My previous role in a marketing company was finding talented web writers. Be sure you quiz the guys and gals how much they know about keywords as the good ones write for people AS WELL AS search engines. Why not get your webcopy to help your search engine rankings? A trick I used is simply to Google terms like webcopy...if your webcopy writer shows up on the first three pages and their copy looks good, you've got yourself a writer! We mostly used webcopyplus (Canada/US) and gerry mcovern (Australia) -- they weren't cheap, but we had decent budgets and the results were always exceptional. I did try the Craig's list way, but always dealt with wanna-be's who were doing it on the side. The two times I went that route the results were substandard and we had to pay someone to do it again...my boss wasn't pleased. In that case, better to do it yourself and pocket the cash!
I didn't get the idea of that post. Was it supposed to be something like "unleash the fury" kind of moment?
There are certainly all kinds of writers out there. I'm glad you were able to find some that met your criteria. Were you looking for new writers or just sharing your prior experience?
Sorry, I don't understand your point, Flif. My point was, if you want results, hire a pro (and check out their rankings to make sure they're well-versed in SEO). And if you don't have a budget, you might be better off doing it yourself because you'll likely get sub-standard results getting an amateur to write your web content. That's it .