Outsourcing Content Writing. Thoughts?

I learned from a few friends of mine that, to help promote their blogs and websites, they outsource post writing through various freelancing websites. They manage to get considerably low prices for one page articles. The English is not always breathtaking, but I read some of the articles and they seem quite enough to a bot.

I was wondering if this practice is really beneficial, and if someone uses it, how much should I pay for it.

i don't use this service but i think it will be beneficial depending on the quality of your article.

I think a good article (500 words/good english) will cost you $20 am I correct? I've looked into it and I'm slowly beginning to think its easier to buy links in my industry as my competition has thousands of highly ranking backlinks. It depends if you can pull off high serps with a few blogs than go for the content writing if not buy the links (around $5/week for big industries).

Well, I had my first ever experience with an average writer whilst outsourcing some content this week. I’ve heard stories of people having trouble getting good writers, and I always wondered at that, as I’ve had fantastic writers who have actually taught me a lot about how to write great articles. My best writers have taught me how to design an article so it presents the subject matter in a coherent and meaningful way. They taught me the power of a good introductory section, and underscored the idea that it is often important to provide some background material when publishing articles for syndication.

There are good writers and there are GOOD writers. Of course there are also bad writers and VERY BAD writers

My point is you must check their work, if at all possible hire a specialized writer who is knowledgeable in your area.
I have debated getting a partner to write for my blog so there are two of us which would provide more viewpoints and more articles however so far my users don't want it. They hate my grammar but they must like my articles for some reason
It is best if at all possible to write yourself from experience, hire a editor if need be but the best articles come from the website owners who write from the heart.

Take a look at some of the biggest blogs, they are mostly run by their owners and the articles are mostly written by their owners even though they are fairly large. This isn't always the case and you can do well with a article writer and sometimes you have to go that route. But if you do make sure the article writer has experience in your field and can write based on that. A good writer will be able to write on unique subjects, instead of copying someone elses theme.

I just wrote an article of 1100 words. It took me two days (and I work really long days). One of my employees spent 5 hours helping me with research and data. At this rate of pay we would have made about $1 per hour.

(sorry no rep left) - THAT is what I am talking about when I say QUALITY articles. I know what you mean EGOL. I sometimes spend days or more, literally whole days on one article.
I do alot of research into each article I write as well.

I have outsourced article writing and summitted them to article sites. While the articles don't have the details I would have written they did have the keywords that I wanted to focus on and a number of sites did pick up my articles. I sometimes rewrote parts and added to them but it does save a lot of time and if you have lots of sites in different niches you may never get the opportunity to write your own articles.

I paid about $20 per article but I know you can get them for about $5 per 500 words. Test out the writer with a few articles before committing to a high volume. Ask to see other articles they have written.

You also have to decide if you are going for high quality or quantity. Quality will get you a better reputation especially if you are writting under your own name rather than a pen. Quantity will help your bank links thus your page rank.

You have to look at the ROI or likely ROI from having content out sourced.

The bennefits are

1) You spend no time on it
2) You can concentrate on other things - like getting good links etc
3) You are not limited to the volume of content you are physically capable of writing

Take for example a fairly low search volume page that gets 200 visits per month. Assume a CTR on you adsense adds of 3% (conservative for a well designed adsense page) and assume a per click value of $0.10.

Each month the page would get 6 clicks earning $0.60 per month. So if the article cost you $20 to have written it would take 33.3 months or 2.77 years to payback. Any clicks after that are profit.

Now this scenario isn't a shinning example of good ROI. I just made the numbers up as an example.

What having your content written does for you is allow you to make the page and site more profitable.

Target higher paying keywords
Build Links
Get a better CTR
Get more traffic.

One of my adsense sites gets about 17.5% CTR but very little traffic. I am now concentrating on getting more traffic to it after I have experiamented with my adsense template and site structure.

It will really save you a lot to outsource content writing services. You can always ask for a sample of their articles to have an idea of their proficiency with the English language. Also, some writers have background in keyword optimization that is really helpful for you.

Content is one of the easiest things to outsource because you can see right away the quality of work you're getting.

You'll definitely get what you pay for, so expect to pay a little more for authors who are proficient in English. If you're just trying to get content that is sufficient for a bot to read, then you can get away with spending a lot less.

If you can write top quality articles on your own then it would be the best thing, but then again we aren't good at everything we do, so for anyone whose not good in content writing, it would be a very good option but don't expect the highest quality in content. But still it can work for you :p

I have found that I am better off doing the research myself and giving the copywriter what I want in the article. Most of the writers seem to like this and I have been able to get better writers at cheaper prices.

Yes the word is "Quality". I beleive if u get quality work, u should pay the right price. thats professionalism

It isn't worth doing a strategy this way. The low cost of substandard copy ensures that these same pages go to supplemental results, first... the moment they go to supplemental results you may as well delete them as they "will not help you at all"...

You could re-add the copy on another page and get a little bit of time with it there but the resulting outcome is the same... supplemental...

If you are intending to spend "a little" on copy - you are far better off spending that money on "just links" preferably niche specific directories... there are literally 1,000s out their that are $1-2 bucks...

...don't bother buying crap content that 'as you said' is "quite enough to a bot" because the bot isn't going to help "if" you can't get links to that "crap content"... and sorry to say people don't link to crap!