I stink at writing, my english or grammar skills are very poor, and that alone would take away a lot from my articles. Plus I have an awful time at coming up with info to say about anything. Have you tried guru.com or other services, or do you all write your own articles ?
I use DP members, serenity & lrrupert for my articles, both do an excellent job. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=26689 They are both reasonablly priced and produce excellent content and you can keep the money in the familly so to speak.
You'd be surprised how easy it is once you sit down and put your mind to it. Just go out and pick up a few magazines or books as resources - that's the easiest way IMO. I've also used serenity, lrrupert, and articlesandcontent.com and they've all been great, but I see that as a supplemental effort to my own writing.
Bluegill_catcher Your post was well written Depending on your audience, polished writing skills may not be required. For some of my sites it is more important to give the readers a feeling that I have been in their situation and understand where they are coming from. The directions I provide need to be clear and understandable but not necessarily polished from a writing standpoint. You have no doubt seen the advice to write about a subject you know about. That sounds obvious, but I find that I frequently don't realize how much I know about a subject. I think I am just "messing around" with something but in reality that means I know a lot more than many. For example, I am not a serious Ebay seller. However, one day it occurred to me that I do have 250 feedbacks and that means I have bought a variety of things, sold a variety of things, learned something about packing and shipping, been conned by sellers, had the "joy" of trying to get the USPS to pay up for an insurance claim etc. For someone new to Ebay that is all valuable information. My son-in-law buys car parts there. He doesn't think he knows much about old cars so I have had no luck getting him to write anything for the web. However, I listen to him talk about which part from one make will fit into a different make and KNOW there are potential readers who would love to learn from him. Even knowing nothing about you, I have to think there are content areas where you are under estimating your expertise. Paul
i have hired several people to write articles off of guru , and a couple from here both have been good
I just recently contracted lrrupert to write some articles for me. They were well written and quickly delivered. I plan on getting more done in the future. I have no problems recomending her again. While I can and have written articles myself, I feel my time is better spent on other areas. The cost per article is very reasonable, I typically request 300-400 words and then pay $0.03 per word. When you take into account the time needed to research the article, and then write something reasonable about it, those prices are cheap!
I never had much trouble writing. (I know, you woudln't know it from my crappy posts, but 'tis true.) Of course I've been writing since High School, through college, and past. I wrote everything on my site (about one or two articles a week) while in college. About three years later, started letting other people write for the site. Notice the important word ther: "LETTING". The site became good enough that people WANTED to write for it for free. If your site is good/quality enough, you can have your pick of good writers for your topic.
I personally write all my own articles for my parenting blog. Although I have not written in a while. I do really enjoy writing, I wont say that I have polished skills but I enjoy it none the less!
I write my own articles, but I'm a copywriter by trade, so I would say that The problem I have now is that I spend so much time writing for other people that I quite often don't have enough energy to actually sit down and write articles for my own sites. I've occassionally outsourced article writing to members of my own site, but I tend to be a little bit of a control freak: when I put something onto the site, I like to have written it myself!
I think it's better to get it written by a freelancer writer if you're not confident on your own writing.
Honestly, I set up some google alerts so that I get the latest news and articles emailed to me, then I write my articles from them. www news google com / alerts
I love writing myself as well. The new website that I'm in the process of re-designing, is entirely written by me. With every article/content I write, I learn new things...
I write for myself and others, ghostwrite and coach others to write. If you speak reasonably well, it's pretty easy to write well enough for the web. One of my sites, www.aboutfreelancewriting.com has a ton of stuff about writing and how to do it... all for free. Anne Wayman
I try to write for myself as far as possible. At the moment though I don't get much time doing much beyond trying to promote my site, which takes a huge chunk out of time.
I actually started up a new site, employing roughly 40 or so writers to help webmasters in their pursuit of new, original content..but that being said, this is what I generally recommend. Granted, it is a paid, low cost solution (ok, sales guy mode off..) If English IS your first language, try developing your own content. Dedicate 1 or 2 days a week and put your mind down on paper. You'll find that by the months end, you'll have enough thoughts put down to add a couple of new pages to add to your site. I found that to be the easiest and cheapest solution in the long run. Some of us do have sites that we enjoy developing, so it only makes sense to keep reinvesting our thoughts in energies into new, original content.