How strong is the correlation between article quality and results?

[ScottByers]

I was shocked to learn from another thread that some people are paying (or charging) upwards of $25 or more to have a single article ghostwritten. I've never payed more than $5 per article, usually it's closer to $3, and I've always considered my results to be "good enough" for that price. It did make me curious about whether I should consider buying article of higher quality, but I have some questions...


1. I'm certainly not going to ask anyone to define whatever-the-hell "quality" means, and I'm also not suggesting that there is necessarily a direct correlation between "quality" and the cost of a ghostwritten article, but in what ways might a $25 article be "better" than a $5 one? Again, whatever "better" means.


2. In your experience is the trend line linear, exponential, or logarithmic? What I mean is...

Does an article of $25 quality caliber get 5x the results of a $5 one?

How does the situation look if we compare a $25 article to five $5 articles?


3. What do you do with articles of such high "quality"? I doubt that simply submitting to ezinearticles is enough to get enough value for your money, but I'm open to being wrong

[mookinman]

One way to find out would be to do some testing.

I'm interested to find out other warriors' experiences with this, as I'm about to start outsourcing articles (I'm lazy)

[John S. Rhodes]

I've seen quality $2 articles. I've seen terrible $20 articles.

Find a person or group that can reliably generate great content
for you. There's nothing like consistency once you get it.

Back on topic...

In my experience, your high quality articles generally do better
than low quality articles. But, the price isn't a factor. I'm trying
to help my readers and customers, not come up with a perfect
solution 100% of the time, or pay a ton of money for articles.
I'm running a business with very real expenses. So, I get good
quality at a fair price.

Here's another angle that's also important. I will always spend
more money when I'm trying to create linkbait. That is, when I
want people to talk about my topic and link to it, I make certain
that the content is outstanding and I'll pay to make it thus. I've
not been able to get high quality linkbait-type articles without
paying less than $10.

~ John

[kenj]

I am sure that a carefully written quality article will perform better than a cheap article.

I would say that wouldn't I?

There are elements that can make you lucky in getting results but for a consistent set of well performing articles you have to go for quality.

I now focus on a number of elements that have one aim. To get the whole of the article read. That way I know people will take the action I want.

What makes an article of good quality would take far too long to run through here, but there are plenty of excelent warriors who can run through the theory here. Steve W, Justin M and Allen G spring to mind.

[mario2001]

In my opinion,the best way to find out which article
is better is by split testing.


Mario

[Steven Wagenheim]

Let's forget about the price of the article, because you can get good and
bad articles for $25.

The quality of the article itself, if you're talking about Internet marketing
purposes, reaches a point of diminishing returns or even detrimental returns
once it gets past a certain "quality point."

What am I talking about?

Let's say you're writing an article on a natural acne cure and in the article
you write about the causes of acne and the standard treatment and maybe
just touch on the cure so that they want more info.

Let's say the article, quality wise, is a B article, meaning it's good, but it's not
going to win any Pulitzers. However, it does the job. It gets people to go
down to the resource box and visit your site, as long as you have a strong
call to action.

Now, let's take it a step higher. Say you write an A article. It goes into
a little more detail on the causes and traditional cures and is maybe
written a little better. It's not going to get that many more people to your
site. So the returns are already diminishing as far as the effort that you
had to put into writing that "A" article.

Now, let's go to the next level, where you actually write an article so good
that you travel into the realm of detrimental returns.

We're talking about an A+ article that is expertly written and not only
goes into detail on the causes and traditional cures but also goes into
significant detail on the natural cures...to the point where nobody HAS to
go to the resource box.

You've given them the whole Enchilada.

For Internet marketing purposes, articles only have to be SO good.

Now, if you're writing for a publication and they're paying you for your
work, well then yeah, you better write your butt off.

So, having said all that, what do you spend for an article?

Well, it all depends on what you want and who you get writing it for you.

If you want an article for the purpose of marketing, then find somebody
who is an expert at writing articles for marketing, because you don't want
him giving away the store.

That's why there are people who buy articles for $2 a piece and rave
about them and other people buy articles for $25 a piece and call them
crap.

All depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

[Denice S. Anderson]

Hi Scott,
Have you looked at your stats at Ezine Articles for a
quick idea? If you have kept up with which articles you
have submitted that have been of your own writing
versus ghostwritten with little or no revision you might
get a good idea.

Look at the number of views each type of article
(yours or ghostwritten) have gotten in each niche.

You cannot really compare each niche to another because
some niches are naturally more popular than others and will
automatically get more views.

Anyway, until you can do some really good testing, this
is a quick way to get an idea of how your purchased articles
are doing.
Especially if you are submitting a LOT of articles.

Cheers

[John S. Rhodes]

Steven:

Your comment about diminishing returns is absolutely accurate.
It's like when you buy an ice cream cone on a hot summer day.
The first licks are absolutely the best. As you move along, it's
still pretty good but not quite as good as those first licks. If you
go nutty and get another ice cream cone, that one won't be even
close to as good as the first one. You might even throw it right
into the trash. The marginal utility drops with every single lick.

~ John

p.s. I can always tell when I am hungry when I post. ;-)

[anomaly]

Steven, Great Post! I totally agree!!

When I first wrote articles I made the mistake of giving customers the solution in the article ... now I've wised up. I think this is important advice for any beginner!

[write-stuff]

Of course testing will provide the final answer, but I can't imagine that quality wouldn't matter. I look at articles and if they lose my interest for whatever reasons (bad grammar, difficult to read, berift of useful information), I'm gone. I'm not going to expend any extra effort just so I can say I read the whole thing. If its crap (and I'd say 80% of the stuff on ezinearticles falls into that category), I'm moving on.

[aresdiva]

What Steve said above about detrimental returns might have happened in one of my niches recently. I'm promoting a natural cure product solely through article marketing at EzineArticles, writing some recent articles about some natural ways to help prevent and reduce the pain of a horrible condition. I was getting at least one sale every two-week period when I ramped up my article marketing this past spring... It's been over a month since I made a single sale with that product. Of course this could be due to any number of reasons, but this thread certainly made me think about how I've been writing my articles lately, so definitely something to keep in mind for future articles.