What would you expect to pay?

[Kevin_R]

Hi all, I see different article packs here and there in the forums. The prices are really low, so I wonder about the quality.
What would everybody/a person who needs quality content expect to pay for a very well written, pre-written, sold only once, article pack of say.. five 500 word articles on a given topic?
Just curious..

[jhmattern]

There are too many different potential markets for you to get a serious answer (and frankly, those willing to pay a decent price on DP are the ones who aren't going to say so publicly, so don't base your rates simply on what people tell you they'd pay on this forum).

[webgal]

Jenn is right. And prices are all over the place. But in general, you get what you pay for.

[rustyc]

Where would a person have to go to find a reasonably priced author?

[wrttnwrd]

"Reasonably priced" is not a good spec for a bid.

A really great marketing copywriter can charge you as much as $150/hour, $350/page, or (in extreme cases like Dan Kennedy) $10,000 for a single sales letter.

If you don't mind something that reads like it was written by a third-grader, you can likely pay as little as $100 per page.

Don't skimp on copy though. Skimp on design, skimp on dinner, skimp on your office. Your copy is the way you communicate with your audience. It needs to be great.

[DeeJayEl]

"Reasonably priced" is not a good spec for a bid.

A really great marketing copywriter can charge you as much as $150/hour, $350/page, or (in extreme cases like Dan Kennedy) $10,000 for a single sales letter.

If you don't mind something that reads like it was written by a third-grader, you can likely pay as little as $100 per page.

Don't skimp on copy though. Skimp on design, skimp on dinner, skimp on your office. Your copy is the way you communicate with your audience. It needs to be great.

I'm new around these parts and the prices scare me, even with some of the currency conversion rates.

If what you do adds value to a company or website, charge accordingly. Even if you're a hobbyist.

[bobbyt]

I have sold 10 pieces of 500 words articles at slightly over $20. I don't really get paid hourly, I sell per article or batch of 10. I guess I am sort of underpaid, because I write everything from scratch without copy and paste and all my articles pass copyscape, but hey, I am just starting out...

[Farhan5]

in my ways price have to be reliable..

[internetauthor]

You can reasonably charge anywhere from $5 to $500 for a 500-wd article. A lot depends on your abilities, your topic, your level of expertise, your clients and primarily your marketing abilities.

Rebecca

[Dylan P. Hawkins]

You can reasonably charge anywhere from $5 to $500 for a 500-wd article. A lot depends on your abilities, your topic, your level of expertise, your clients and primarily your marketing abilities.

Rebecca

Kind of a broad range, don't you think?

[jhmattern]

Kind of a broad range, don't you think?

I'm pretty sure that was her point... you can't pinpoint a price, b/c there is such a broad range (and those numbers are very realistic).

[internetauthor]

I'm pretty sure that was her point... you can't pinpoint a price, b/c there is such a broad range (and those numbers are very realistic).

Glad sarcasm is always appreciated. :p That was exactly my point.

[AvarianParakeet]

You can't necessarily equate price with quality. There tends to be a very harsh view towards the cent a word articles.

The price depends on what it is meant to be. The cent a word article packs are meant to be web content only. They are there for the benefit of the search engines. It is a plus if they won't make the readers' eyes bleed.

The higher costs usually are associated with really good articles. These are made to be read and to present a unique point of view. These are actually edited and revised well to make them the best they can be.

So, the price varies. A quickie piece that is pretty readable but just done for the keywords will be 1-2 cents a word. Anything that is really meant to be read is going to have to factor in research time, editing, and general experience.

I would like to throw out another reason for the low cost articles. There really isn't much of an incentive for casual web entrepreneurs to have great content (depending on their business model). A bad article will make the person click a link to leave and find better information. Only the serious businessmen try to stand on content alone.

[Perfectionist]

I think around $50 per one 500 words article is a reasonable price for a quality content. I mean quality, not professional though.

[jhmattern]

The price depends on what it is meant to be. The cent a word article packs are meant to be web content only. They are there for the benefit of the search engines. It is a plus if they won't make the readers' eyes bleed.

The buyer's intention should have no bearing on what a writer charges. There's no excuse for a writer to write poorly just so they can sell cheaply... your writing becomes your reputation. People who don't understand that will fail as a freelance writer in the long run - it happens every day. Also, writing for search engines doesn't mean it's not also for readers. Smart webmasters know this.

I would like to throw out another reason for the low cost articles. There really isn't much of an incentive for casual web entrepreneurs to have great content (depending on their business model). A bad article will make the person click a link to leave and find better information. Only the serious businessmen try to stand on content alone.

Again, smart webmasters know better than that, and they realize that there's a lot of incentive for going with higher quality content. Just like your writing is your reputation as a writer, your content adds to (or detracts from) your reputation as a webmaster. Look at the number of webmasters out there buying hoards of cheap crappy content. How many of them do you think are making a huge income (and more importantly, sustainable income - as in Google won't ever have a reason to go after their methods, since that's likely how they're making their money). Compared to those getting "real" content on their sites to attract and keep readers, I have no doubt who's doing better. Those thinking about nothing but cheap-ass SEO articles that could be a factual nightmare and just poorly written tend to put all of their eggs into one basket - Google. One penalization, and they could be done. Those with serious content that draws readers in are able to market more affectively through diverse channels, and have better potential for not only repeat traffic, but also the holy grail of marketing tactics - word of mouth.

[wilhb81]

There are bunch of talent article writers in DP forum, but not all of them are professional enough to create the articles you might look for...

I think with $20 you can get a quality 500 words article at DP forum, if you want more professional article writer, you might need some time to search for it...

Wilson.

[godsofchaos]

Honestly speaking, in DP it is really hard for anyone to get the info on the right price for an article, any article. With that being said, I am there are still a lot of people who knows what "quality" is.... As for example, I am a designer and have my portfolio in my sig and was asking people how much to charge to my advertisers... One advertiser said that he will only pay $50 ( I was expecting $300/month) for one month of advertising. I was so heartbroken and surprised by that cause it came from an advertiser himself. Then I asked him about his product which was an ebook... I have a site about my cell phone themes... so definitely I wont expect ebookers to advertise there... It is obvious that he didnt even read what I do or what the site is all about, other wise he would never say it so harshly (it was a harsh comment lol)... Then I realized for a pescy product the budget is pescy too. Hence, in your case it really depends on what you are writing about. Yes, the way you write an article really matters, but what matters more in terms of price and not value, is what you are writing about. So without you pin pointing that to everyone here... you will never get the optimum answer from anyone here.

I hope I was able to communicate what I wanted to say...lol...

Anyway, nice to meet ya and hope to see ya around... best of luck!

[AvarianParakeet]

The buyer's intention should have no bearing on what a writer charges. There's no excuse for a writer to write poorly just so they can sell cheaply... your writing becomes your reputation. People who don't understand that will fail as a freelance writer in the long run - it happens every day. Also, writing for search engines doesn't mean it's not also for readers. Smart webmasters know this.



Again, smart webmasters know better than that, and they realize that there's a lot of incentive for going with higher quality content. Just like your writing is your reputation as a writer, your content adds to (or detracts from) your reputation as a webmaster. Look at the number of webmasters out there buying hoards of cheap crappy content. How many of them do you think are making a huge income (and more importantly, sustainable income - as in Google won't ever have a reason to go after their methods, since that's likely how they're making their money). Compared to those getting "real" content on their sites to attract and keep readers, I have no doubt who's doing better. Those thinking about nothing but cheap-ass SEO articles that could be a factual nightmare and just poorly written tend to put all of their eggs into one basket - Google. One penalization, and they could be done. Those with serious content that draws readers in are able to market more affectively through diverse channels, and have better potential for not only repeat traffic, but also the holy grail of marketing tactics - word of mouth.

I did not say that it was necessarily the best business model in the world. I was just explaining the huge gap that new writers might see. There will not ever be a huge demand for expensive articles. From what I've seen, the field is limited to the standard set of professionals who are looking for quality.

There will always be a considerably larger group of people who want cheap basic articles. Even if google nails them, they can purchase other forms of article marketing. Most webmasters can't bank on shelling out hundreds of dollars for a little article that may or may not make them money. The only reasonable reason to pay that much would be for a sales copy where they were selling something.

I respect your work very much, but you have to recognize that there is a need for cheap articles that can be exploited by basic writers who know how. I was simply stating that it is possible for one to fill the need by basically doing a 15 minute free write. It's not bad money even for a writer who does it as a hobby.

And...It is only reasonable to consider their intention when writing. 1 cent a word articles are meant to be SEO articles which should be written in SEO style for an search engines. It's the same as your copywriting orders being meant to be extremely high quality. Misappropriating effort is just foolish. They don't expect their writers to pour hours of work into a $5 article.

It's just my 2 cents anyway

[jhmattern]

You'd be surprised what clients "expect" writers to put into a $5 article. Have you ever read some of those ads? ;)

There's also a MUCH bigger demand for "expensive" articles than I think you're giving credit to - that demand is just not as public, and that's what many writers fail to realize.

I don't deny that cheap articles have their place. There will always be webmasters who don't value good content, because they don't understand the benefits. I don't worry about them, because I know most won't still be around a few months to a few years from now.

And btw, I do SEO writing as well... not just copywriting. ;) And I get paid quite well for it, as do quite a few others here that I'm aware of.

If the OP's post said "hey, I just threw together a few crap articles - how much can I sell them for?" I'd probably agree that they're worth very little to most people here. They key in the original post is that they're claiming it's quality content. If that's true (in the eyes of potential buyers), they shouldn't be playing by the rules of the cheap content writers who wouldn't know quality content if it bit them on the ass. (And before someone bites my head off... yeah, some are decent writers who just underprice themselves... they're just bad marketers). :D

[godsofchaos]

Indeed, very nicely put jhmattern. There are two sides of the coin and its both upto the copyrighter and the buyer himself/herself. Obviously the market for quality oriented articles is there, otherwise some articles wouldn't rank so high in terms of value, both in terms of seo and writing content. Just a general observation though, from what I can tell and from what I have personally experienced, most good articles are actually valued by google/yahoo way more than the cheaper ones. This is how it should be in case of writing and buying content as well, and for a smart ass buyer its the bad marketeers they always expect to run into. In some cases (most cases rather) it is them who never finds any cause greed finds them and the find those cheap 100 articles for $5. Talk bout what goes around, comes around!

[AvarianParakeet]

You'd be surprised what clients "expect" writers to put into a $5 article. Have you ever read some of those ads? ;)

There's also a MUCH bigger demand for "expensive" articles than I think you're giving credit to - that demand is just not as public, and that's what many writers fail to realize.

I don't deny that cheap articles have their place. There will always be webmasters who don't value good content, because they don't understand the benefits. I don't worry about them, because I know most won't still be around a few months to a few years from now.

And btw, I do SEO writing as well... not just copywriting. ;) And I get paid quite well for it, as do quite a few others here that I'm aware of.

If the OP's post said "hey, I just threw together a few crap articles - how much can I sell them for?" I'd probably agree that they're worth very little to most people here. They key in the original post is that they're claiming it's quality content. If that's true (in the eyes of potential buyers), they shouldn't be playing by the rules of the cheap content writers who wouldn't know quality content if it bit them on the ass. (And before someone bites my head off... yeah, some are decent writers who just underprice themselves... they're just bad marketers). :D

Can't really argue with that:). Just wanted to give credit to both sides of the spectrum. It takes all kinds to build the vast web that is the internet.

[shutterslide]

I'd pay about $10 for a 500 word article but only if it was very well researched, SEO optimized and written well without the need to much editing, if any. Ive had some writers provide articles that can hardly be understood!! Quality really varies and obviously price people will pay will depend on nature and quality of content.

[wrttnwrd]

Um. At $10 an article I'm amazed you got anything that could be understood.

For $10 I might be willing to let my guinea pigs walk around on a keyboard for a while, but that's it.

[Annea]

I've never quite understood why online articles are sold for so much less than print articles.

[jhmattern]

I've never quite understood why online articles are sold for so much less than print articles.

They're not. You can get paid just as much for online articles as print articles on the high end, and there are a lot of print publications that pay little to nothing, just like the cheap webmaster market.

[RenaissanceMan]

You get what you pay for. On average it costs around 7 bucks for a high quality article.. thats AVERAGE :) Hope that helps... anyways thats what i pay for them.

[jhmattern]

You get what you pay for. On average it costs around 7 bucks for a high quality article.. thats AVERAGE :) Hope that helps... anyways thats what i pay for them.

Average for you doesn't mean it's anywhere near "average" for the overall Web content market. ;) That's actually on the extremely low end.

[Annea]

They're not. You can get paid just as much for online articles as print articles on the high end, and there are a lot of print publications that pay little to nothing, just like the cheap webmaster market.


Yes, you're right. I'm afraid that I fall into the trap of comparing my articles selling for $100 to a newspaper almost twenty years ago, to what is happening in today's online world....or at least forgetting to apply the same rules online as for offline when seeking publishing opps.

I've been exerting my energy on that rather than seeking out reasonably paying markets that can be found for online work.

Thx for making that point!

[djjeny]

I think the age-old motto seems particularly pertinent here: you get what you pay for.

That is to say, the more well-written, concise and interesting an article is, the more you can expect to shell out for it.

HOWEVER, depending on the exact purpose of your buying such an article, this may be a good investment. As a consumer, there's nothing worse than being force-fed trash, so the best articles are the ones to (almost always) succeed.

I don't really know if it's possible to put a ballpark figure on the kind of thing you're asking for as it really depends whom you approach to provide you with such content. It's true that a lot of the adverts in the Buy, Sell & Trade forum are advertising a rate of around $5 for roughly 400 words, but this is a surprisingly low fee for what you have described as "very well written". My advice would be to completely ignore this, and expect to pay something substantially higher for the kind of thing you want. I would expect to pay someone at least ten times that amount just for one, "very well written" article of 500 words. For outstanding and professional articles, this figure may even be one hundred times larger, as freelancers higher up the writing ladder, as we all know, can charge what they like.

:)