Content arbitrage

The best way to tell a good writer is by his or her samples. Forget the ones without samples and move along to the ones who have them.

For what it's worth, writers with good samples usually charge more than $5 per article.

You'll really struggle to find someone good at that low of a price. It's impossible to write good content an make any money out of it if you're only making $5 per article - you'll only get people who are willing to churn out rubbish quickly or you'll end up with a lot of plagiarized content.

For what it's worth your best bet is probably Elance. I do a fair bit of writing work over there and almost everything that is posted gets a high number of applicants no matter how low the budget is. But in terms of supply and demand there is certainly a higher number of writers than there is jobs so you should be able to negotiate down prices.

Only 3 applied? Try iwriter. There seems to be more than enough people who want to jump at $5/300 words on there. Quality isn't always great but it helps if you give good descriptions on what you're looking for. And you can always reject and request a re-write.

Is making money with content arbitrage possible? Probably, but you'll never make much.

Any professional freelancers already find their own writing projects, so they're off the table.

The mill writers that you find on sites like HireWriter are completely new to writing, and won't stick around as they improve. So you're dealing with absolutely mediocre writers. The problem here is that you won't be able to sell their articles to anyone.

So that leaves the middle of the road writers. The ones who have been writing for a year or two, but don't know how to value their work properly. Almost every writer goes through this phase at one point or another. This is probably where you would want to make your money. Post an ad on a writing job board and you'll get a wide range of pitches. Judging by their samples and their desired rate, you'll find out who these writers are.

The next problem is finding work to essentially outsource to these writers. From experience, this is tough.

Overall, it's not easy. You're welcome to try, but I wouldn't recommend it.