I’ve only spent about half a decade now as an increasingly successful Internet marketer. However, in that time–over and over–I have learned the absolute veracity of the frequently mentioned cliche that content is definitely king.
Anyone who has done much online article writing for syndication for traffic or SEO purposes will recognize that it is not a simple task. Good web writers possess a special skill set.
Last night I happened to find myself at one of those websites where free lancers can view project proposals from businesses and vice versa. It was not guru.com, but it was a site similar to that. I decided to look around just to see the sorts of things that were listed. I actually laughed out loud at some of the proposals, even though I was alone in my office. I needed to share my frustration; hence this article.
One business was looking for someone to help with search engine optimization by negotiating over a thousand one way links, all from ranked sites and all with keyword rich anchor text. A good plan, no doubt. Their top end of the budget for this work was $300! Oh yeah, they mentioned that they had tried to reach their goals before but hadn’t received good results. I wonder why…
More to the point was another company that was looking for 300 optimized five hundred word articles. This project had a more modest budget of $150. Could this explain all the sites with worthless content that give the Internet a bad name?
I suppose we all have to make our own mistakes. I ordered ten articles when I was new to this business. They were all to be written to my key phrase specifications. The price for this package: $70, a mere seven dollars an article. I felt as if I was getting a great deal, and I did wonder how they could do that much work for so little money. I found out when the articles were returned, on time as promised. Except for the key phrases, the articles were virtually identical. They weren’t similar enough to have been the results of spinning, but it was clear that the writer had not taken any time to research. I wasted a couple hours trying to rewrite them, correct the many errors and salvage something from my investment. I finally just gave up and deleted them all.
Because of the essential nature of having quality content for our own sites and for use in our syndication efforts for traffic and search engine optimization purposes, we must be very efficient in our article marketing efforts. Few things impact our reputation more than the content we put out there with links leading back to our websites.
I only had to learn once from my $70 mistake. While I am careful with all of my expenses, I do not try to skimp on content. If you pay the price for junk, you will receive junk in return.
I have an acquaintance to operates a number of retail sites. He says that he learned his lesson (as it seems we all must). He has found some excellent writers. He pays $50 for each 500 word article and reports that it is money well spent. I’m absolutely sure that his business is much more profitable than the company who is offering fifty cents an article or the business that is willing to pay less than fifteen cents per “quality” link.
Try to profit from my prior mistakes. If you have to learn by making your own mistakes, I hope you only waste seventy dollars as I did. There is an advantage to being a quick learner.
