How many articles does a writer normally writes in a day??

Depends on many things like articles' length, the writer's knowledge about the topic and from my experience it typically takes about an hour to complete a good article.
I guess 5-6 articles per day is normal for good writers. I know guys who write 10-15 articles, but usually the quality is not very good.

 

I guess, in truth, it all boils down to the writer. Today's so-called journalists are no longer writing what happened. Everything is about spin, CYA and being first to press.

Newspapers have done themselves no favors. "Just the facts" has degraded to "just the facts that match the political or social agenda of our publishers." People are tired of it. Why put up with headlines of 90% Increase in Home Sales when the truth can easily be seen by simply driving around our own neighborhoods? Journalists have sold their souls. Sadly, they have little choice if they want to keep their jobs.

How many of the folks here talking of writing a piece in 30-60 minutes are likely to pick up the phone or dig deeper than Wikipedia. A group of writers, who once hung around here, proclaimed they wrote wonderful stuff. Their sources? Ezine articles and Wikipedia. They dug no deeper than that. Most of them blithely admitted to simply rewriting what they found. Others extolled the profit in spinning/rewriting those same articles to sell to someone else or use them for article marketing.

Some of us do pick up the telephone and call someone to clarify a point. However, the depth of information online makes it rarely necessary. Between Google Books, Gutenberg, the open textbook initiatives, thesis repositories, lecture notes, trade journals and a whole host of other freely accessible materials; it's easier than ever to access true primary source information. Membership only information may give the SME a slight edge but the information can often be gleamed from secondary sources anyway.

A good researcher can easily write a piece equal to one written by an expert.

If a writer is more worried about becoming a production factory, they aren't going to dig into a 150-year-old book to read what Manet actually said about another artist. They're not going to question using words like only, always, never, largest, most, etc. in sales materials. They're not going to call a national park office to ask when the elk are easiest to spot. They will simply go to Wikipedia and rewrite what they find.

Problem is that the marketplace is driving more and more writers to turn themselves into production factories. The question of volume is not a new one here. I cringe when I see them. The writers who participate in the "I write faster than you" contest just don't seem to realize what they are doing to their own business. If someone can write, or thinks they can write, a piece in 30 minutes, why should anyone pay them more than a few dollars an article? Any writer could whip out a piece or two in that time frame but it would just include information they've already written for someone else. Again, why should anyone pay very much for that?

 

People go to school for years to get enough knowledge to be proficient in certain subjects you just cannot match that or compete with that but doing a few hours of "research" they have done years of research and they are way ahead.

Many of the good articles I have read the writers spend a week, a month maybe more wandering around talking to people, requesting documents from various public entitles, going though records in the basements of old building, etc like writers and reporters used to do. You just cannot do that type of stuff from a crossed the country on the Internet.

You find info on the Internet and it is already on the net you are just gathering it and human spinning it. The Internet needs fresh material and info or it just becomes the same old stuff spun 10001 times. People who read and study a subject on the Internet recognize new stuff and they will read longer and link to it and SEs recognize this.

I think most writers would be a lot more valuable if they stuck to subjects they have real knowledge in. Then they can put new info into the Internet and it is worth more then the old info respun.

If someone tells me they need to be paid to do research I will just hire the guy who has already invested years of study into the subject and pay them what they are worth. Writing is a very common skill most of the population can write some can write better then others but you need to specialize in something or you are just your average writer.
I know I have heard the same mantra over the years here on DP "I only write for big money" "I am the Best..!!" but in reality it is a flooded market there are tons of the "Best!!" copywriters. Unless you have a niche you are swimming in a very crowded pool with many low bidders.

 

Are we now talking about scholarly research papers now or website content and sales copy? - Of course, the scholar or SME has the edge in producing a scholarly work, but are they capable of writing at a level for the intended audience or just for their peers?

Are you saying that only someone who has spent years studying a topic is capable of producing material that has a new approach or presents new facts?

The problem for a copywriter, who specializes in a particular niche, is a built in conflict of interest. How long before they give one client information another one paid for? Do they withhold information from the second client to protect the interests' of the first?

When I started, I had thought about specializing in the real estate market. When I started in 2002, most Realtor websites did not link to the MLS system and offered very little information - at least in my local market. My first client saw the change in her business as did the entire community. She wanted to help me find more work. She also didn't want to lose the competitive edge she was enjoying from my efforts.

It would obviously hurt her business if I took on a second client. Where's the limit? One client per city? One per county? One per region? or maybe one per state? Would someone selling vacation condos in Florida consider it a conflict of interest for me to represent a Realtor in North Carolina also selling beach-front vacation condos?

What happens when the niche is a much smaller than real estate? How long before one client would sue me for sharing trade secrets with another client?

I worked with a client who had a number of patents for these high tech coatings for their floors. They thought being the only company offering their patented coatings was their USP. They had white papers from their scientists and engineers on their site. Even with my two years of college chemistry, I understood very little of it. How many folks buying their floors do you suspect cared that their coating was made with polymer X or polymer Y? The company's experts, who had written the material on their site, were missing the entire point of having the website in the first place - to sell floors.

Want to impress your industry or the scientific community? Submit that stuff to the trade journals. Want to convince people to buy your floors? Talk about durability. Talk about guarantees. Talk about why customers continue to trust you with all of their flooring needs. Include the white papers for those who do know about polymers but focus on what customers want to know.

Those scholarly papers on polymers were not helping to sell their product. They may have been truly revolutionary but they alone weren't going to keep the lights on. You're right. I could never have written those white papers. But, their experts obviously couldn't write informative case studies and sales copy either. Which written material is worth more?

I guess after a lot of words between us, my thinking is sometimes you need a skilled researcher and writer or copywriter. Copywriting is about so much more than simply knowing the science behind floor coatings, the 'in' neighborhoods or finding some long lost archive and sharing it with the world for the first time in 200 years. Someone being introduced to a topic is going to ask questions that too many in the field take for granted, i.e. my FROG example.

Sure, I may have used sources already on the web for one of my art pieces. Sure, that art term was mentioned in a number of articles about the same painting. And yes, I learned what the term meant from Wikipedia. But, none of the other articles or Wikipedia included the definition within the conversation about that painting. With web articles, at least in my mind, it isn't always about being the only one to have a fact but the only one to complete the picture or explain it in a way a non-expert would understand.

 

People who buy article usually have an agenda behind them or they would not be spending money on them. If someone wants a Detroit real estate article they will probably want some kind of sales pitch somewhere in there like "homes in this part of town have historically held value" this is copywriting so is "what is the best kind of lasik surgery?"
So you need a real estate article you usually hire a real estate copywriter. I am sure you know copywriting is more then a cover page and generic business sales pitch.

I would not hire a real estate agent to tell me how my car runs just like I would not hire a auto mechanic to tell me where to invest in the housing market.

Most niche copywriters have experience in their fields they were real estate agents, mechanics or whatever, so they don't need to do "research" they can just write a original article without opening 13 webpages that were spun from wiki.

Really it all comes down to what people will pay for.. a general copywriter is pretty easy to find(every copywriter says they are they best, it is their job..). If you can make good money in that field then it works for you; most it does not.
Also so you "research" one subject for this article then do "research" for another subject next week for the next. How deep can you study like that? and how profitable could it be if you have to spend hours of "research" before you write.

 

What of the Realtor who collects and restores classic cars as a hobby? Or the mechanic who is from a family that has made a killing at flipping houses and just works fixing cars because he loves his job?

For my art project, my base of knowledge grows with each article. Granted, the ROI isn't where I'd like it yet. I do probably spend too much time researching but I also see my site starting to grow into a resource rather than just another site posting pretty paintings.

And yes, had I hung out my shingle as a real estate copywriter, I wouldn't have to do as much research from project to project. My experience is in NC real estate but I also have some knowledge about the TX, VA and KY markets. A Canadian real-estate oriented client admitted that my articles were actually teaching him something. You probably wouldn't hire me because I've never been to Detroit, much less been involved with real estate or Realtors there. (I did work with a home builder in your neck of the woods though. He was building homes in a neighboring state and targeting retiring auto workers.) I get it. You want a local expert. Detroit real estate experience trumps copywriting skills in your mind. I'm just suggesting that your approach may not be the only one or even the best one.

Real estate is a business that lives and dies on confidentiality. It would be extremely hard to keep client number 5 as happy as client number 1 and maintain a professional standard of conduct if they were all working in the same region. How many others in the Detroit area have hired the same expert as you have? Are you sure you're getting their A game or are they reserving that for an older client?

There are some advantages to not limiting my efforts to one industry. Information from one project can often lead to greater understanding of another. When I did work for a company that manufactures construction equipment, I never knew that I would later use that knowledge to write about industrial floors for another company. I shocked the flooring guy when I knew how much those machines weighed and whether they were tracked or wheeled. It's not always knowing what polymers are used in a floor coating that matters as much as how people use that floor.


I have found that with each new industry I get to learn about through my clients, the more I build my core knowledge of marketing and writing for the web. I think the biggest difference between a SME and a copywriter is the ability to write materials for all levels of reader and find something new to say that hasn't been already said by the rest of the industry. In a world full of noise, it's not always so easy to turn "homes in this part of town have historically held value" into convincing someone to entrust a particular Realtor to sell that home. Large markets are so full of people shouting "Pick ME, Pick ME, Pick ME" that it becomes increasingly difficult to be heard. It's doubtful a local expert is going to spot an opening and exploit it. After all, if they found a weakness in the market, wouldn't they already be making moves to exploit it?

 

I do agree it is bad to limit your skills, personally I am a jack of many trades.
Right now many real estate folks are unemployed with nothing in the future and no skills to go elsewhere. Same with coders that specialized in codes that are now outdated and outsourced, many of then made good money for a while but now its over.

I guess it is all strategy and what works and what pays. In web design I have to invest lots of time studying keeping up on the latest trends some things I study never pay off and so do. I would never be able to do everything many things you just have to invest too much time in and if you never use them again you basically lost money on that job. So I just study a few things I think will be around and will hopefully be popular for a while.
I invested about 200hours studying Flash and made about $600 off of it, so that’s less then .50 an hour. Flash sucks..lol

I guess it is all what works, but to me I just feel like research off of the Internet cannot compare to real life experience and time proven accumulated learning.

 

I can relate. I started my tech career as a VAX/VMS systems manager. Most of the young pups around here have never heard of those machines, much less used one. Getting email to work between my office in North Carolina and headquarters in Virginia took 10 months, countless calls with tech support and hours spent trying different software and settings. In the end, it came down to changing one setting from a 1 to a zero. Mention writing code in DOS, Assembly, Fortran or COBOL to most of the web wizards and you'll get blank stares or comments like, "That's that old programming stuff, right?" In this industry, perhaps moreso than just about any other, you have to keep learning new things and reinventing yourself or become obsolete.

Never got into Flash. Couldn't be indexed by the search engines and not everyone's machines, for a long time anyway, could view the files. I got lucky with that one. lol. Wish I could say the same thing about FrameMaker. sigh

I agree that real-world experience can frequently trump research. I can remember back when getting a Microsoft certification was all the rage. Problem was their own course materials and the test were WRONG! We had a new hire, with a shiny new certification, who couldn't do anything. He brought his stuff in. What he had been taught didn't work - we tried it. All his book learnin' was useless. Of course, I blame the folks in Redmond for that one rather than the newbie.

Anything I could learn about art via the web and book research could never compare to visiting the Louvre or a cathedral and seeing the works in person. A trained art historian or artist could talk about application of the paint, technique and other sorts of academic stuff. To my mind that stuff takes away from the beauty of the art. I've also found that the experts seem to play follow the leader. If one says a particular artist was only famous because of who SHE was related to, suddenly everyone is talking about her limited skills. Even today, art appears to be considered more of a man's world. Who knew? I'm taking a more historical and positive look at each artist and their work while keeping it family friendly.

I think among the thousands of words we've written to each other, I never mentioned that much of the information I use comes from my clients - those folks who are the experts in the field. They hire me because they can't write, hate to write, don't have the time or tried someone else first and didn't like the results. I suspect most of the real copywriters here would say much the same thing.

Being able to interview folks and get them to dig deep inside and evaluate what they do, why they do it and how they do it better than anyone else is the most important skill any copywriter can have. Not all scholars or writers have that skill. In my mind, without those skills, you can't write truly effective sales copy.

 

YMC, I do appreciate you sharing your insights and the intelligent conversation, which is rare on DP. Many of my comments are directed at writers and copywriters in general and not at you. I know you can write and could handle most any job that needed to be done.
Many copywriters in the industry are bad.. so it has tainted my view of the industry in general. Kinda like SEO guys,

I am not a writer, my writing skills are poor, I do appreciate and can recognize good writing and as a web designer it is something I like to study and learn about because basically writing is the blood and guts of the Internet.

I think on the internet you get so many people that find copywriting something easy to get into, everyone knows how to write and they can read a couple of books or threads and instantly they are a "copywriter" not only that they are "they are best.!!"

A lot of my angle, (which has change a little after some pondering) was that at least some knowledge would separate instant copywriters(and your average junk article) from a decent readable informative article. But I guess you also have to throw talent and skill for actually writing in there also.

It is kind of a balance when I think on it, some really knowledgeable people have great info but they do not know who to present it and a good writer can.

 

Uh oh, don't look now, but I may have converted you a bit. lol. Or did I just wear you out? lol

The people who need to read our conversation will never do so. See how the writing world's version of Name that Tune has virtually ended? It might educate a newbie or two but even that's doubtful.

If you've ever seen system manuals written by a programmer vs manuals written by a tech writer, you'll see perhaps the best example of experts who can't write. There are, like with most things, exceptions to that of course.

So many web services have such a low barrier to entry that it's seen as a great way to make money. We see it here all the time..."I write good for you." "I charge you 50 cents for unique research pass Copyscape". Who couldn't churn out dozens of articles a day if all you do is copy them from somewhere else, slap a new headline on it and proclaim it original work?

Those folks at least provide a warning to anyone hiring them within their sales pitch. It's the web designers who charge clients thousands of dollars only to find their site is useless that drive me crazy. I just love telling a new client that they've been screwed by a self-proclaimed web programmer or an SEO guru. Ironically, they often fire me, rather than admit they made a mistake. So be it. At least I don't have to explain that it's not my writing, but their code that is keeping them from ranking well in the SERPs.

And, their lack of understanding about marketing can take your breathe away. Wouldn't you just want to buy a multi-million dollar home on a beautiful beach where the picture of the beach is a stock photo of beach erosion? The stock site it came from even said it was a picture of beach erosion. lol. Oddly enough, the client kept the folks who did that little gem, but fired me. After, getting them to change the photo though.

And, don't get me started on what I think of most of the "SEO professionals." I often equate SEO services with the electronic version of snake oil.

It's a hard business environment we've chosen for ourselves. Between the thieves, scammers and simply unprepared; much of what we do is educate our customers on the 'right' way to do things online. Personally, I love refugee clients - those folks coming to me after being burned by someone else. I feel bad that someone stole from them but it can make my job easier. Granted, their expectations and demands are usually greater, they are willing to pay more for someone who actually knows what they are doing. They also recognize the value of building a quality site rather than a site built by the lowest bidder.

 

Many people will tell me they can get a website for $199 w/hosting and a logo for $50 I just tell them I hope they don't get sued for the stolen clip art and hopefully the 3rd world hosting lasts more then 30days. Most of the time they glare at me like I am trying to misinform them and make a sale. I really don't care at all.
They set themselves up, personally I think it is funny I have to try not to laugh when they tell me their horror stories.
I used to really despise scammers but after having customers tell me they can get this or that for "so much cheaper" and try to haggle me down to basically nothing. it just makes me think sometimes people reap what they sow.

You can rank first for "handbag" for $100? Logos for $35, Someone will write web content $1 a page? "I can get photos off the for free.." Awesome. good luck, tell me how it goes.(I need a laugh my job is dull until you guys tell me stories)

 

Too funny. Thanks for the laugh. Would leave rep but I have to spread more around first.

 

Forgot about the "rep" thing, I have none.. I sell some to you and a sig link for $2,,lol

Every time I try to answer a question or help someone I soon realize it was just a setup to drop a link or some other petty forum scam. I don't come here to make money, so i don't really care.
I like to give back to the internet because I learn from it. So I usually when I post on DP and want to contribute to a subject I have in mind that someone searching google might come a crossed the thread. Or I am just taking a break from work and want to amuse myself.

 

it depends on if you are producing a master piece or a crap

 

I think it all depends upon the writer and the project requirements as such.

 

Looking at these long replies in this thread, I bet some of you don't have any problems coming up with a lot of articles per day

 

Yowza... lots of opinions on this one.

I agree with the majority that it depends on the writer and the subject matter. I mainly do reviews and "release" articles involving the mobile/tech field, and can easily crank out a 300-500 word article in 30 minutes or less. That being said, I've been doing this day in and day out for 2 years and all my articles have to follow a specific format (always the same) so it's become old hat to me.

If I had to go and write an article about RC planes (something I know nothing about) it would definitely take longer as more research would be involved. I guess it depends on the type of writer you are or want to be. Are you a 'hired gun' that will write for anyone about anything or someone that sticks to a certain area. Too many things to factor in to give a solid answer really...

 

Depending on who I'm working for - anywhere from 10 - 100. Smaller it is, the easier it is for me to pound 'em out. The longer something is the harder I find it to write on a topic. But in a typical day I'm doing 5000+ words with everything I'm doing.

 

i am writing 2 or 3 article.

 

wow 100 a day? that's great. I can only do 5,000 words tops per day.