Outsourcing Your Articles... Easier Said Than Done.

[roley]

Its not outsourcing that is the issue.

It comes down to checking your work, dont pay until its checked, pretty simple

That is why outsourcing services provide the escrow option to avoid these issues

[Steve King]

Hi Michael
Sorry to hear about your troubles...I've been fortunate to find a really reliable and high quality writer, it took a fair bit of selection but it was definetly worth the effort.
Thanks for sharing
cheers
Steve

[parker3773]

I know for sure that I'm a better writer than I am an SEO guy and I often ask all of you for that advice on that front. As an article writer, I hope that I'm not one of those people that you are talking about. I have more job offers than I have time and, in fact, I have a waiting list. I'm far from the cheapest charging $15 per 500 word article. I'm not the most expensive but if caring had a price, I would be far more expensive. I only mention that because, as it has been said, there are plenty of people out there who are writing who work hard at giving the best product.

From my perspective, there can be a few problems on the other side. If you are hiring a writer, you need to be specific as to what you want. For example, I have been told that certain articles are being used only for article directories so ground breaking content at a ground breaking price isn't needed because the article probably won't be read anyway. (That doesn't stop me from working hard at the article but that's an example.)

Tell them what you want, give them ample time to complete it, provide feedback, and allow the writer to maximize their time by giving them similiar topics so research can be consolidated as much as possible. Finally, pick your keywords in a way that allows for creativity. "5 ways to save money when eating out" has been done to death and it makes creating original content that will turn heads more difficult.

In short, be a partner in the creation rather than simply a client. Creation is a less than scientific process and it takes all stakeholders to make it great, especially if the writer is new.

I'm happy to say that out of the thousands of articles I've written, only a small few have been returned from an unhappy customer. Not only do I make it right, I write 3 for free to make up for the time they lost. Good writers understand superior customer service.

[Mustafa Khundmiri]

I've had hard time with outsourcing, but then there are a few "gems" out there, you'll need to look real hard to uncover them .. Once you have them working for you, there's no looking back ... So yeah, ain't easy but totally works.

[John Romaine]

If you hire a writer, you should be hiring a proof reader too.

[Cerberus]

I have never had a writer do any work for me without either 100% or having it into escrow.

I will gladly pay you up front next time I need writing done.

Originally Posted by TMG Enterprises

I've posted my first WSO and you wouldn't believe how many people refuse to put a 50% deposit.

[abelacts]

Internet is full of baloney and many so called gurus talk about outsourcing even though they have not tried it. Having problems finding good writers should not be a hindrance to outsourcing your writing. Treat it like finding good employees for your company, you just have to keep looking. I've found a good writer on rentacoder, some here on WF, and also through references. There's no way you can increase productivity without outsourcing.

[dbarnum]

Originally Posted by Michael Ellis

I just wish my fingers were as fast as yours Steven!

This in response to the above and other comments here in this thread:


You don't need lots of time to write your own content. Seriously.
It's a myth that you need to quickly churn out article after article so that you end up having many articles out everywhere everyday for every niche you're in.


Get help, sure, but with a lot of internet marketing - - use the good, solid content with audio, video, in question / answer (FAQs) format, in press release format, etc. instead of focusing on flooding article directories 24/7. And don't neglect social marketing, and I don't mean spamming people with Twitter, etc. I mean really communicate, even here in forum threads.

Seriously.

Slow down and dig in with quality content, and dig in deeper instead of throwing out a handful of grain hoping to sprout a couple plants while the rest is eaten up or blown away. Watch the difference it makes.

[Kendall McGuire]

For quality articles I've been lucky enough to know a few people who were naturally good writer's and I then just needed to train them on the SEO aspects of article writing.

In order to keep the information they were writing about fresh I instructed them to research over numerous sources of information absorbing the facts and points of whatever they would be writing about.

Again these people are naturally good writer's of the english language and are able to apply this knowledge into a completely original article of their own.

So I just want to say outsourcing can be great and allow for other marketing ventures to get accomplished as long as you are using writer's worth their 5 or 10 dollars an article.

[SoundsGood]

Originally Posted by Michael Ellis

• Up'ed the price (can't blame them for that)
• Resold my exclusively purchased content as PLR
• Sold my research (keywords and content) to others that created similar websites targeting similar keywords while using some of my purchased content
• Created similar articles for themselves based off of my purchased articles and submitted them to article directories

...writers had basically taken articles from elsewhere, and just changed the wording enough to pass copyscape.

Now, I advertise for 100% unique content. I also specify that I will check using Copyscape. So, I'm feeling a little cheated right now.

Ouch. This is a timely thread for me... I was just about to look for writers to hire, and I was going to specify that I wanted "100% unique content that passes Copyscape."

Now what?

[Barry Walls]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

So let's say you buy ten sample articles, and ninety percent of them suck. [/size]Then you pay the one decent writer a hundred bucks for ten articles, and when you go over them, you find that one of them is crap you can't use. So you've paid $200 for ten usable articles, or $20 an article - plus you've had to examine 21 articles, for let's say ten minutes each. That's two and a half hours.

If your time is worth at least $40 an hour, that's another $100, for a grand total of $300... and you may as well have hired the $30 writer! Not to mention he probably would have delivered faster!

You pay for what you get. What you don't pay in cash, you'll pay in time, effort, and aggravation.

Couldnt have said it better myself.

IM'ers who have poor businesses which cannot generate enough income from articles cannot afford to pay rates which decent writers will demand...and at which they will fill their diaries.

This pushes them further and further down teh totem pole of writing/professional quality.

Address this issue by working to make your articles earn you more money....then you get a virtuous upward circle, instead of a vicious downward circle.

All the best

Barry

[Gabe77]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

So let's say you buy ten sample articles, and ninety percent of them suck. [/size]Then you pay the one decent writer a hundred bucks for ten articles, and when you go over them, you find that one of them is crap you can't use. So you've paid $200 for ten usable articles, or $20 an article - plus you've had to examine 21 articles, for let's say ten minutes each. That's two and a half hours.

If your time is worth at least $40 an hour, that's another $100, for a grand total of $300... and you may as well have hired the $30 writer! Not to mention he probably would have delivered faster!

You pay for what you get. What you don't pay in cash, you'll pay in time, effort, and aggravation.

This makes a lot of sense. Penny-pinching marketers think that they've saved money by paying cheap but in the end, they end up paying more.

[Michael Ellis]

Originally Posted by Barry Walls

IM'ers who have poor businesses which cannot generate enough income from articles cannot afford to pay rates which decent writers will demand...and at which they will fill their diaries.

Ahh, yes, it's that simple, isn't it? And let me guess, you can provide me those great quality articles, right?

Look, perhaps you have no idea, but there are very lucrative business models that exist where you cannot invest $30+ per article. Let me put it another way, would you put a $2000 paint job on a car that you're going to sell for $1000? Maybe you would. I don't know.

The articles I purchase on the cheap are not intended to be super high quality award winning articles. Going back to my paint job example, I'm looking for a $400 Maaco paint job, not the $2000 one with flames. I just want them to be original, readable and semi-interesting. Should I pay $30+ for that?

But let's talk quality and price...

The fact of the matter is, you can find someone that writes high quality articles for $10 and someone that writes junk for $30, and of course, vise versa. In fact, one of the best writers I ever had wrote for a measly $8 an article, and yes, I'm comparing her to my high paid writers as well.

There are quality writers in the low end range, you just have to look a WHOLE lot harder for the good low-cost writers. (Once you find them, hold on to them, and don't wear them out like I do.)

Sure, you have to weigh your time of looking against your savings when comparing to the bottom line profits, but it is still very workable, especially for what I do.

It's true, I go through about 9 writers before I settle on one to write for me on an ongoing basis. These are the lower paid folks. However, that doesn't mean that I hire every Tom, Dick or Marry that comes around charging $50 per article. Sure, I usually sift through fewer high cost writers before I find one to use, but let's not forget these folks charge 3-5 times more.

Here's the thing, for me anyway...

To someone buying 40 or less articles per month, they should have NO problem finding a quality writer for lower cost (around $10 per article). At least that's been my experience. However, I usually request 500 - 1000 articles per month. It gets tricky in that volume because I'm usually dealing with numerous new writers each month.

Bottom line -

Low cost writers don't *usually* produce the high quality that the higher paid writers do, but that doesn't mean you can't find very high quality at low cost, it just takes more time, and the more articles you need, the bigger the problem it becomes.

High-cost writers don't always fit the business model. And no, that doesn't mean it's a "poor" business model... Well, the again, it may be a poor business model to a high paid writer, since they are not being used.

And lastly, just because you're a writer that charges a higher price (and you oppose IM'ers using low-cost writers), it doesn’t make you a quality writer in the least.

Take care,

Mike