In an effort to provide ongoing quality content for our readers, I decided to seek the services of a guest blogger. But where to find one? Clearly, I turned where everyone first looks for quality information

1) Facebook- Clearly the source for all things important. I chose Facebook over Twitter because 1) I have a stronger presence 2) There are more people I directly know and trust and 3) I did not want to be spammed by people on Twitter. However, posting also opened it up for Facebook friends to suggest writing themselves (a few did, but no one followed through). A friend, suggested trying oDesk.

2) On oDesk, I submitted a job, and people started responding with applications. Initially I was excited at the number of submissions, but my excitement quickly turned into frustration when I noted that none of the applicants were native English speakers, or had the level of English required to produce quality content for our blog. I was about to give up when I decided to search by country. Alas, a lone American showed up who had applied, and she seemed to have contributed a lot of content to the site. The great thing about oDesk is that applicants have multiple criteria for evaluation: number of logged hours working on oDesk projects, recommendations from past employers, and scores on tests assessing their knowledge of English.

3) I reached out to the applicant and asked for a writing sample. The relationship was established when I paid her for her post using oDesk. (they charge a 10% fee).

I feel that I was lucky in finding our guest contributor, because finding a quality writer was much more difficult than I expected.