.

INTERESTED?

Okay, so if you're reading all of this and thinking, "Damn, this sounds like a really cool gig and I'd love to hang out with these people!" then you're in luck.