What are the common problems people have when hiring and working with freelance writers?

Freelance writers may be temperamental. They may not be used to meeting deadlines and producing a finished product on time. They may not be familiar with contracts and obligations.

Depending on what is being written ()fiction, article, essay, non-fiction, instruction book, etc.) the writer may not work well and creatively under pressure.

Deadlines are notorious creative killers for a lot of writers.
First things first. If you find sample works appealing and like what you read then give the writer enough space to work their magic. While I am not a professional free lancer I know that pressure is a creative killer a lot of the time. You can’t hurry words, no you just have to wait, great words don’t come easy, it’s a game of give and take…..LOL

Ya gotta remember, any writer worth their salt is going to agonize over the perfect presentation, a win for you in the end.

If the reporters are experienced they can be no trouble. They do the work, and turn it in on time. If they don’t have a lot of experience they might miss the mark on what is important for the story.

A lot of journalists live the writing, but hate the billing part. They get behind or disorganized in keeping track of what needs to be billed, and whether money has come in.

That’s what I do. I track billing for journalists and companies that hire journalists.

As a creative director and writer working for big and small agencies and also at companies who used agencies, I ran into two perspectives over many years.

Perspective one: Some clients and agency managers worried that “outside” parties couldn’t possibly be as familiar as the agency about its clients’ products or services and therefore couldn’t deliver effective work. Agency managers also tended to be paranoid that freelancers would siphon off business by establishing direct links to their clients.

Perspective two: Some clients felt that outsiders who weren’t bogged down in agency bureaucracy and safe, staid thinking could be more objective and therefore deliver more out-of-the-box solutions.

And then, thank goodness, I worked with clients and agency people who simply let the creative director use my judgment and get the work done however I chose.

Others above have offered excellent input, much of which I can attest to by personal experience. Just thought you might be interested in my one comment.

Paying them.