Content writing rates vary. You see writers charging anything from $50 to $500+ or more for one 600 word article, so it can be somewhat confusing to decide how much you should pay. What you should pay content writers really comes down to the quality of the content and the level of service you require.
Just like every other profession, when it comes to content writers, there are good ones, average ones and awful ones. If you scour the Internet for the lowest rates possible, it’s obvious which group of content writers will be most likely to accept your work. The good content writers will simply not undertake work at those rates – nor will the average ones for that matter. They don’t have to – they’re busy working for the website owners, SEM and SEO firms who understand the importance of quality content and the value of professional and reliable writers.
If you take a quick look at the websites that broker freelance writing work, you’ll notice that a large percentage of the writing jobs posted are offering abysmal rates – some as low as $1-2 per article. There are plenty of “writers” bidding on those jobs. What you won’t see are big brands and professional marketing firms looking for professional writing services on those sites. There’s a reason for that.
Content writing jobs come in a range of sizes – from a handful of blog postings or articles for an individual website owner, to job lots of hundreds of articles or postings each and every week for large marketing firms. For an individual webmaster, receiving a few articles of poor quality and having to re-write them is somewhat of an inconvenience – but consider the position of a firm that requires multiple articles a week. The company is outsourcing because they don’t have the time to write those articles and because writing is not their core profession. When a firm receives poorly written articles from writer they must –
- read every item closely to identify errors;
- re-write or edit them in-house or
- find someone to re-write or edit and
- pay them to re-write or edit;
- explain the delay to someone; and
- find another content writing service.
Hiring low cost content writers ends up costing far more than if the firm had paid higher rates for professional writers in the beginning. The time marketing personnel spend reading and correcting articles can be substantial – the process will take longer than it took the cheap writers to complete the articles. The hours spent doing this is time lost working on what they are good at. The marketing firm also risks losing their client as a client has no interest in errors made or delays caused by contractors – they are paying the firm they have engaged. Experienced marketing personnel have learned this and they bypass the cheap content writers without a second thought.
Likewise, firms that market for professional businesses seek quality writers. They know that anything less than grammatically correct and well written content will simply not be accepted by their clients. They wish to retain their good clients and as the cost of the content is billed to the clients, there is simply no need for the firm to use cheap writing services. Hence good marketing firms and webmasters of professional websites tend to seek out professional content writers or writing services.
If you’re counting the pennies, consider this – professionally written content can give you a good long term return on your investment. Spending $500-5000 on professional writers is likely to bring quality traffic to your site and increase your sales – whereas having poorly written content is likely to give your visitors the impression that your business is as ‘dodgy’ as your content writers.
