So my websites are doing ok, they are starting to make adsense money and my affiliate program sites are doing well, and it all came from writing and submitting articles. With each article my backlinks grow, and I'm getting more and more visitors with each article. My question to the community is as follows, I really want to expand faster and get more users, would it be wise for me to pay people to write good articles for my website? What would be a reasonable price to pay people for articles? I figure if a reinvest my adsense money and affiliate money into my websites by letting others write them it will pay off even faster as my site will gain more popularity over time, and content will always be added. Your Thoughts are appreciated.
Setting aside the vendor personna for a minute since that is what we do Before I founded Article Authors, I utilized paid writers to build several of my niche sites. I found that it worked best I when i provided them with an overview structure of what I was trying to accomplish, the keyword density, and the direction of each of the articles. At first, I just told them- "Give me 10 articles on Razors..anything and everything!" Then i got more saavy about what I was asking for and thought from the visitors point of view. What information about Razors would they be looking for online? How can my writers get that point across and direct the visitor around the site. Therein lies the key, in my opinion.
Basically time is money, there will come a time where it’s not cost effective for you to write your own articles. You have to give your own time an hourly rate, as your time becomes more valuable your rate will go up. At some point it will make more sense to pay someone to create your articles for you since it would costly for you to do it yourself. I do this for web design, content development, web development, etc. I figure out how much time it would take me (estimate), then see how much it is to outsource it. If it’s cheaper to outsource it then what I would charge myself, I will outsource. Its also nice to get different perspective’s and different writing styles, that and I couldn’t write myself out of a wet paper bag.
A "reasonable" amount of payment depends on many factors including the quality of the writing, location of the writer, and if you are dealing with an amateur or a pro. For many, $3-$7 per article is fantastic. And that is what many people will pay. And many writers will be happy with that. For me, I won't proofread an article for $7 let alone write one. If I have free time I might write a 400 word piece for $30 but even that is pushing it on the low end. So whatever your budget, there is someone who will be willing to write for it. Heck, if you are really greedy and don't value the writing industry then you can even find someone to do it for free.
You may want to consider "accepting" free articles. Depending on your subject, people often will volunteer to write to build their own credibility and to become visible in a community. I started this way doing Flash tutorials for free 5 years ago. I get paid to write now but writing those first articles got me on the map. Quality is always an issue so you'll have to filter the inquiries. Just a thought.
Absolutely. It all depends on what kind of articles you're looking for. Submitting articles is a great way to gain links and traffics (it's pretty much how we've done it), but you also need to think carefully about the way these articles will portray your business. I'd love to see an end to the $3 article industry, but I don't see it happening anytime soon...
I think you get what you pay for. Being a part of the article selling industry I see what goes for $3 and what goes for $80. The difference in quality is dramatic and we don’t even allow people to request such inexpensive articles. It lowers the quality of our business, which we can’t have.
I never tried buying content, but I know a site that I picked up just incase http://www.affordable-content.com/
Good stuff! I prefer to write my own sometimes. But that can be time consuming when you have 10+ blog sites I'll be glad to write an article for 20 dollars an hour. Dirt cheap if you ask me. You should see what I charge for writing documentation for software applications You could post messages at student unions at colleges...give some bait to english writing majors: free beer and pizza. Those kids will certainly write for that! hehe