How to Hire a CopywriterFind a writer who sells, not just one who writes
Anyone can write a sentence. Far fewer people can write a sentence that gets a stranger to click, sign up, or pull out a credit card. That gap is the whole job. This guide walks you through hiring a copywriter who closes that gap, from the brief you post to the paid trial that tells you the truth.
Pick the model that matches your volume, not your budget alone
Freelance
Best for: Project work, variable volume
Typical cost: $50-$150/hr
Less context, more flexible
In-house
Best for: Copy is core, steady volume
Typical cost: $60k-$95k/yr
Deep product knowledge
Agency
Best for: Campaigns, no time to manage
Typical cost: $100-$250/hr
Polished, pricier, less direct
Most teams hire copywriters the way they buy a couch online. They look at a few nice pictures, pick the one that looks good, and find out later whether it actually holds up. The samples read well in the portfolio. Then the work starts and the copy is vague, off-brand, or slow to arrive.
The fix is not a longer interview. It is a sharper process. You need to know what kind of writer you actually need, how to read a portfolio past the polish, and how to run a short test that mirrors the real job. The same discipline you would bring to hiring a social media manager or any other specialist role applies here.
Demand for strong writers is not going away. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks tens of thousands of writing and editing roles in the United States, with median pay for writers and authors at roughly $73,690. Good copy is still a paid skill, and the people who have it know their worth.
First, know which writer you need
People use the word copywriter to mean five different jobs. Before you post anything, get specific. A copywriter writes to drive an action right now: a click on an ad, a signup on a landing page, a reply to an email. A content writer builds trust over time through articles and guides. A brand writer shapes voice and messaging. A technical writer documents how things work.
These skills overlap, but the strongest candidates specialize. A brilliant long-form essayist may freeze when asked for a 30-character ad headline. A sharp performance copywriter may write a thin blog post. Hire for the job in front of you, and say which job it is in the post. If you are honestly not sure, that is a sign you should clarify the role before you start sourcing.
This matters more than it sounds. A vague title pulls a vague pool. When you write the job description, name the formats you care about and the outcomes you expect. Our guide on how to write job descriptions that work covers the structure, and the same rule applies: specific posts attract specific people.
Freelance, in-house, or agency
The model you choose shapes everything else: cost, speed, and how much management it takes. There is no universally right answer. There is only the right answer for your volume and how core copy is to what you do.
Go freelance when the work comes in waves, when you are still figuring out what good output looks like, or when you want to try a few writers before committing. A freelancer costs more per hour but nothing when the work stops. The catch is context. A part-time writer will never know your product as deeply as someone who lives in it every day.
Hire in-house when copy is a constant input to your business: a steady stream of emails, landing pages, product launches, and lifecycle messaging. A full-time writer learns your customers, your voice, and your funnel over months. That compounding knowledge is the real value, and it is why a good in-house writer often outperforms a more talented freelancer on your specific account.
Use an agency when you have a defined campaign, a real budget, and no appetite to manage a writer directly. Agencies bring polish and a team, but you pay for the overhead and you sit one step removed from the person doing the work. For most growing teams, the honest path is to start freelance, find someone who fits, then bring that person in-house when the volume justifies it.
The hiring process, start to finish
Here is the whole arc in six steps. Each one filters out a different kind of mismatch, so by the time you reach an offer, you are deciding between people you have actually seen work.
Six steps from open role to signed offer
Write the brief
Source & shortlist
Read portfolios
Paid trial
Final call
Offer
Notice that the portfolio and the paid trial sit in the middle, not the interview. A pleasant conversation tells you almost nothing about whether someone can write. The work does. Treat the interview as a way to confirm fit, not as the main test.
Step 1
Write a brief that filters
A weak job post asks for a creative, detail-oriented writer with a passion for storytelling. That post attracts everyone and tells you nothing. A strong post names the work: the formats you need, the audience you sell to, the tools you use, and what success looks like in 90 days.
Spell out the real job. Are they writing paid social ads, product launch emails, or SEO landing pages? Who reads the copy, and what do you want that reader to do? The more concrete you are, the faster the wrong people opt out and the right people lean in. Concrete posts also make it much easier to screen the applications that come back.
One practical move: ask applicants to send two or three samples that match the work you described, plus a sentence on the goal of each. That single request does more filtering than a page of requirements, because lazy applicants skip it and serious ones treat it as a chance to show they read the post.
Step 2
Read the portfolio past the polish
A portfolio is easy to fake and easy to misread. Pretty words are not the point. What you want to see is judgment: did this writer understand the goal, the reader, and the constraint, and did the copy do its job? The best candidates annotate their work. They tell you the brief, the audience, and what happened after the piece shipped.
Be skeptical of samples that read like prize-winning prose with no commercial purpose. Clever is cheap. Clear is rare. A writer who can explain a complicated product in plain language is worth more than one who writes beautiful sentences that leave the reader unsure what to do next.
Watch the signals below as you read. They separate writers who think about results from writers who think about applause.
Hire signals
- Explains the goal behind each portfolio piece
- Asks who the reader is before writing a word
- Shows edits and earlier drafts, not just final copy
- Writes plainly, even about complicated products
Pass signals
- Portfolio is all adjectives, no outcomes
- Cannot say why a line works the way it does
- Bristles at feedback during the trial
- Sends the same generic samples to everyone
Screen writing applicants without the spreadsheet chaos
Prepzo scores and organizes every applicant against your brief, so you spend your time reading the writers worth reading.
Try Prepzo freeStep 3
Run a short, paid trial
This is the step that tells the truth. Portfolios show curated past work. A trial shows how someone writes for you, on your product, under a real constraint. Keep it small. You are not asking for a campaign. You are asking for enough to judge clarity, craft, and how well they follow a brief.
Pay for it. I am firm on this. Free spec work signals that you do not value the craft, and the writers worth hiring will quietly decline. A fair rate for an hour or two of work costs you very little and tells you a great deal. It also sets the tone for how you will treat the person once they are on the team.
A good trial brief has four parts. Give the candidate everything they need and nothing they do not.
The product
One real thing you sell, with a link
The reader
Who they are and what they fear
The single goal
One action you want the copy to drive
The deliverable
Five headlines plus one short asset
When the work comes back, judge three things. Did they follow the brief, or write something clever that ignored the goal? Is the copy clear to someone who has never seen your product? And did they ask good questions before starting? A writer who asks who the reader is, or what the one action should be, is showing you exactly the instinct you want.
Speed matters too, but be careful with it. A writer who turns around brilliant copy in an hour is great. One who turns around rushed copy in an hour is not. Look at the work first, then the clock.
Step 4
Use the interview to test thinking, not vibes
By the time you interview, you have already seen the work. Now you are testing how the person thinks. Walk through their trial together. Ask why they made specific choices. A strong writer can defend a headline with reasoning about the reader, not just I liked how it sounded.
Give them a line of their own copy and ask them to make it shorter, or to write it for a different audience. Editing on the spot reveals far more than any question about their process. You learn whether they hold their words too tightly and whether they can shift register when the reader changes.
Keep the loop tight. Two conversations is usually enough: one with the hiring manager and one with whoever the writer will work with day to day. Dragging copywriters through six rounds is a fast way to lose the good ones to a company that moved quicker. If you want a framework for keeping the panel disciplined, our structured interviews guide lays it out.
Step 5
Set a budget that matches the work
Pay is where good searches fall apart. Underpay and you get writers who are still learning on your dime. Overpay for the wrong model and you burn budget you could have spent testing. Here is the honest picture as of 2026.
Freelancers commonly charge $50 to $150 an hour, with senior specialists in performance or conversion copy charging more. Per word, rates range from about $0.20 for general work to $1.00 and up for high-stakes sales copy. A full-time mid-level copywriter in the United States usually lands between $60,000 and $95,000 a year, and the BLS median for writers and authors sits near $73,690. Senior and specialized roles climb well above that.
Resist the urge to anchor on the cheapest quote. Copy that converts pays for itself many times over, and copy that confuses costs you customers you will never know you lost. Think about return, not just rate. For a deeper look at how to value any hire, our breakdown of the cost of a bad hire applies cleanly to writers.
Avoid these
Mistakes that sink the search
Hiring on a clever portfolio alone
Curated samples show a writer at their best, on someone else's brief. Always test on your product before you commit.
Asking for free spec work
It filters out the writers you most want and attracts the desperate. Pay for the trial. It is the cheapest signal you will buy.
Writing a vague job post
A request for a creative storyteller pulls a flood of mismatches. Name the formats, the reader, and the outcome.
Confusing fast with good
Speed is a feature once the quality bar is met. It is never a substitute for it. Judge the work first.
Dragging out the process
Strong writers have options. Six interview rounds will lose them to a team that decided in two.
After the offer
Set the writer up to win
A great copywriter writes bad copy in a bad environment. The first month decides a lot. Give them access to your real customers: support tickets, sales calls, reviews, the words people actually use about your product. The best copy is usually borrowed from the mouths of buyers, not invented from scratch.
Share a clear voice guide if you have one, and a few examples of copy you consider strong and weak. Tell them what the goal of each project is before they start, the same way you ran the trial. Writers do their best work when they understand the reader and the action, and their worst work when they are guessing at both.
Run a writing hire start to finish in one place
From job post to paid trial to offer, Prepzo keeps every applicant, sample, and scorecard in one pipeline so your team decides faster.
See Prepzo in actionFrequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to hire a copywriter?
It depends on the model. Freelancers commonly charge $50 to $150 an hour, or $0.20 to $1.00 per word for senior work. A full-time mid-level copywriter in the United States usually lands between $60,000 and $95,000 a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for writers and authors at roughly $73,690. Agencies cost more per hour but carry less management overhead.
Should I hire a freelance or full-time copywriter?
Hire a freelancer when the work is project-based, seasonal, or you are still testing what good output looks like. Hire full-time when copy is core to your business, the volume is steady, and you want someone who learns your product deeply over months. Many teams start freelance, find a writer who fits, then bring that person in-house.
What should a copywriter's portfolio show?
Range and results. You want published work across formats that matter to you: landing pages, email, ads, or long-form. Better candidates explain the goal of each piece and what happened after it shipped. A portfolio that only shows pretty words with no context is a warning sign.
How do I test a copywriter before hiring?
Give a short, paid trial brief tied to a real project. Provide a product, an audience, and a single goal, then ask for a headline set plus one short asset. Judge clarity, how well they followed the brief, and whether they asked sharp questions. Pay for their time. Free spec work attracts the wrong people.
What is the difference between a copywriter and a content writer?
Copywriters write to drive an action: a click, a signup, a purchase. Content writers write to inform and build trust over time, often through blog posts and guides. The skills overlap, but the mindset differs. Hire for the job you actually have, and say which one you mean in the job post.
Resources & Further Reading
Related Guides
- How to Write Job Descriptions That Attract Great Candidates
Specific posts pull specific writers
- How to Screen Resumes: 7 Steps to Find Great Candidates Fast
Sort writing applicants without drowning
- Structured Interviews: The Complete Guide
Keep the panel honest and consistent
- How to Hire a Social Media Manager
A close cousin to the copywriter hire
External Sources
- BLS: Writers and Authors
Pay benchmarks and job outlook data
- SHRM: Talent Acquisition
Hiring benchmarks and best practices
- Harvard Business Review on Hiring
Testing for judgment, not just skill
- LinkedIn Talent Blog
Sourcing and hiring research
