Note: Never hire a cheap article writer!

[Prashant_W]

i've never (ok maybe i have... but still!) felt so damn frustrated before!

i'd ordered a bunch of articles from this cheap article writer. first 10 were surprisingly alright. minimal edits. i thought, wow. great friggin deal!

NOT

i'm so pissed off at the quality of the 2nd bunch of articles. i ordered 20 this time. they suck so bad!

turn around time was fantastic. 3 days i think. i'm sick of editing them though, to have them make any remote sense!

i'll admit, i paid $2 a pop. he has pretty good reviews too!

i've no idea why these customers are so happy though.

i know for sure, i'm just gonna stick to doing my own writing for now. until i find some one who can actually string sentences that make sense!

sorry, just had to let off some steam.

f******************************k!!

ps: people, don't fall into the "cheap article writer" trap. there is no such thing as a good cheap article writer. trust me!

[Marhelper]

Yep, you get what you pay for.

[Mary Gallivan]

Hi

I feel for you - it's happened me before. First batch turn out good, order more and get rubbish.

In the end I was so fed up with trying different writers I decided to write my own and set up in business doing so.

It can take as long to re-write a badly written article as it does to write one yourself from scratch.

Mary

[chrisgarrett]

Cheap
Fast
Good

Pick two

(Added: A couple of people have taken this to mean I am offering cheap writing services, sorry to disappoint but no, my comment was about writers in general and not about me specifically )

[BrandonIM]

chrisgarrett - When it comes to article writing, it's more like pick one...

I'd rather pay someone $20 for 500 words that take two days to get to my desk than $5 for 700 words when I KNOW that $20 is going to make me $100. That $5 article might be 1000 words and get there in 2 hours, but it probably won't make me $100.

[AidanKay]

I'm not advertising myself, because frankly, I haven't written articles for a few months now.

But, I charged 1c per word. And my articles were of a high standard (compared to other articles charged at 1c per word!).

I'm just trying to say, don't knock all cheap article writers. I did it just until I got photoshop so I could make templates and such. I made my prices cheaper so I could get more sales, it didn't reflect my quality.

Guess the moral of the story is.. well I dunno, but somehting along the lines of - cheap doesn't always mean nasty. The author could just be desperate :P.

Cheers,

-Aidan.

[edmltw]

Here's an article writer that charges a promotional rate of $0.0125 per word till the end of October. My usual rates are like $0.0175.. Only flaw about me is, I could only afford to write 2~3 quality 500 words articles a day. That's my limit. If you are interested shoot me a PM and we'll work out a deal. Oh, so far with my new technique of writing, I have gotten 100% of my articles accepted by Ezinearticles.

Have a great day ahead!

Edmund

[JoeHughes]

Like all these out sourced item's its trial and error. Don't give up, try someone mid range price wise next time. Once you find a good one stick to them like crazy, if I like their work I normally send them a 10% thank you. If you do this they remember you and will usually put your work to the top of the pile.

[chrisgarrett]

Hey I am not knocking low cost writers, I routinely write for free (and get big rewards doing so). You can see an article about that here:

http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/...e-writing-pay/

[Bev Clement]

Prashie would you write copy for $37? If not, why not? You know why not, as a copywriter so what were you thinking of assuming $2 articles would be high quality.

My articles are high priced, because I factor into the price something a lot of cheap article writers forget, the amount of time it takes to research a subject.

I can write a high quality article in 7 minutes once the research is completed, but many people try and cut off minutes to make a decent living and then the quality and sense are compromised.

[MattSteel]

In my opinion, one should find a quality writer who SPECIALIZES only in writing. True writers actually enjoy the process of research and editing. Good writers know they will never get rich by writing, but are okay with that, too. Not everyone wants to be a billionaire. Some people enjoy just being creative and learning new things by writing. That's why I enjoy it anyway. Chin up!

[ramone_johnny]

Cheap attracts cheap.

Its not the writers fault. Its yours for the way you HIRE.

Follow a strategic hiring process and you wont have this problem at all.

[Damien Roche]

Let's make it clear: you get what you pay for.

If I pay somebody $1 to build me 1000 one-way backlinks...you seriously think I'm going to turn around and complain when I find out they are all from the same link farm?

Oh, and maybe you can string together a passable sentence, but you need to work on your punctuation. There is no way in hell I'd read passed the first sentence of an article if it didn't punctuate one occurrence of 'I'.

Least you should be paying for a 400 word article is $4-5.

[JakeDaly]

Originally Posted by chrisgarrett

Cheap
Fast
Good

Pick two

I choose cheap & good. PM me with your prices. Won't pay more than $1.50 an article.

[Pipinscott]

Well there ya have it...

Ya get what ya pay for...
I wouldn't do that to you...
Are you a nit wit for trying to get good stuff cheap?

Come on folks...we know that there are good bargins available...

Maybe the operative idea here is to limit the risk to your investment. Do a bit more than one testing.

[MattSteel]

Originally Posted by Damien Roche

Let's make it clear: you get what you pay for.

If I pay somebody $1 to build me 1000 one-way backlinks...you seriously think I'm going to turn around and complain when I find out they are all from the same link farm?

Oh, and maybe you can string together a passable sentence, but you need to work on your punctuation. There is no way in hell I'd read passed the first sentence of an article if it didn't punctuate one occurrence of 'I'.

Least you should be paying for a 400 word article is $4-5.

Damien (and others), I am new to this site and am really curious to learn more about "backlinks" and "link farms". Is there a really good source for one to learn how to improve? Thanks!

[Charann Miller]

There is always a price to be paid, time or money and if you go on the cheap you'll end up paying in time with re-writes.

Great writer's will usually charge accordingly and rightly so, it's because they're worth it, they know that your work will be well researched and well executed and that you as the recipient will be able to slap your name on it and sell with it, isn't it worth paying a little extra rather than pulling your hair out with the frustration of re-writing everything?

Don't go cheap and you really do get what you pay for.

[acrasial]

Prashie, why didn't you make it clear in your project, that you would pay ONLY upon each and every article meeting your standards.

My suggestion next time then, with ANY writer that you hire, is to specify in your project that you will not pay for plagiarized content, or content which does not meet your standards for english in BOTH grammar and english, etc...

(some writers get sneaky and try to send you plagiarized content, it may be only a few articles in each batch, but this is something they may do when they are feeling lazy, so always check for this as well before using them.)

Anyone who then accepts your writing project would agree to this, and in turn would understand that any and all articles which have a problem (such as grammar, or spelling mistakes), would be returned to them to fix, without payment...or simply they would not be paid for those articles.

You should also never pay upfront the full price, and if they are asking for some payment, then you may do the 50% thing, but once again, this is at your risk when you haven't even seen the content yet which you are going to use.

This is my suggestion to you, so that way no matter what amount you are paying, you can ensure that your money is still well spent. Even great writers have their days where things just aren't in the flow, so this may work well for you.

At the end of the day it's YOUR project, and if you are getting people to bid on it, they should be meeting YOUR standards then. So that is really would I think you should do and try, and I disagree there are writers who can write good at the price you listed. You just haven't found them yet.

Presumably you are outsourcing, and if so, there are some outsourcing "teams" who have many groups of writers. This is how you can end up with really great articles one time, and really horrible or weird articles the next, because there are different people writing. However, if you find a "good" team, they can be tuned in very well to your needs, especially if you promise them bulk work, as they love to make money this way.

I know of people doing this, and once in a while there are issues, and if so then there are steps taken to prevent the buyer from being ripped off, which were mentioned above. It also helps if you give clear cut details each time, because as mentioned, you never know exactly WHO is going to really get your project if you outsource, as many of the "writers" are actually a team of writers.

Thus, when you do this, make your project clear and concise each and every time as to what you want, the kind of content, etc...so that way there are less misunderstandings in the future. I wish you good luck in finding a quality writer,

Regards,

[DAS_Matt]

Sigh.. cheaper doesn't automatically mean worse and expensive doesn't always mean better. I've paid big bucks for crappy work and cheap rates for great work and everything in between.

Keep in mind that price is a point of competition between competing businesses.

[Amy Harrop]

I don't think you can make a sweeping generalization about price.

I have a very good writer who does 400-500 word articles at $3 each. And I have a very good rewriter who rewrites at $1 each. I never pay upfront either. I went directly to the freelance sites and hired them directly. It took a bit of time to sift through the offers and find a good match, but I've been working with them for several months and have been happy.

So far, I've been more satisfied with the quality of the articles using freelancers, then I have been using an article writing service.

[TommyBussey]

Originally Posted by prashie91

i've no idea why these customers are so happy though.

Those customers were probably SE spammers who don't give a rip about actually providing decent content.

Anyways, I think a great place to hire people who do excellent work is Odesk.

You can actually monitor what your workers are doing because they have to log in to the system while they work in order to receive payment. It is a really cool setup.

Tommy

[AvidAZ]

I had the same experience with an article spinner. The first 10 articles were pretty decent for overseas content, but on the 2nd order, you could barely make sense of a single sentence.

[TelegramSam]

You spent $40 and you want to let off some steam...

Give me a break!

[Jillian Slack]

Usually, I would say, "You get what you pay for," but I can see where there would be situations for a writer to offer their services at a discounted rate.

Maybe he or she is trying to build their portfolio or they are in need of some quick cash.

Inexpensive does not always equal bad quality.

But I am concerned about some of the insanely cheap deals that we see once in a while.

I edit and proofread for small business owners, along with offering my writing services to them, and sometimes they send me really bad articles or ebooks to edit. We've all seen examples of really bad writing posted here and everyone chimes in and makes fun. Well, there are some people out there, calling themselves writers, and selling this terrible work to people who have trusted them to provide well-written content. It's pretty sad.

[1040]

I have found that mostly you a;ways get what you pay for. If it's cheap so is the product.
Brooks

[Emily Meeks]

I can't imagine writing a 500 word article for just $2.

I don't just spit out whatever crap comes to mind. I research the facts and the keywords, then I make sure each idea is conveyed very clearly and smoothly. Depending on research time this can take anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Would you go work in a regular job that just paid $2/hour? I think most immigrant workers get better pay than that.

No one in their right mind would work for that low payrate for any great length of time. If they are willing to charge $2 for the LONG term (not talking about temporary promotions), then something is wrong.

My rates are reasonable. I don't think $10 is bad, at all. It's 1.5x the pay I get at my day job. Not trying to toot my own horn, but I would not work $2/hr for the quality I produce.

[Dennis-White]

well at 2 bucks a pop you cant complain ... I generally get good articles at around 4.00

[radq9]

I had this happen. I wish you could trust the referral.

[Profit-smart]

You get what you pay for!

What you need to do is hire an editor as well, a top notch writer. Offer him 1/2 of what your paying to actually have the articles written. Tell him all you need is someone to fix grammatical errors and the like.

$3 is a bit more, but its still cheaper than $5 or $10 for a top rate writer.

[tferraro11]

It usually goes like this, the price reflects the quality of work you are going to receive in return. It frustrates me when I see warrior's get burnt by cheap dishonest freelancers.

[1960Texan]

I couldn't resist chiming in on this topic...

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. How much would you charge to write a 300 to 500 word article? Your time is valuable, right? Most of the paid for content I've seen is absolute crap. If you believe that content is king, and is an important component of your success, you're either going to have to start writing it yourself or pay the price for well written, professional quality articles.

[Kay King]

I love cheap writers - they send a lot of business my way.

[Roy Carter]

Originally Posted by BrandonIM

chrisgarrett -
I'd rather pay someone $20 for 500 words that take two days to get to my desk than $5 for 700 words when I KNOW that $20 is going to make me $100. That $5 article might be 1000 words and get there in 2 hours, but it probably won't make me $100.

Spot on! Quality counts. There are places like Articles For Affiliates! - The article writing service that delivers the sort of articles that affiliates have been looking for! that are not cheap (I think they charge around $17.00 per 500 word article) but as you say, if that article makes you 5 times your cost (or more) because it's a quality article then it's just common sense.

[TelegramSam]

It's amazing how much people underestimate the value of a PROPERLY researched very well optimised article.

Such an article put onto one's own website which attracts the right traffic can make you a LOT of money.

Don't compare this to having someone bash out a $5 article and then splattering it all over the internet in the hope of making $50.

I have numerous articles that are each responsible for bringing in $xx,xxx's in my niches.

So would I have expected this by paying just $2 per article?

Sam

[nursewriter]

Paying $2 per article is just throwing your money away. The cheap writer needs to take on a ton of work to make any money and the quality of the articles will suffer.

No time will be spent on research and proofreading will not happen.

Think about the psychological aspect. Would you strive to do your best work when you know that you are only getting paid peanuts? No.

Just like you are using articles to make money, any good content writer is writing to make money.

So everyone should steer clear of the cheap content writers if they want quality articles that are actually going to make them a profit.

[Michael Motley]

I've used quite a few writers here. I'll be the first to say that a well written article is gold for marketing.

TMG Enterprises puts out good work. Keyword juicy, well written, worth more than they are asking for. I wont use anyone else.

[seobro]

I agree. When people see poor copy it kills your sales. Hey, you get what you pay for. Would you go to a surgeon that had a sign over his door "Deep Discount Brain Surgery - THIS WEEK ONLY!!! 50% OFF!!!"

It seems like every day I see the Digg effect on digg. and when I click on a site I see this message "Service Temporarily Unavailable - due to high bandwidth use."

A lot of cheap web hosting UNLIMITED plans out there.

[4success53]

Don't pick the cheapest or the highest bidder.

Pick the middle.

That has helped me pick the best article writers.

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by nursewriter

Paying $2 per article is just throwing your money away. The cheap writer needs to take on a ton of work to make any money and the quality of the articles will suffer.

Let me inject some further reality into that.

This past August, I went on a crusade to reduce my time per article to ten minutes. Hey, lots of people can do it in five, right? Surely I can do it in ten. So I said "Today, I am going to write sixty articles."

Fourteen hours later, I was up to 54, and I was just completely wiped. I never managed to get an article done in ten minutes. I was coming in just a little under fifteen, and it wasn't going down.

So I stopped, and I went to bed. When I got up, I looked at those articles... and I would have been embarrassed to send them to anyone. So I spent the next two days going over all those articles and fixing them.

I did the math on that, and reduced my expectations. I find that a high-quality article takes about half an hour. More correctly, I can write about 1,000 words of well-researched and high-quality articles in an hour. And I charge 5 cents a word, so that's about $50 an hour.

Now look at what your article writer charges. How much does he make an hour if he produces an article every half-hour? If that's not a decent wage (for his area - different countries and even different states have different standards of what a "decent" wage is), how many articles an hour does he need to produce to make a decent wage? Can he produce decent quality articles in that quantity?

The general consensus among writers seems to be that 25,000 words a day is the absolute limit of decent-quality articles. The limit on high-quality articles is probably half that. So if your writer has to produce more than 25,000 words a day to make a decent living, the quality is less than decent.

The spanner in the works is writing teams. A writing team obviously multiplies output, but you don't know what the split is. I usually like to do a 60-40 split if I outsource work (which I don't do for writing), with the 60 going to the person actually doing the work. So if I were to outsource writing - which, again, I never do (I have a reputation to uphold) - the actual writer would be getting 3 cents a word, or about $30 an hour. But I could as easily give that writer 1 cent a word, or even half a cent, taking it down to $5 or $10 an hour. You don't know, and most people won't tell you.

In general, I find 2 cents a word or $10 an article to be right around the cutoff for US-based writers. If you go much below that, something is going on - often something perfectly legitimate, like "I need to pay rent" or "I just started and need to build a reputation." But if you can't get a straight answer on why the price is low, be wary.

[adriano9]

Here on the forum you have some cheap writers they have very good writers.
Try them out.

[nursewriter]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

Let me inject some further reality into that.

This past August, I went on a crusade to reduce my time per article to ten minutes. Hey, lots of people can do it in five, right? Surely I can do it in ten. So I said "Today, I am going to write sixty articles."

Fourteen hours later, I was up to 54, and I was just completely wiped. I never managed to get an article done in ten minutes. I was coming in just a little under fifteen, and it wasn't going down.

So I stopped, and I went to bed. When I got up, I looked at those articles... and I would have been embarrassed to send them to anyone. So I spent the next two days going over all those articles and fixing them.

I did the math on that, and reduced my expectations. I find that a high-quality article takes about half an hour. More correctly, I can write about 1,000 words of well-researched and high-quality articles in an hour. And I charge 5 cents a word, so that's about $50 an hour.

Now look at what your article writer charges. How much does he make an hour if he produces an article every half-hour? If that's not a decent wage (for his area - different countries and even different states have different standards of what a "decent" wage is), how many articles an hour does he need to produce to make a decent wage? Can he produce decent quality articles in that quantity?

The general consensus among writers seems to be that 25,000 words a day is the absolute limit of decent-quality articles. The limit on high-quality articles is probably half that. So if your writer has to produce more than 25,000 words a day to make a decent living, the quality is less than decent.

The spanner in the works is writing teams. A writing team obviously multiplies output, but you don't know what the split is. I usually like to do a 60-40 split if I outsource work (which I don't do for writing), with the 60 going to the person actually doing the work. So if I were to outsource writing - which, again, I never do (I have a reputation to uphold) - the actual writer would be getting 3 cents a word, or about $30 an hour. But I could as easily give that writer 1 cent a word, or even half a cent, taking it down to $5 or $10 an hour. You don't know, and most people won't tell you.

In general, I find 2 cents a word or $10 an article to be right around the cutoff for US-based writers. If you go much below that, something is going on - often something perfectly legitimate, like "I need to pay rent" or "I just started and need to build a reputation." But if you can't get a straight answer on why the price is low, be wary.

Excellent post!

I remember when I was starting out I sold my article writing services very cheap. I received tons of orders but I also suffered from massive burn out.

Many people do not realize the amount of thought that goes into writing quality articles. A good content writer will work hard to come up with a unique article for each keyword. This becomes harder when the keywords are almost the same.

After writing for hours and hours I find that my brain goes into shutdown and I have trouble putting a coherent sentence together.

[Rachel Zaouche]

I cant imagine anyone being able to write articles for $2 per 500 words. I research all my articles i.e. I don't rewrite stuff I see online as in fairness it has probably been rewritten 100 times before but also how do you know it is any good?

If you want to pay this level of money buy quality plr and rewrite it - at least you won't need to worry about spelling etc problems.

But I also have seen some articles that people paid $30 for and they weren't great either.

I think it comes down to finding the right person at the right price for both of you. But also personality comes into it as well. Every writer has a certain style. I mean Jane Austin and Charles Dickens were both great authors but they had very different ways with words.

Just my two cents and I am sorry that the original OP had this experience. In fairness the writer agreed to be paid $2 so should not have delivered anything less than readable articles.

Take care

Rach

[Ron Razor]

Great, I just hired a cheap article writer about an hour ago. I really wanted to see if he would do a good job and then order a large batch if he does. Of course now I am thinking he will do a good job on the first order and then screw me on the second.

[jimkirk1943]

There are good $2 500 word article writers on Odesk ! I had to try out quite afew but the last lady i used i got 8 of the 10 articles on ezine without problems.

[Scott Ames]

Cheap... doesn't always mean bad quality
Expensive... doesn't always mean good quality

I would say however you would find more bad quality in the cheap realm. Cheap and Good writers shouldn't stay at cheap for very long.

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by Ron Razor

Of course now I am thinking he will do a good job on the first order and then screw me on the second.

That may not be deliberate, if it happens. It's a lot easier to do a good job on a small order. I had someone order two articles on a subject the other day, and writing two articles wasn't hard at all. Writing twenty on the same subject, however, would be an absolute nightmare. There's only so much you can say about some subjects, and once it's been said, you end up saying the same thing over and over. It gets hard to come up with a fresh perspective, and that makes it hard to stay interested, and if you're not interested... sometimes the creative juices just won't flow.

There's also the way some people offer quantity discounts. While writing a lot of articles on the same subject is harder, a lot of people also make it cheaper. This is the prime example of people in a service industry labouring under the misapprehension that they are in a manufacturing industry. The economies of scale you get in manufacturing simply never happen with a service - quite the opposite. The more you have to do, the harder it is to do it.

My general rule of thumb is that when someone offers to give you more work for less money in a service business, they don't really understand what they're doing, and someone's going to get bitten in the arse by that. Most people prefer that it be the other guy, so when the ball's in the other guy's court... it will probably be you. But that's not always because they wanted you bitten in the arse, it's just because it has to be someone - and most of us won't offer ourselves up on the altar.

[M Thompson]

I've hired some excellent writers who provided 5 300 word articles for $7 or less. I've also hired a writer from here who wrote excellent articles for $7 each that I was happy to pay for until I realized that after the first batch she outsourced to writers charging much less. (how she thought I wouldn't notice is a mystery.)

You get good articles and bad article at most price points, you just got to keep searching until you find a good writer or writers