Fair price to pay for content creation

[Ricky Parker]

To those that have had a lot of different places create content for them at a price.


What do you feel is a fair price to pay someone for well written articles that are around 200-400 words in length?

[Mike Tompson]

Depending on the competitive strategy the fair price may very among the type of writers. But the standard for 500 word article is $6. So now you do the math.

[Anomaly1974]

Price depends on the quality you want, the purpose of the article (An article for my blog is substantially different in format, content and purpose than the content for an article directory where the entire purpose is to send them to my blog) experience, topic, the amount of research required, how difficult fact-checking may be and many other factors.

It also depends on your history to a certain degree. I was offline for over a year so I have to rebuild my client list and am actually working on my old introductory rates at the moment. Still, it should be easy to see that writing an article for National Geographic would take a bit more work and a different approach than writing an article for ezine articles. Without knowing what the writing was about, getting an accurate bid will be more than just a bit difficult.

Just my two cents

[LeeMasterson]

Let's look at one specific niche as an example:

I have a Bachelor's degree in Economics with a major in Finance. For niche topics you don't pay slave-labor rates to get quality information.

If you hire a general content writer to write about general finance topics and you pay $6, then you're getting a re-hashed version of every basic piece of finance information available anywhere. You have no point of difference and you have no credibility among your readers because general information is available everywhere.

Or you could pay professional rates to get in-depth information from qualified writers within a particular niche about a highly-specialized niche topic. You know that the information you're getting isn't available everywhere and you build credibility among your readers for offering quality information that is backed by research and education.

The choice is yours.

[Audrey Harvey]

Originally Posted by LeeMasterson

Or you could pay professional rates to get in-depth information from qualified writers within a particular niche about a highly-specialized niche topic. You know that the information you're getting isn't available everywhere and you build credibility among your readers for offering quality information that is backed by research and education.

Well said. I'm in the same boat as you, Lee. I have an honors degree in veterinary science and access to lots of current vet-only resources, so I earn a fair bit more than $6 an article. Having said that, when I'm looking for blog content etc, that's around what I pay a general writer.

[clifftan]

From experience, I rather go for quality rather than the price. I've paid writers somewhere between $2 per 500 words article to $7 per 500 words article. Being too expensive or too cheap doesn't tell me anything really.

Having said that I do get good quality ones at $2/article and really bad ones at $7. Also, don't trust their samples or portfolios they give you. Rather give them an unusual topic/keywords and get them to write 1-2 paragraphs so they can't simply grab someone else articles and send it to you. If possible, ask for references or testimonials. After learning the hard way, I found this works for me.

cliff

[romesaranto]

I'll echo Clifftan. The price really is not a very good gauge. Sometimes you can get really good writers that are trying to get established, who just want the work and are willing to do good work for a relatively a "cheap" fee. I feel it is important to run them through copyscape when your interviewing people.

[Jackbgd]

I don't really understand why would someone be an "article writer"? Instead of writing for someone else they should just write it for themselves and get their own money out of it by creating their own site/blog.

[SullyUI]

Originally Posted by Jackbgd

I don't really understand why would someone be an "article writer"? Instead of writing for someone else they should just write it for themselves and get their own money out of it by creating their own site/blog.

It's simple - desperation (no other choice) and it depends how much you're getting paid for it as well.

[Ricky Parker]

Thanks for the replies.