Website Content Writers Job
- 26th Sep 2007
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- Content Writing
We all know that to make a website a valuable online resource Google loves fresh content created in an informed way. For a site to be a valuable resource and have authority in its own right and ultimately rank respectively it should ideally be focused towards the topic area with content that hits the mark.
How far should the content writers job go?
I would be interested to know who outsources their content to others and who writes it in-house ?
Another aim of this post is to identify the best web content writers. Pricing ? Do you get what you pay for ? How much is too much to pay ?
25 Comments | Leave a comment »
I would absolutely love to outsource content creation, because it is the most dull task of creating a website. However, I’m just a young student and I’m only just starting creating websites to earn some money and I don’t feel I can outsource until I’ve had some more experience and no I could make a ROI.
You certainly get what you pay for especially if you employ from the sub continent. There are however good writers to be had in India etc but they charge pretty much the same as what you could get in the UK.
The problem that many have to overcome is that you can easily find excellent writers AND easily find experts on a topic (say personal finance) BUT it’s very hard to find a writer that’s good at both that’s not already employed as a journalist specialising in that subject. Now, if he’s a journalist then he’s going to want to charge you maybe 50p to £1 a word or, I think it’s something like £250 for 500. But for that money you’ll get excellent work.
However, there’s a big BUT to all of this. The journalist in question may well be very good but can he write web style, short paras, bullet points, to the point etc? Again, many are excellent at print but not so suited (without training) to the web.
Finaly, let’s talk aout money. You envisage a 500 page personal finance site with some truly great content (plus excellent SEO etc). Each page is 500 words long.
500 x £250 = £125,000!
A lot of money for sure. But even if you can get it for half or less you’re still looking at £50k or more.
PS. Yes, some have got very lucky with finding good and great value content writers but it’s long shot odds that you (or me) will.
We were doing content in-house for a long time. The writing wasn’t done by a full time writer, but by whoever could in the office on top of their regular position. We have since started outsourcing to people working on the side. I am not involved in the price, but I know the prices are pretty low.
I’m currently our company’s copywriter, sales report analyzer, PPC manager, SEO…you catch my drift! I think that’s the way it is with most companies - you’ve gotta wear many hats. However, I think the ideal copywriter would be able to concentrate at least 75% of their time on content creation. Still a copywriter in the SEO world can’t just be a copywriter; they’ve gotta be a marketer/SEO at heart too because they need to be savvy on what to KIND of content to create (i.e., that’s going to resonate with the audience, attract the most links, make the clearest call to action).
All interesting questions, Dan (my thoughts in detail here). I used to write for a living and use a few friends I trust as freelances. Ping me if you’re after recommendations.
I charge £500, although that does include submission to the large social networks. I write to get the eyeballs, pure and simple. I’m not trying to be Ernest Hemmingway, but find sometimes to get the eyeballs you have to be of Ernest like quality.
For those of us who know our worth, know how many links swarm around an excellent piece of the English language we can charge a premium. I still think I’m undercharging. Matt Cutts is not going to get his chainsaw out for the links I get a website.
If you want content to fill a site, that’s a different thing. Good solid writers can be hired quite cheaply these days if you know where to look. But if you want laser focussed precision, razor blade sharpness. You have to open your wallet and pull out a wad of tenners.
We outsource to that somewhere between white and black dog-like creature. Yeah, that’s a gray wolf. We had tried others in the past, and I’ve found you get what you pay for. His work is superb, as are the results with links and traffic.
By day at the online travel agency, we have in-house writers because of concerns over control and reselling of the content. We get some great stuff, hire college students from a local community college or university, and we can address concerns with topic focus directly with the writer. This is invaluable.
As far as optimization for keywords, this is handled after we have a good piece of content to work with. Our thought process is to get the content users want in the flavor that the engines understand.
I started wearing multiple hats like TomS, (still do) but after evangelizing the power of content we hired a few writers. I still review/edit the copy. I am a marketer at heart and this makes it difficult for me to crank out copy that I can adjust, it has been working very well for us.
Quality content is often one of the most overlooked components of online marketing. You always get what you pay for.
As an online copywriter, I have written content for a variety of client projects, as well as managed outsourced content for larger-scale projects. There is an unquestionable discrepancy in the quality of outsourced writing versus content that our company has created in-house.
When I say “in-house,” I mean “inside the marketing agency.” Online marketing firms should invest in a good, web-savvy copywriter. Companies looking for an online agency should always hire a firm that has an in-house copy team.
Why? It’s simple:
• Writing for the web is a separate discipline than writing for print media. There is a very delicate balance between writing for search engines and speaking to the end-user. Unless you have a writer on staff with specific experience in online writing and an understanding of SEO, this balance is difficult to achieve.
• Some companies treat content as an afterthought, and focus on packing in keywords, rather than the quality of the content itself. In doing so, they lose sight of the ultimate goal: To sell. If the writing doesn’t capture the reader’s attention within a few seconds, he will ultimately leave the page.
• SEO firms often outsource the content you are buying, and you end up with outsourced-outsourced content. Each time you add a degree of separation, you decrease the understanding of the product or service you are trying to sell.
As an online copywriter, I am firmly in the “pay peanuts, get monkeys” school of thought. It doesn’t matter which country the writer comes from, the same applies.
Dan, you ask “how much is too much?”
I believe there are two elements to consider - potential ROI and maximising your opportunity.
Some types of business model demand high quality written materials to convert and their ROI justifies this expense. Skimping on the quality that’s required is akin to not paying for a decent website design - it will come back to haunt you.
[…] discussion regarding here copywriting for the web on Dave Naylor’s […]
we pay non native speakers who are very good but not perfect. It is then read by a native speaker. We have a whole CMS developed for controlling and rejecting texts, checking for supe in google by taking chunks of texts. Also counts the amount of work they do in a day/month etc. Complete solution that can control all the people from anywhere.
One rule…
1) Who is your site for? If it’s for your audience (I think it probably is…) then give them the content that they need! I’m a big fan of SEO (and a practitioner), but getting clients to come up with their own interesting content that is of use to their audiences is the Holy Grail of SEO.
Content is becoming more and more important with bulk creation now becoming a necessity. Offshoring content is a difficult and can be a mind numbing process. The savings often disappear with all the issues that can arrive with such a service. I currently run two full time teams of writers and use a large freelance network. My customers all seem to have seen a lift coupled with good SEO strategies. It definetly works and can solve your quality score issues very quickly. At bargain base levels content rich website owners will see ROI per page quite quickly. Get Writing!
Paying for content is just like everything else - you get what you pay for. The real question is, do you need ALL of your content to be great? Or just a few feature articles.
Read any print magazine or newspaper - they have their good writers and their good articles - but the rest of it can run the gamut from mediocre to absolute crap.
Use the 80/20 rule - but apply it to content. 80% of your traffic will come for 20% of your content. And the other 80% of your content you can farm out to whoever can put a decent paragraph together.
For my travel and relocation sites I hire already known “brand name” writers from the old parallel industry in the print world for this market. There are a few regional magazines and newspaper tabs which have good coverage in print but don’t have the editorial experience or know-how when it comes to putting more evergreen content on the web. I pay market rate for the local articles –many times I’m paying a premium for second publication rights since the articles first ran in one of the print mags but I do get unlimited electronic and print rights for future use as well as the right to make derivative works.
Most of all, getting writers to actually WRITE something rather than “talk the project to death” is the bigger chore. 9 out of 10 never get anything done. (Another reason for buying already produced works.)
Cheers for your comments guys
Using eLance or Guru, you could get short articles written on the cheap, but you end up wasting too much time describing what you want and editing the “finished” copy that it’s faster to just do it yourself.
Anyway, for meaningful SEO, the writer has to know about the theory behind it. Luckily, writing for SEO doesn’t require the kind of research, planning, and editing a good article does, so they’re pretty easy to bang out… especially when they don’t always make sense. :-) I pounded out 15 300-word articles one day (30 that week) that each targeted a specific keyword phrase. Man, I hope no one reads them too carefully, but they’re live, they’re working, and they’re sending traffic to the sales funnel!
We’re very lucky in that we have a strong academic contingent within the business, myself with a PhD in English and Ji doing a part time PhD on Intrusion Prevention Systems. I do end up spending a lot of time editing his writing though to polish his English language skills - English is Ji’s second language. It’s the time element that is the real killer for content writing, and there’s a lot of room for improvement on our website, but I like to keep this sort of thing inhouse, in the same way that I don’t like the idea of ever sending us down the paid advertising route.
Hello All,
I read all your blog posts and replies and one thing seems to be the major factor in these discussions - Quality and Price. One writer says for higher quality, you may have to shell out higher. That may not necessarily be true. I live in India and know a lot of freelance writers who do writing for peanuts, literally.
Knowing our content writing services well, we do it for $10 for a 500 word page. After 4000 articles in 4 months with absolutely no complaints from my complaints, I could say that we are an effective mix of price and quality
I write a portion of my stuff but also outsource to others as well. A higher percentage of my outsourced writing goes to article directory submissions. I use Artemis Pro (not an affiliate link) because it can submit different versions of an article to many directories (this is handwritten content, not spun).
10$ for 200 words or 20$ for 500 words is too much for you? what do you think?
I must admit that writing in-house has been the most successful decision my employer made and there have been better results from focused, well-SEO’d writing than from any of the ‘experts’ in the publishing industry - although they write good content their on-page SEO attempts are poor, dare I say virtually non-existent at times.
On the other hand, the trouble with paying $10 for 500 words and not getting any complaints is that the buyer is often just as crap as writer.
I think this is the hardest part of putting together a site, of late I’ve been trying to source out some good writers for a couple of different verticals and we are having a very hard time with it. Broken promises, poor quality work, more poor quality work. We are forced to write a lot of stuff in house and it sucks time and the life from your body - no kidding!
If I need writers, I send a posting to writethismoment.net, which is a writers opportunity board. It’s free to post your requirements and I’ve had a good response from writers who subscribe to their site. It’s worth taking a look!