📈 Industry
Marketing & Advertising
📍 Hire Location
🇨🇴 Colombia
📝 Position Hired
Copywriter
🤑 Savings
$50k per year
"I actually just reached out before this recording — just doubled her hours and doubled her pay because she's been doing SUCH a good job."
Compound Flows is an email marketing agency based in Australia. They build and manage email campaigns for e-commerce brands — the kind of work where the copy has to convert, not just fill a template.
Kieran Dwyer, the founder, needed a copywriter. Not eventually. Now. The agency was growing fast, and both Kieran and his account manager were buried in writing email copy instead of doing the work that actually scales the business — strategy, client management, new business.
He tried the usual routes first. Upwork. OnlineJobs.ph. No system, no process, just scrolling through profiles and hoping for the best.
It didn't work.
The Challenge of Hiring a Copywriter for an E-Commerce Email Agency
Here's the thing:
Hiring a copywriter sounds simple until you actually need one who's good.
The freelancer platforms are flooded with writers who can string sentences together. Finding someone who can write e-commerce email copy — the kind that drives revenue, not just opens — is a completely different search.
Kieran's situation before HireUA was a mess. His words, not ours:
"I was a bit all over the place. I'd go to Upwork, which is a bit all over the place. You got freelancers that got a lot of clients. They're not really committed or loyal to anyone."
He also tried the Philippines through OnlineJobs.ph. It was "okay" — but okay doesn't move the needle when you're trying to scale an agency.
The bigger problem wasn't just finding candidates. It was the time.
Kieran had no hiring system. No structured interview process. No clear requirements document. Every hire was a guessing game, and every guessing game ate hours he didn't have.
"I knew it was just going to be a massive time suck. I was super, super busy. So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to go towards a hiring agency and see what they can do for me."
That's when he found HireUA.
How HireUA Placed the Right Copywriter
We got Kieran's requirements — budget, skill set, time zone needs — and went to work.
Within days, he had six to eight pre-vetted candidates ready for interviews. Every candidate already knew the role requirements, the compensation range, and what they were interviewing for. No wasted calls. No explaining the job from scratch to every person.
Kieran didn't have to post a single job listing, sift through a single resume, or chase a single candidate for a follow-up.
"Really good. Super clean. You guys obviously take the load off. You get your information that you need from us, and when I hopped onto the call with the candidates, they already knew the requirements and what they were there for."
He was torn between two or three candidates — a good problem to have. He chose a copywriter from Colombia.
And here's the kicker:
The English was so fluent, the cultural fit so natural, that Kieran said she could pass for Australian.
"I didn't realize Colombians were so culturally fit and have really good fluent English. I really just thought I had the Philippines and that's it, being in Australia."
That's a reaction we hear a lot. Most business owners don't know that Latin America — Colombia especially — has a deep bench of English-fluent professionals with strong Western cultural alignment. It's one of the reasons we source from the region alongside Eastern Europe.
The Results
The hire landed at exactly the right time. Compound Flows was in a growth phase, taking on new e-commerce clients. Before the copywriter came on board, Kieran and his account manager were splitting the writing load between them.
That meant the account manager — whose job is client management — was spending hours every week writing email copy. And Kieran — whose job is running the agency — was doing the same.
Things were slipping. Not because anyone was lazy, but because there weren't enough hands.
The copywriter changed that immediately.
She picked up e-commerce email copy quickly. Kieran's account manager noticed the speed of her learning curve. And because she already had a strong foundation in copywriting, the agency-specific nuances of e-commerce email didn't take long to click.
But get this:
Kieran started her part-time. Within weeks, he doubled her hours and doubled her pay — not because he had to, but because she'd earned it. She was producing at a level that made the investment obvious.
"She's been doing such a good job. I actually wanted her to take on more work."
Why It Worked
Three things made this placement click.
First, the process eliminated the time suck. Kieran had been doing everything himself — posting jobs, screening candidates, running interviews with no structure. HireUA handled all of that. He showed up to interviews with candidates who already knew the role. That alone saved him weeks.
Second, the candidate could actually write. Not "fill a template" write. Not "I watched a YouTube video about email marketing" write. Actual e-commerce copywriting — the kind where you understand why a subject line matters, why a CTA needs to hit different in an abandoned cart flow vs. a welcome sequence. She had the foundation, and the agency-specific knowledge built fast on top of it.
Third, the cost made the decision easy. A comparable copywriter in the US or Australia runs $2,000+ per month minimum for part-time work. Many agencies pay $4,000-$6,000 for a full-time senior copywriter. Kieran got someone producing at that level for a fraction of the price — and the savings went straight back into growing the agency.
"I have nothing bad to say. Super silky clean, smooth process. It's completely off my mind. That's the main thing."
That last part is what most business owners underestimate. It's not just about the salary savings. It's about the mental bandwidth you get back when hiring stops being a problem you're solving and starts being a problem that's solved.
Hire a Copywriter Through HireUA
If you're running an agency — email marketing, content, creative, whatever — and you're still writing the copy yourself, or you're burning hours on Upwork trying to find someone who won't ghost you after two weeks, there's a better way.
We source, vet, and place copywriters from Eastern Europe and Latin America who can handle e-commerce email copy, website copy, sales pages, ad copy, and more. Full-time or part-time, in your time zone, at a fraction of US or Australian rates.