If you are a business owner with a longer to do list than hours in the day, you need a data entry freelance website. A lot of people think hiring freelancers is expensive, but not anymore, you can get small tasks and projects done from as little as a fiver. Data entry is one area of the business that is often overlooked, so here we list 5 areas of your business data entry can support and what kind of freelance websites you should be looking for.

 1. Data updates

This can be anything from exporting member data to your newsletter provider, going through SEO activities and updating keyword lists, updating invoices into an excel workbook, recording inventory (if it’s available digitally) and many more task.

These jobs are usually very tedious therefore you will need someone who has a great attention to detail and knows excel well. The reason why they need to know excel well is because you want them to be able to do as much of the tedious work as quickly as possible. Updating excel workbooks can take anywhere between an hour to five, so make sure you have all the data ready before looking for a freelancer.

What are the costs: We have broken down the costs as low, medium, high to give you an idea of the different data entry difficulties that should reflect in the price you pay.

Price points for data entry

Importing data from A to B – Low (example, taking an excel sheet with emails and updating the main mailing list with new emails)

Importing data from A to B and creating unique data C – Medium (example, importing titles for a product list but then writing new product descriptions)

Merging data A and B to create a new set of data – High (Answering What if queries and analysing both sets of data to have a wider understanding of your topic, this usually requires formulas and conditional formatting)

For the low price points you can find people that will do your data entry from as little as a fiver, but the the medium and high you might need to combine more skills like creative writing, mysql and data analysis.

2. Data Research

If you need certain information to enhance your set of data, find a freelance researcher. A researcher already has tools and templates in place for finding information quickly, so the only thing you need to be vary about is being precise about the information you need. If you need journalist contact details in the technology field, elaborate! What country? Digital, print or both? Do you want just editors or also freelancers? The more information you give on the type of information you want found, the quicker the process will be. Here are some of the most common data research tasks small businesses commission and what they pay for them.

  • Business contact details – B2B companies rely on this research quite heavily which can take quite a bit of time to source depending on the type of business you run. The prices are usually listed for the number of contacts you choose, so if you are selling bakery equipment in the UK, you will want contact details of every baker and bakery so you can offer them your product. For 250 contacts you can expect to pay from $5-$10. If you want contact details elaborated e.g. you would like twitter handles of every baker and bakery, there might be a small addition fee.
  • Keyword Research – This is now a hot area for startup businesses who cannot afford expensive SEO agencies and do not really know how SEO works. By simply outsourcing the keyword research to someone who has the software to find the perfect keywords in your industry, businesses are saving thousands. For 20-50 keywords prices range from $10-$50, depending on your industry. Once companies have the excel sheet with high and low competition keywords, they simply create content around them to start ranking higher on google search.
  • Multimedia – Every business starting out wants to look good and have branding of a large corporation. Companies with small budgets for branding outsource researchers to gather anything from high resolution free images, to free typography fonts that they can feed to their graphic designer. By outsourcing certain elements of branding it allows websites who are run by 1-2 people to look at lot higher valued.

3. Data Creation

This is one of the most popular areas why startups outsource data entry freelancers. It’s especially popular for e-commerce platforms that sell tangible products. An e-commerce company would send a stock list to a data entry freelancer and ask them to fill out the rest of the product information like product description, images, titles. If keyword research has been done already, a company might outsource a data creation freelancer to add keywords to thousands of product descriptions and titles. One of the main reasons why companies outsource this is because it’s cheaper than allocating it to an in-house person. For 2.5 hours of work a company can expect to pay $10, which is a bit more expensive than usual but it requires more skills than just pure data entry. The data here can also be singular, if a company has the keyword research done and simply need someone to create the content, they would outsource for a research writer who will look at the competition and write up a singular blog or article around the keyword you require content for.

Because there will be a lot of data to handle, ideally a company would not like to double check the work already done. When looking for the right freelancer, check for language and grammar skills to ensure it does not create double the work at a later stage.

4. Data Checking

With this, companies tend to develop really close relationships with data entry companies. Data checking includes things like copywriting, financial proofing, link checking, basic website UX checking, reference checking. The reason why companies tend to stick with agencies here is because there is usually 1-2 people doing the same job, the checker checking the checker. When doing proofing of data there is no space for mistakes or errors, so if you need your information to be 100% accurate and fault free, it’s worth investing a bit more money and let an agency have the responsibility for your data.

5. Data Scheduling

Usually a startup produces a lot of content that becomes difficult to manage, from new features to blog updates to social media accounts, everything needs management. Data scheduling is essentially a well kept diary for all of the content surrounding your business. These can be ordered on a weekly or on a fixed fee basis, depending how much content needs management.

If you are looking for constant data entry support, it’s good to build a report with a freelancer so they understand your standard of work and can jump in when ad-hoc tasks come up.