...I am looking for *good* writers that are cheap. Hey, there's nothing like being honest! Now before you tell me "you get what you pay for", I do accept that. However, that said, I know there are good people out there that are prepared to work for, shall we say, more competitive rates. Some of them are already working for me. My situation is such that I have around 100 projects for which I need content, and each project can cost me up to an absolute maximum of $10,000. If I can use the services of good people in India, it's not impossible to be able to get rates at a half or a third of these prices, or potentially even less. Across 100 projects, this represents an enormous saving for my business and allows us to complete the work more quickly. However, I have tried India, Thailand, Pakistan, etc. and my problem so far has been finding good quality writers in those countries. I would be more than happy to pay these people above the usual wage for their country, as this could still represent a significant saving for me when compared with hiring someone in Europe or the US, but my problem to date has been finding good writers. They either a) try to shaft me by plagiarising... (that guy got the boot pretty quickly!) , or b) (and more normally) just don't have the quality that I'm looking for, and tend to have either grammatical/spelling errors or strange nuances to the way in which they write. Does anyone have any tips on how I might find cheap, good quality content writers? The subject matter is travel-related, by the way. Thanks for any suggestion, Aaron
Not myself at this time, but I have seen that there are many qualified writers around this forum willing to write for reasonable low rates. So you landed in the right place for finding them
We have a new writer that will work for low rates. Look for this member. She is more than willing to write for you. BTW. She's English and living in Australia. Col
That's negotiable, but I have around 100 contracts each worth up to $10,000 (in European/US terms). Each contract can probably be completed in 2-3 months. I'm more concerned - at this stage - about trying to find quality... but without having to spend too much per contract at the same time, because of the sheer volume of work that I have available.
This is like going into McDonald's and asking them to serve you a steak for a cheeseburger price. It's not going to happen.
Thanks for your input, latoya, but I don't think that's a fair analogy. I am talking about two different countries here, each with a very different cost of living. Let's assume I pay the average rate for the work in Europe/the US. In India, I would actually be happy to pay twice the going rate if I could find good quality, and yet that would still present me with a saving. The work I have would cost $1,000,000 if I was to get it all done in Europe/USA. In India, you can usually get rates of 1/3 to 1/4 of Europe. Let's suppose I found someone at 1/3 at the rate and paid them DOUBLE because they were good. If I did that across all the projects, I'd be making a saving of more than $300,000. So please... it's not unreasonable for me to attempt to find savings for my business, when I'm dealing with these kinds of sums. Aaron
Altyfc, you're still not being direct and saying *how much* you are willing to pay to the writer or *how many* words/articles you want from them. You say that you have $10K to spend on 100 projects each, so that's one million dollars. Are you wanting to pay $3K to a writer? For how many words/articles? The devil is in the details. Hell, if you're looking for a good writer, hire me. I just want to know what you're paying, how big the scope of the project is and what you want. To use an analogy, you're going up to a general contractor and telling him that you want a house built but you don't say how many bedrooms you want, if you want a basement, a back yard and so on, just that the guys in India can make you a house for cheaper.
I have no problems being more upfront with costs. Here's the situation: I have 100 projects. Each project is a different website (catering for a different location). For each website, I am looking for 2,500 pieces, where "a piece" consists of 75 words of researched description, contact details, email and web (if applicable), and location. If you wanted to see an example, click here. I hope this gives you sufficient detail but, if you have questions, feel free to ask and I shall do my best to answer them. I already have a number of people in the UK doing this work, and so have about a dozen of the 100 sites already "in progress". (They have worked for me in the past on other, similar projects.) My UK freelancers are paid at the rate of £2 per piece... ie. £5k for 2,500 attractions, which is why I quoted the figure of $10,000. However, I am trying to find people who are able to do this well at a cheaper rate, hence my references to India. Hope this is clearer, Aaron
I have written a few ezine articles and I have a blog where you can read my writing style, I might do it for you...PM me and tell me more...English is my first language and I spent five years traveling the world...maybe I'm your writer... K.
When you start looking at other countries, you run into language differences even with native speakers. Judging by the writing I saw in the English-language press when I was in India, Indian writers have a very different style, and there are some grammar differences, I think. The writing to me seemed rather old-fashioned, formal, and flowery. I'm an American currently in Thailand, and I recently saw someone studying from a book that had an example business letter that started out: "In re yours of the 23rd" No one has written like that in the US for about 100 years. So, if what you are looking for is someone who writes as if they actually were English, I think you might have to stick to the English. You might be able to find an English writer living in a cheaper country that might work for less.
Did you know that London is a capital in which 300 different languages are spoken? And such counting includes numerous British, Celtic, Gaelic, Irish and Scottish dialects deforming English in such way that people often joke about lack of understanding between each other. Nowadays we are facing problems with all languages in all countries around the world, whether you are native or not.
My point was that what you're looking for probably doesn't exist, i.e. someone in India that writes English like someone in the US. This may sound crazy, but it makes more sense to hire a writer from your target audience because such a writer will have a better understading of what your readers are looking for. From what you've described, Indians aren't your target audience. Your best bet is to make a firm decision on what's important to you, saving money or having quality content, and then take action based on that. If it's money that's most important, then why not hire the lower cost writers then proofread and edit the articles yourself? If it's quality that's most important, then pay the extra cost to for a quality writer. Think about how you can make the monetary benefit of quality content outweigh the cost. On a project of this size, there are far more ways to cut your costs... Can you possibly restructure the projects so that it results in fewer articles being written? For example if each project contains 1,000 articles @ $10 each, decrease it to 750 articles and you save $2500 per project. Or decrease the number of projects from 100 to 75 and you can get the same savings. Is something like that possible with this project?
Something else you have to keep in mind is the reverse of what most people like to say... people like to say prices are low because of global competition, and those in India, China, etc. will work for less. However, there are writers there who can in fact speak and write in fluent conversational English, and they make or charge just as much as their US / UK / etc. counterparts do, because frankly, they can. If anything, they're in high demand for their ability to give a world perspective in many publications, without heavy need for editing. They don't need to work for pennies, and they won't. They're vying for the same contract work as native English-speaking writers, and if they can earn more and live like "kings" because of their cost of living, then they'll either do that, or they don't have an ounce of business sense in them. Rates for any quality writer (no matter where they're located) are going to be based on their own target markets in the sense of what clients they want to work for. Those targeting US publications (not talking small webmasters w/o a budget for content), will charge rates accordingly, but might work for less locally, because of the financial backing of the clients there. It's all in who they choose to work for, and what kind of quality they can offer. You'll still pay more for quality content. If you want dirt cheap, you run a bigger risk of getting lousy work.
Hello stilloutthere... your post makes a lot of sense, thank you, and re-enforces my experiences to date.
OK... understood. Quality is probably ultimately what's most important but at the same time I have to keep costs in mind obviously. Perhaps I'm trying to 'have my cake and eat it' but I feel sure there must be some people out there who I would be happy to have do the work, and who would be happy to do it at a fraction of current costs. It's finding them that I'm stuck with. Those are possible, but I'd rather not. Ultimately it'll just mean I stand to make less from them. ie. I would save money on the content creation but I would also earn less as a result of producing less content. Decisions, decisions...
I think that right from the beginning, with a demand formulated like this, your chances to find such a writer, who is *cheap* run very low. Anyway, I hope you will eventually find the person you are in search of.
Smart writers know when their writing can make you money, and they'll charge accordingly... so admitting outright that you basically "could" alter the scope of the project to pay decent rates, but won't b/c you want a higher return isn't going to score brownie points with any writer. If anything, it says that if you're going to make more, you'd better be willing to pay more. Pricing is very often value-based (why copywriters can charge hundreds and thousands per page. That's a good point Turbulence.... "Good" writers aren't generally going to associate the word "cheap" with their work - a word that speaks as much, if not more, to quality than price. "Inexpensive," "affordable," etc. would be better choices if you advertise elsewhere for writers. If you want "cheap" writers, you'll get "cheap" work.
To clarify, I'm seeking good writers, but as inexpensively as I can. As I said in my post, I appreciate that you get what you pay for. The same is true with most things in life. But there are countless exceptions... for example, I could buy a white Bosch WAE24162 washing machine from Roy Waring Appliances and it would apparently (according to pricerunner) cost me £879. Alternatively, I could buy exactly the same product from Tesco Electrical for £233.82 inc. delivery. I suppose what I'm saying is that, whilst there will be differences in quality with different prices, it is also possible to find the same quality at a lower price if you look around. I don't think there's anything wrong in me trying to find good value. Regarding "getting a higher return", it's more a case of trying to get a return more quickly. For this particular venture, we don't expect to see any return for possibly up to 3 years, and simply would like to see returns happen more quickly. I'm just trying to run my business as efficiently and effectively as I can, that's all.