Cheap Content Sux: Calling All High-Quality Content Writers

Let me get the ball rolling here...

What is High-Quality Writing?

I can't agree more, i say you get what you pay for and cheap articles usually are just that, cheap and tacky. You may pay more for high quality articles but the actual content is normally more to the point, flows better and really can make a difference to your seo. Spun articles are unreadable so you can gurantee your visitors wont return.

Spot on Nelson

There was a time when I'd have jumped right in to support what you're saying. But frankly, as someone who USED to write for a living (and earn decent money offline), I eventually got so demoralized by the total lack of respect shown by IMers for workers of ANY kind online -- thinking quality can be had for pennies an hour and that it's OKAY to hire people a world away for what would be slave wages here when people in your own country are starving -- that at this point I don't really care any more. They'll get what they pay for and what they deserve. And more power to them.

As I see it, you're fighting a losing battle, the battle against Greed. But good luck with it anyway.

Hmm... well you are not offending anyone, you're just telling the truth .

If somebody wants to offer you $20 to write a book, I suppose you could just... not do it?

And it's my experience that people will pay for quality if you promote yourself.

I'm a professional writer on all the freelance websites, and it's sickening the rate people work at. I can understand why employers would hire at these rates, but for writing, it's not a good idea.

You get what you pay for in the world of writing. By hiring foreign workers to write content for you, you're going to receive garbage as a result

1. The content is directly copied from somewhere else = google will notice
2. The content is fragmented (poor English) = needs to be edited
3. They have no idea what you're trying to get accomplished = waste time

There are many more reasons why hiring these types of writers is no good.

It's hard out there for freelance writers. To be successful you have to wait for the good jobs, and/or promote yourself to businesses willing to pay for high quality work.

Poor writing is usually a red flag to get off the site you are reading. Maybe it's because I'm a writer myself, but badly written content will jump out right at me like it was in bright red letters and I will immediately move on to a different search result for what I was interested in.

I don't know if some marketers are so focused on all the other areas for success that they don't pay attention to the writing, or if they are just trying to hold onto that last bit of money for other requirements, but you can immediately spot the "$20 for an E-Book" writing.

The current state of 3rd grade prose isn't going to last for too much longer. Google's new content requirements, (defined here: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites) re-prioritize quality, so just hold on for a little bit. Content employers will want their products to live up to these standards, so now is a good time to ensure writers have what it takes to provide them.

Quality is slower creating than quantity rattled out, but it will drive real good traffic to you not just junk

"The market will sort itself out. It will take time." The sooner the better.

Ken, A much nicer way to say it than mine: "keyword spew."

If someone truly is good enough to command Real Writer's rates, they're better off creating content for their own use. Or selling it as higher-priced PLR with limited licensing. Dealing with clients who want the moon for the price of a reflection isn't any way for a self-respecting person to live. Unless they have a broad masochistic streak...


Paul

Not too long ago, I heard they've increased the number of their employed human quality raters. With so many sites to evaluate, being unable to catch each splog and spam library isn't surprising, but I think they're working hard to change that considering the clear standards they've now set.

And I don't know about you, but I'm excited about it.

Be back to fight again tomorrow. Thanks to all the contributors so far.

Not 'writing', but the analogy is apt.

In January 2004, I launched a product. It would make content
unique. A simple script. I charged $297 for it. And sold
dozens of copies on this forum - in a week.

In March 2004, there were at least a dozen clones. Not the
exact same script, but different ones. Some did more than
mine. They sold dozens too - at $27.

Yep, the missing '9' was in the middle of '2' and '7'.

That's the diminishing value of a commodity.

It applies to writing as well.

Want to retain premium pricing? Do this. POSITION yourself
as a premium writer - and back it up with skills and results.

Want people to pay you what you charge? Get out there and
get hustling. Marketing and differentiating are the keys.

Another trend many writers seem to have completely overlooked
is the reality of 'robot GENERATED' content - which even at
a rudimentary level of development is able to deliver quite
remarkable value (when value is defined in information terms,
rather than aesthetics).

'Good writing' will not remain just stylistic and syntactic
superiority for much longer. Great research, plus an ability to
synthesize opinion and collate data to present as meaningful
insights, will grow increasingly important to qualify as good
writing... and that's leading to an era of specialization,
where you write in your niche, because you're a MASTER in it!

My 2 dollars worth ;-) (I stopped writing for 2 cents!)

All success
Dr.Mani

Let's face it... the market is changing. Not too long ago, I was getting paid $300 an article (800+ words) from one outlet. I have the reputation and authority to get that. But I frequently was at a loss for ideas, and I started going to Constant-Content and buying articles off of there for anywhere from $25-$75, tweaking them to my own personal taste/style, maybe adding a little tidbit of information, and submitting that. Every bit as good as the articles I wrote from scratch, and I make $250 for about half an hour of work vs. $300 for 4-5 hours (or more) of work.

And for some of what I'm doing now, I'm finding I can get a 500-word article done on Fiverr and get it up to my standards in 5-10 minutes. That beats the hell out of spending 1-2 hours (or more) on it myself.

I have a client who needs an e-book. I've had excellent writers quote anywhere from $2,000-$5,000 for a 30-page e-book. I found someone who'll do it for $150. It won't be as good as the $2,000 version, but based on the sample I had him do, a couple of hours of my time should get the whole thing up to an acceptable level. What makes better sense?

The market's changing, and writers are going to have to figure out how to deal with it. You may think your writing is "worth" a certain rate, and you may be right that it's better than what can be gotten for half, or a fourth, or an eighth of the price, but is it ENOUGH better? Does the increase in quality justify the increase in price? From a buyer's point of view, in most cases I think the answer is "no".

Want to keep making money from writing? Slash your price by 50% or more, sub-contract one of those cheap writers to do 80% of the work for 20% of the price, spend a couple of hours on it yourself to get it up to your standards, and pocket the difference.

One of the reasons why many won't pay for content is that they are seduced by the low entry cost for having an online business. So they figure that they can boot strap their way to millions. This comes as a result of a glut of products and promoters having to create a product which is easy, affordable and gives fast results. You seldom if ever read an ebook or go to a seminar and are told that you need real quality content to succeed.

Next...

People start this and realize that hey, it's not so easy after all. Then they start looking for magic solutions. It makes sense to them to spin and buy cheap articles, because once again, they are fed the kool aid about such methods.

And...

Becasue they aren't amking a zac, they won't pay up for quality content. Simple.

On the flipside...

Running a freelance biz is no different to any other. Truth is that most writers are cr@p at worst or average at best. so they rely on churn and outsourcing articles for a pittance... hence making a small amount on the mark up.

Reality is...

Any freelancer worth their salt should have a base of regular, good customers who understand the benefits of quality content.

And don't try an compete with the masses. Yes, it take time... but then again, what business doesn't?

Sal

PS: I find it amusing that people try tens of writers based on price... trying to get the lowest cost. you can join a site like need-an-article and get very good articles, unique for the same you'll pay on here for cr@p.

I don't give a damn about style. I prefer substance.

I hope the crap content never goes away. It just makes my content look even better.

What exactly is style? Google can easily determine things like reading level, grammar, proper sentence structure, etc. The thing is none of that has anything to do with good writing or quality content.

So not sure exactly what you mean.

OMG. Even as I sit here and preach what should be general knowledge, there is a neighboring thread entitled "the best free article spinner online." Its has 13 posts and 1582 views. My thread, which features the words 'high-quality content' in the title, has 47 posts and only 309 views. Do you see what I'm getting at here people?

Writers, PLEASE, Stand Up and Educate these people. SPINNING SUX, AS DOES ANY OTHER KIND OF LOW-QUALITY CONTENT!!

And now you have your signature promoting your article writing service. Yeah, right. :p

Seriously, you can't force anyone to follow your line of thinking just by saying that "cheap content sucks" (which may or may not be true because it doesn't necessarily follow that the cheaper the article, the lower the quality of content will be). Whether you like it or not, there will always be people looking for cheap filler content, and it's hopeless to go around and say that they're doing it wrong. It's just like going around and saying that people shouldn't buy cheap products made in China because they're mostly of low quality.

Writers often take a very ego-centric view of the Web. So how about writers tell us what they would write for the following search queries/topics:

download podcasts
convert 32F to celsius
pictures of snow
cheapest airfare from Denver to Las Vegas
how many homeruns did Babe Ruth hit?
free screensavers
twitter backgrounds

Or...How about this site:
Latent Semantic Indexing

Is this useful "content"? The writing at the bottom of the page is basically a sales letter. The "content" I'm refering to is what the page DOES, not what it says.

Haha . Manual spinning is Ok in my terms for using it for seo purposes . Straight to money site content is always the "native writer + lsi " combo .

You have to be strict with yourself. You should say no to anyone who is trying to rip you off - hold out for the good clients!

There will always be many people after cheap content. They either can't afford higher prices, or simply don't see the value. If they're submitting articles for the sake of building backlinks, I can't blame them for not wanting to pay $20+ per article.

I target bloggers as they really do need quality content. I won't lie, I do cut down my prices at times, but mainly for web design businesses that outsource to me (plenty of their clients request their web page content to be written for them). It's common for web design firms to not have copywriters in-house.

Like others have said here... the low-end writers are not competition, unless you're writing for low prices too. And remember that one of the main keys to selling is targeting the right customers, rather than wasting your time trying to convert the low-end buyers.

I like to write, and I am good at it. But how can I apply this skill to internet marketing and make money at it? How do I start? I feel that my talent is being wasted by not being utilized. Can anybody help?

Panda started to weed out content farming. Make sure you got me right, it just started. I think we'll see more slayers of low quality content shortly

I got to join in on this thread, I run a small team of writers as part of my seo services and I think that we have been squeezed out by these $3 writers.

I mean if you think that you can get decent content for $3 then you are on drugs. I have tested out some of the competition on various forums and to be honest most of them were of a low standard and did need some work to them. I have only found one or two of these content companies to be worthy.

But the fact is people only see price, there are more over night seo gurus born every day which has flooded the market and confused people. This has lead to the price of services to fall which has a knock on effect down the line and content will suffer.

I think that poor quality blogs and articles will suffer in the rankings war which will bring good writers back. I see 300, 400, 500 word articles as a thing of the past, I use 700 to 1000 words as a minimum standard for my back links.

Maybe we can have something on this forum so that writers will need to pass some kind of standard so that high quality writers are easier to find?

Lol, Read this and have a laugh with me people :p:

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IS THIS WHAT WE'RE DEFENDING? HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY FOR THIS ARTICLE??

I'm just going to throw an idea that goes ever so slightly against the grain here.

I do a good portion of my work on freelance websites. Yes, I have had the experience of having my heart start to palpitate as I browsed through listing after listing that advertised "$0.79 per 500 words," and I've even had moments of weakness where I thought that that was just the way the market is.

But then I realized something.

When I actually look back on jobs that I ultimately ended up applying to, I never lost out on when my bid was higher than the average. I only lost when my bid was lower than average.

My rate on elance and odesk is $25/hr.

There have been times when I've applied for a job where only one person aside from me was bidding... and they were bidding at less than $10/hr!

I'd always think, "gee, if that person can actually meet the employers qualifications at $10/hr, I'm screwed!"

But I'd stick to my guns, apply at $25 an hour, and get the job.

And yet there were many other times when I'd go up against someone charging $50 an hour, and not even hear a word back on the employer, because they hired the more expensive worker instantly. Or, I'd check out a job posting that was averaging $27/hr for applicants, and I'd notice that the average rate for the "interviewees" section was $30/hr, then bump my bid up to $35/hr, and get the job.

Now, there's an important qualifier I should throw in here. With all these experiences, I was browsing the jobs CAREFULLY, and making sure that every single job I applied to was for a real employer with a real business who had hired people for real jobs in the past. If I had thrown in my $25/hr bid over at random SEO fodder job postings where the client specifically claimed he wanted $.79 content, then yeah, I'd probably end up a little disappointed.

But I don't think disproves my experience, it just proves that actually searching for and picking out the high paying gigs is part of our jobs.

And I've developed a theory, based on my experiences.

There is a chance that all those higher bidding freelance site workers I lost out to really were better than me. There is a chance that all the $50/hr guys really are better than a $25/hr guy like me.

But I don't think that's true all the time.

What I actually think is that in many cases, you will do better with a higher bid than a lower one simply because your bid is higher. By that, I of course don't mean that you can suck and throw out an outrageously high price and then suddenly have everything be cool. But I do think that, psychologically, people see price as a quality indicator. Therefore, you can make a case for the idea that, given two comparably priced contractors of equal skill level and a results-oriented employer who can't quite determine which is best, the employer will err on the side of high quality and pick the higher priced contractor.

Now, I can just hear people saying,

"if that's true, then why are there so many buyers in the freelance writing marketing who buy on price points?"

My answer is that these employers just aren't serious businesspeople. I don't think they're actually making any money of the crap content they purchase, and further, I don't think they even really know what they're really doing in business. I think they're typical "weekend warriors" who read some "how to make money online" e-book, heard that you need hundreds of articles to get ranked in google, and went online to get as many articles as they could get for as cheap as possible from last week's mcdonald's paycheque.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you can see my point. These employers aren't people who would be willing to pay for quality in any market, be it writing or car repairs. They have short term outlooks that prevent them from seeing what real value means in anything, so they keep looking for way to get something for themselves without investing something themselves. As a result, they live profitless lives, in every sense of the word, with businesses that make no money, cars that are always breaking down, and clothes that are never washed. In a world without low priced eastern writers, these people would just forget about article marketing and focus on whatever hair brained scheme they thought could make them quick money without having to pay anything up front, like stock speculation on margin or rubbing their hands on a magic penny before purchasing lotto tickets.

Is it bad that some people think READABLE, ENGLISH LANGUAGE writing could go for $1 per 500 words?

Perhaps. But I would submit to you that if those people were offering, say, $25 an article, you wouldn't even want them as clients then, because they'd be too dumb to actually use your content in an intelligent way, and would go all over the internet writing stuff like "i bought articles from so and so, posted on ezinearticles, made no money, so and so sucks."

So basically, at the end of the day, the low priced writing market is nothing to worry about. Yes, seeing it in action is gross, but it's like watching people play slot machines when you could just as easily give them a simple business idea that would make them real money. Just leave them alone, they're already too far down the path to be reasoned with.

Yeah, I agree that they definitely do fill the web with junk, but post-Panda, I think a lot of their stuff has been driven into obscurity at least.

I agree that writers should make a stand, if they all did, then they would get reasonable prices for their efforts

That's right John, this is what I want people to know; one doesn't need 1000 lame articles to be seen by search engines -- 10 good ones will achieve better results. And who knows, you might even attract a human following; potential customers just itching to buy whatever you're selling.

Here's Google's take:


"Of course, we aren't disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don't want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google's mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we've been looking at the issue:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don't get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you'd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?"

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites