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How strong is the correlation between article quality and results?

by ScottByers
9 replies
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
#article #correlation #quality #results #strong
  • Profile picture of the author 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)
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
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    • Profile picture of the author 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.
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      • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author mario2001
    Banned
    In my opinion,the best way to find out which article
    is better is by split testing.


    Mario
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    • Profile picture of the author 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
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  • Profile picture of the author 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. ;-)
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  • Profile picture of the author 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!
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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