The political opinion blogosphere can be classified in terms of ideologies--there's conservative blog rolls, liberal blog rolls, and many points in between. If you get credibility with the bigger blogs in your "ideological space" you can get higher PR as well as quite a bit of direct traffic.
I am familiar with the political stance of the blog, actually, not to mention some of the frustration involved in hiring writers, and getting things up off the ground. Hiring bloggers can get really monotonous after a while, as well. I'm doing it also. It seems like so many people are in and out the door, or just not qualified, etc. Not to mention the expenses in putting up ads. The best thing you can do is network, get your name out there, and always ask for samples. The people who charge more are worth every penny, because their content is professional, and usually keyword rich.
You can hire blogger from blogvertise, smooty as well, best to generate positive review for your product or service.
I can see paying those high prices if you're brand new and starting with no traffic and no following. In my position i'm looking t increase posts, not to start from scratch. I've got a little over 300 members and my contributors are putting in 8 to 12 new articles per day. I think rather than spend 9 grand a month to double my posts, I'd rather pay my existing contributors who do it for free to stay on. I mean a couple grand would pay them and they'd be happy since they're doing it now for the sheer drive of the cause. I was planning on paying for some new writers and introducing pay for my existing, but with those rates it makes no sense. i'd be much better off paying 1/3 of that in advertising and bringing in more readers. Like I said it depends on the model. Wheras I'm not starting out fresh I'm a little more fortunate in having the options. I just redesigned my site and it's set up as a news format now instead of a blog. That's already bringing more readership which is what I hoped. But going in to do something I've never done before (pay for writers) I had no idea what the rate would be.
Why, you're welcome InternetAuthor! =) Most of the people you'll find here, will probably write for five, six bucks a blog post, or 1-2 cents a word. Right now, I'm writing at pretty steep prices, because I have a certain amount of living I would like to do outside of working for peanuts. =P
LOL - Isn't that the truth? There are all manners of bloggers out there. Some are cheap and some are not. The quality of the material is on the same scale...it's up to a webmaster to decide what he wants and what his site needs. Not all sites need top notch writing.
In one way "Internetauthor" is right. Afterall the webmasters will decide the quality of content they would like to come on their websites.Webmasters have to take care of several other business aspects at the same time.Compromising on the quality terms though affects the quality of the site ultimately and webmasters who understand this prefer paying respectable prices.Writers afterall help them earning good revenue.
Writers love volume and reliability. If you can give a writer both, then he or she will lower their price per word.
I am so anti-Hillary Clinton that I'd be happy to supply you with 1 post a day for a week. I would be happy to talk about her horrible healthcare plan and some of her other policies that are destined to be worse for America. Email or PM me if you want to discuss further.
Network with other bloggers in your niche, and get them to post guest articles on your blog. This will give them exposure, and give you free content. Also, you will build a relationship this way. And they will tend to want to reciprocate, which will allwo you to post on THEIR blogs... and piggy back on their traffic. When you have competition, it is best to befriend them and share the wealth.