Why do people prefer cheap content?

My best writer is charging me six times as much as my least expensive writer, and I'm paying it.

Cost and quality are linked, in the long term. Writers who produce low-quality content can only continue to get work if they provide content at a low cost. Writers who produce high-quality content can demand higher rates, and get them.

 

If someone only has a $100 budget he shouldn't be trying to manage 100 domains. The fact that he's trying to fill all 100 with content at the same time just shows that he's terrible at planning.

Even with a business model like the one you mentioned, all the domains don't have to be filled with content at the same time. Using that $100 to monetize just one site then using the return on investment to fund the other sites, will produce much better results.

My take on why people prefer cheap content is because in a lot of instances they're trying to get something for next to nothing. I'd be interested to know how many webmasters have been successful using cheap content on their sites.

 

No way. It's just as absurd to say quality never determines price as it is to say quality always determines price. Anyone who believes either of those things is cheating themselves. If anyone really believes the only place to find quality content is on free or super-cheap sites, their competitor has better content.

There are people who buy expensive, quality camera systems, and start doing weddings at bargain-basement prices. Some of them have natural talent, and produce better stuff than seasoned pros, at 1/10th the price. But pretty soon they tend to get burned out, and either raise their prices, or go back to having a day job.

You can find a lot of quality free content if you have enough time to look for it. There are all kinds of reasons; usually the person making the content is using it as "linkbait." But human nature and entropy suggest that people who can produce quality stuff are at a competitive advantage, and sooner or later they'll want to capatilize on it.

 

Price not related to quality, I get good quality for low price but you have to search.

Cost of living related to the price you charge, if you can live well for $5 a day and make 5 articles at $5 each a day, get the picture.

 

The VAST majority of the time, yes, price is very much related to quality. But as I've mentioned before (I believe in this thread), the fact of the matter is that most webmasters wouldn't know really great content if they saw it. When they say something is "high quality," it's generally just because it fits their needs, even if the writing is honestly crap... and most wouldn't know the difference. Sure, there are a couple of great writers who charge very low rates. But that's just evidence of their lack of basic business sense, and frankly they won't last long. They'll either run themselves into the ground b/c they'll wear themselves out writing so much for not enough to really get by, or they'll eventually wise up and start acting like the self-respecting professional in the industry that they want to be. That's the key to being a professional... charging what you're worth and being able to market your work and yourself effectively to keep clients at that level coming in regularly. But like I said, the vast majority of the time, the cheap content isn't high quality... the buyer just doesn't know the difference.

 

I used to write for really cheap prices when I started out. But now I prefer to write for myself free of cost. It drives traffic to my website and helps me procure more deals.

I write for someone else only if I feel that he is paying me the worth of the content I write and the time I spend on the job. Otherwise, the material can just be used for self-promotion.

 

I guess in a situation like the one above, what we do see is an entrepreneur who, by no doubts, thinks short run.
I am almost sure he won't even begin monetizing at all, since a piece of $1 piece of writing would very rarely be persuasive enough to grab serious attention.

 

In which case you are raising your cost, because your cost includes both the purchase price of the articles and the time you spent purchasing the articles.

 

Lets not get into the economics of it.

 

Exactly! And it won't be too long before the webmaster abandons that idea because it didn't work and moves on to yet another short-sighted venture lol

 

Yep, thats how it goes it seems.

 

It depends on the audience, and the advertisers.

The audience and the advertisers in the New York Times for example, expect authoritative, quality content. They're prepared to pay for it.

Someone setting up a niche Web site on arthritis remedies may want good content, but since he doesn't have a big budget, he can't afford to pay much.

That doesn't mean he wants cheap - he prefers good, but he settles for what he can get.

It's horses for courses, to coin a cliche.

Cheers

Angela

 

Hello, Angela,

I stand by your opinion and still I have to disagree with you to a certain extent.

In my opinion a much better solution for a low-budget entrepreneur is to get not much but quality content. Having some low-class writing is not a recommended start of any initiative...

Have the best of your day

 

if we look from a different point of view and raise the question "why do people prefer cheap content?" we will actually derive the answer from the word "prefer". This is not a must thing. They prefer it, though they can afford themselves an expensive one, just because the cheap content is in most cases read by the vast majority of people. Cheap content is in some cases considered to be written in plain language. This is so, because entrepreneurs want to focus on the average reader who is not bother in most cases to read content with many professional terms and expressions. The common person searches for lets say a specific thing that he or she doesn't know of. In response the user expects a plain definition or explanation. Maybe that's why people prefer the cheap content, cause the cheap one is plain and easy to comprehend.

 

I disagree with that a good deal. Cheap content isn't generally written in plain English, but rather broken English. It's not read (and certainly not often re-read) by the majority of site visitors. Instead, low quality content drives them away, and the hope is that they'll leave via an ad.

It's the higher quality writers that know how to write for various target markets, and who can tailor their English to fit each audience. The low quality writing is more often than not just a copy/paste job of plagiarized content that's been reorganized or rewritten a bit thinking that's enough to stop violating copyright laws when it's not (although not always) - it's not generally the quality article written for an average reader, which gets natural bookmarks and backlinks.

 

You've said it all, Jenn.

Plain English and broken English do not appear to be synonymous, that is for sure.

 

Generally speaking you are right, but the devil is in the details. You are speaking of these illusive cheap writers the same way my grandpa used to talk about constructions. Everybody enjoyed listening to him, but nobody ever followed his advice. Why? Because he always proclaimed the superiority of wood versus stone. What is wrong with that? He was involved in the frigging lumber business.

In other words the objectivity of your replies is somewhat questionable.

Regards, George

 

How can a simple fact be questionable? I'd agree with you if I marketed my services to the same market, and were vying for their business. I'm not. I don't generally advertise content writing here, and turn down almost every request I receive for it, because I don't negotiate my rates. They're in the link in my sig, and that's that. People either like it or they don't, and I don't go looking for content work. These $5 writers aren't my competition in the slightest, and I have no reason to be biased. They're not affecting my work directly. It's not like I criticize them for the sake of being a jerk. It's constructive, and I've had quite a few follow my lead to start earning more. The truth basically sucks for most of them, and it's up to them whether they learn and improve, both the quality of their work and the quality of life they can earn from their work, or whether they choose to take offense. Constructive criticism is a huge part of being a writer, and those that can't take it won't ever cut it. As far as the buyer side of things go, I'm also a business owner and site owner, and understand their motivations. But from a business perspective, it's short-sighted and would very very rarely lead to the best long-term business model. There's a reason why a lot of startups go that route, and why the vast majority of new online businesses won't make it past their first year or two... they don't put in the forethought and business planning to understand anything beyond a quick buck (not all, but again, it would be pretty hard to argue that of all of the webmasters out there, the majority are going about their business in a smart way). So I'm not quite sure how my objectivity can be questioned on a pretty basic fact. It's not even debatable. The very vast majority of cheap content is extremely poorly written. That's just a fact of life in the content writing world.

 

Fair enough. You do not get your content writing gigs here. The fact you proclaim as accurate though is downright offensive. In a broader sense you attack every writer who was not fortunate enough to be born in the Anglo-Saxon world and thus you do attack your competition.

Also putting the equal sign between quality writing and marketing skills reveals a school of thought that I cannot agree with. No writer, regardless of his or hers talent (and this comes as a general rule) can land good paying gigs at the beginning of the career, especially when English is not the native language. Boasting this wrongheaded superiority complex is not the way to prove your point. If you want to show me that cheap writers deliver poor quality, give some examples before proclaiming it as fact.

Please don't take this as a personal offense, but please stop thinking of the non Anglo-Saxon world as being a huge pile of dung.

Regards, George

 

I imagine that any native English language writer would have similar difficulties marketing their writing in Hindi or Romanian.

Do you really want some examples of bad writing?

Here are some actual article submissions I have received recently:

Clearly, a portion of this writers difficulty comes from being ESL (English as a Second Language).

That being said, however, I should point out that my best writer at the current time is Portuguese.

Of course, he charges me like he's a native English speaker -- because he can. And I pay it, because working with him is a lot less time consuming than working with the less expensive writers. Time is money!