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How much do you pay for writers?

by online only
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I wanted to ask this long time ago, especially from people who build affiliates sites and do SEO.

I usually write articles/posts by myself and let it proofread by someone. However, occasionally there are some topics and niches that are either extremely boring or time consuming. In this cases, I usually outsource the writing.

I'm usually paying anywhere between $20 - $30 per 500 words. In some rare cases, when I build power pages, I've also paid around $50 per 500 words.

Furthermore, do you have writers whom you have been working with long time, or do you pick different writers for different projects?

For example, when I want someone to write a PHP guide, I first search on Google for "PHP tutorials" and contact the persons individually. In that way, I could actually find writers who are competent enough and know their stuff.

And yes, I've also tried the $5 for 500 words in the past, but this content made me puke so yeah..

What are your thoughts/opinions?
#pay #writers
  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
    Yeah your pretty much around the same ballpark as me. My brother and sister do a lot of writing for me (College Educated Geeks) @€40 ($60) per 1k words. And I've found a decent crew on WF Alex Hayes who have done some quality work for me on smaller pet projects (Similar pricing).

    For real specialized content though, it really depends on your outreach and hustling skills.
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  • Profile picture of the author jxam69
    I'm paying around $10 per article.

    I've done that by hiring a Filipino writer full time and training him up over the last year - he was a good writer to begin with and knew the subject material well, but he's an excellent writer now that I've trained him.

    With the investment I've made in his skills, I could now easily sell those articles for around $40 to $50 each.
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    • Profile picture of the author gerski
      Originally Posted by jxam69 View Post

      I'm paying around $10 per article.

      I've done that by hiring a Filipino writer full time and training him up over the last year - he was a good writer to begin with and knew the subject material well, but he's an excellent writer now that I've trained him.

      With the investment I've made in his skills, I could now easily sell those articles for around $40 to $50 each.
      Happy to hear it from you the rate that you are paying to your filipino writer.Lots of filipino writer are paid below that amount actually right now,some are even being scammed and that is very sad.Keep it up.
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      • Profile picture of the author ChristianSites
        I originally got into this business from the writing side of things, and that is still how I make most of my income. My experience has been in line with what others have said. Here's what I look for from clients:

        (I'm a graduate student in the U.S., native American English speaker and have written for restaurants, a university and Yahoo!).

        1. For a typical blog post that I don't need to research, I look for $10-15 (all for 500 words), and I'll spend 15-30 min. writing it. This is something that I personally would be comfortable using for tier-1 backlinks, but it's not well optimized for sales or keywords.

        2. For something that requires research or higher quality content (money-site content), I look for $25-40/500 word; these will take me 30-60 min.

        Regarding the number of writers you use, I definitely appreciate working with the same client consistently. However, writers are extremely inconsistent. I would look for a team of 3-7 writers to use, for this reason.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdevpro
    A few months back, I was hired a writer from Elance for about $15 per 700 words and the quality of the contents was satisfactory.
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  • Profile picture of the author GyuMan82
    Generally for 500 words to get a good article you're goin to pay at least $10.

    For affiliate sites, you can get pretty well written stuff for $10-15.

    There are a few good writers in the Warrior For Hire section that write pretty well for $10.

    As far as writers, I tend to have a group and am always on the lookout for more. Writers tend to come and go in terms of reliability, unless you are paying a really high $$$ for full-time professional ones.
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  • Profile picture of the author laurencewins
    I am a writer and I get $25 - $75 for an average 500 word article.
    Prices vary depending on topics and other requirements as well.
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    Cheers, Laurence.
    Writer/Editor/Proofreader.

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  • Profile picture of the author InitialEffort
    We've been working with an article writing service provider and they have a very fast TAT and all of the articles we've received passed copyscape. Their usual rate is $6/500 words but they gave us discount for bulk orders. We are specifically using these articles for link building purposes. After doing a copyscape check, I found that all of hundreds of articles passed without issue. Also his team will go the extra mile to make sure the formatting is correct for your articles so that can be easy plugged into whatever software of system you are using.
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  • Profile picture of the author Youtubeseo
    I've got a bunch of english honours graduates as my in house writers so I get pretty decent quality at $3/500 words.
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  • Profile picture of the author Moneymaker2012
    It depends, if you chose quality it can be expensive, it also differ from topic to topic and length of the article and the place where you pick the writer from. I mostly prefer paying for words count.
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    • Profile picture of the author deannatroupe
      As with anything, you get what you pay for. You have to decide how much quality work is worth to you. The rate you are paying seems like a reasonable rate for a professionally written article.
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      • Profile picture of the author heavysm
        I have paid anywhere from $5 - 50 for 500 words of well crafted engaging content. The $5 dude is long gone having only offered his services for a couple months before moving on (I was honestly shocked at the quality of his work) but now I tend to pay for mid range writers then edit the articles to sound more my style.

        This may seem like more work than it's worth, but like anyone else, when it comes to niches I don't have much to say about I need a helping hand. Editing the articles to help stabilize my voice rather than theirs let's me keep a consistent angle for my sites so my visitors don't get weirded out by me using other writers when i get too lazy to do all the work myself :p
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  • Profile picture of the author ViralMediaBoost
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    • Profile picture of the author online only
      Originally Posted by ViralMediaBoost View Post

      For a article, i have a professional writer who does them at $2 per article which is really cheap for how good his articles are.
      Hmm.. Something is not right here...
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