Hiring full time remote vs agency/freelance

[areelius]

I run an ecom business in the UK and organic is our biggest channel. Due to restrictions in my niche, we can't do any paid ads....I have a budget of $3-4000 p/m for outreach and wanted to ask you what you think might work best for us. Their job would include prospecting potential websites that fit our criteria, outreaching to said websites, managing guest posts, negotiating link costs etc.

After using various freelancers to varying degrees of success, I am starting to think it might be better to hire a full-time (remote worker) and begin to build the SEO team in house.

Few questions:

1. What have people's experiences been like hiring full-time remote employees? We use many remote workers currently, but they're all freelance. It has worked very well for us.
2. What are the salary expectations for full-time remote outreach specialists?
3. Where do you find remote workers looking for full-time positions?
4. Are there any legal / tax implications of hiring outside of your own country (UK)?

Would love to hear your thoughts/experiences of anyone who's been in a similar position.

 

[kimpet]

@areelius Hey.

So I run a web agency, and we had a similar situation when we first started out.

We tried freelancing and just bringing people in as we needed them, but we never got the quality we wanted.

We decided to eventually bite the bullet and hire someone full time remote. Honestly it was a game changer for us. We’ve grown the company to 6 people now, all full time remote.

For me, it gives us control over the quality, as it’s being done in house by our team, it’s not just another project on the books

For me, if it’s going to be continuous work, then I would hire in house. If it’s one off, then go freelance.

What I would say is specialise down, we were too generic at first and it showed in the people we originally hired ( jack of all trades ). We started again and got in specialists in particular areas, and it worked so much better.

I can’t answer your questions specifically, but we use online jobs.ph for hiring staff. There’s no Tax implications I have come across, as the team simply invoice us at the end of each month. We’re UK based as well

Feel free to reach out with any questions. More than happy to answer where I can

 

[areelius]

@kimpet Thanks a lot for the detailed response. That's some good advice and think we're on the same page tbh.

We're keeping the JD super-specific this time. We did exactly the same thing in the past, searching for the "unicorn" all-rounder, and quickly realised these people a very few and far between.

We've tried using online jobs. ph in the past and found it to be a little sketchy, I would love to DM you and hear more about your experience with it as on the fence about trying it again.

We've had some really good success using upwork, but that was for freelancers, and have met some incredible people who have really helped us out / continue too.