What do you pay for quality articles these days?

To lose $1.50?

I started off writing articles online, for internet marketers, in 2008, at about $20/$25 per article.

Over the year or so that I was doing them, my estimation of the value of my own time crept up, and I found that by the time I was charging nearer $50 each for them - and taking a bit longer to write them - it was much easier for me: not only were there more customers in that price-bracket, but they also returned more regularly for more articles (unsurprisingly, because of course they were the clients who knew exactly what they wanted, knew exactly how/where to use them, and regularly got them well syndicated by others).

I didn't understand it in these words at the time, but what had happened was that my clients were actually "article marketers" rather than "article directory marketers".

It was the fact that there were both more customer-retention and fewer competitors, at higher prices, that first made me realise I should be writing them for my own business rather than for anyone else's, which was why I (happily!) stopped doing them altogether.

The writers who have the hardest time of it are those charging $5 or less, perhaps not quite understanding that at that end of the market there are almost as many service-providers as customers. But that's also not surprising, when you think that if a new Warrior asks for advice about making money online, several people will inevitably suggest that he should write articles for marketers - regardless of his apparent standard of literacy! :rolleyes:

Clients at the bottom of the market quite often don't really know how to use the material (typically they just put them in as many article directories as they can and then wonder why they don't get much targeted traffic or SEO-help out of them!), are unaware that "there's a whole other world of article marketing out there", and tend to have struggling businesses, which makes them more anxious, overall, and therefore harder to deal with.

What attracts clients to writers with the cheapest prices is the cheapest prices.

Writers who don't quite appreciate this sometimes imagine that competing on price is a sensible way to get started, and that after they have some customers, they'll be able to increase their prices. This is totally fallacious, because the market doesn't actually work like that. At all! :rolleyes:

If you can write decently and have some marketing skills, it's actually much easier to sell articles for $25 each than for $5 each; there are more readily identifiable customers for them, and they return more frequently.

Don't tell anyone, but writers working for $5/$10 typically have to find new clients all the time, to survive; those charging $25/$50 don't, because if they provide what their clients need, they'll soon be fully booked.

I'm sorry bobbobson, I truly don't mean to jump all over you personally here, I'm just taking your quote because it sums up a few other comments I've seen on here...

Why wouldn't you want quality *everywhere* on your sites? If the intent for putting words together is to create "content", why wouldn't it always be good quality work?

I guess I don't get that there's a time and place for "second rate content" on my site and there's a place for "the good stuff". If it's my site and other people's eyeballs are going to cross it - anywhere - I want it ALL to be good.