Outsourcing? – Hiring a Ghostwriter

by Scribe

There are times when, even if you can write, it is not good use of your time and you look for one or more ghostwriters to provide your articles. If you require a large number of articles in a short period of time hiring a ghostwriter (or two) may be the only way of keeping to your deadline.

Whatever your reason for outsourcing, the hardest part comes when you try to find a good, affordable ghost writer.

There are a number of freelance ‘matching’ sites which allow you to post details of your job to attract bids from writers.  www.elance.com, www.rentacoder.com and www.ifreelance.com are examples of such sites. But, just because you attract bids from writers does not mean you will find a writer capable of producing good quality articles.

In my humble opinion, one of the major problems you will almost certainly encounter at these sites is caused by nothing more than greed. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh.

Purchaser’s of services are attracted by the painfully low rates offered by writers living in non-English speaking Countries. It seems that the price is more important than the quality. Because the writers do not speak or write English to a high standard, the articles are of extremely poor quality.

You only have to spend a short amount of time surfing the web before you discover sites populated by such articles.

The writer may be intelligent, articulate and able to produce a high quality article in their own language but they simply do not know enough English to provide the content you need.

Unfortunately, because of the low rates demanded by purchasers, plagiarism is often another problem you will find at these sites. There is no excuse for it, but you have to think it through. A 500 word article, properly researched, checked and edited will take between 30 and 40 minutes to produce. (A professional writer producing material on a subject with which he or she is familiar may take less time). If you are only seeking to pay $3 per article, this is an hourly rate of between $4.50 and $6. I cannot condone plagiarism but I can understand the temptation for that rate of pay.

To protect yourself, if you purchase articles from a writer at a freelance site, run the finished work through the facility at www.copyscape.com to make sure the work is original – my advice would also be to advise the writer, at the commencement of the project that this is your intention.

If you are going to make regular use of a ghostwriter look for one whom you can use exclusively for all of your writing needs. Yes, most of these writers are more expensive, but you will save time and money in the long term as you will find yourself taking delivery of good articles at a reasonable price.

When setting up a project with a ghostwriter be absolutely clear about your requirements. Be sure that you communicate, in detail, your needs and expectations. Be prepared to provide the ghostwriter with a list of keywords, topics or titles for the articles; be clear about word count and the purpose for which the articles are required. This amount of detail allows the writer to fully understand your project and to provide exactly what you are looking for.

A professional writer will give you a delivery date for your articles – and stick to it. The time to delivery will depend upon how many articles you need, how much research the writer must do and how many other projects are in the writer’s diary before yours.

Be prepared to make some payment up front, especially if this is your first ghostwriting project with a particular writer – but think carefully before paying the full amount. It’s important that both parties to the transaction are comfortable and have some protection. The benefit of finding a ghostwriter and establishing a long term relationship with them is that once that working relationship is established they will usually allow you to pay upon completion.

Outsourcing your article writing tasks to a ghostwriter will undoubtedly save you time provided you pick your ghostwriter carefully and are prepared to pay realistic rates. If you outsource to the cheapest price point you may well find the exercise costing you a whole lot more in time and money to bring the articles up to an acceptable standard.

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Need Help with your Article Marketing? I have 6 Tips for you

by Scribe

Article marketing provides an inexpensive way for small businesses to establish their web site firmly on the internet map.

Marketing with articles is also one of the relatively easy and profitable business generation activities from which you can see gratifyingly quick results.

Done correctly, article marketing = profits.

So, here are my 6 tips to improve your article marketing strategy and increase those profits.

1. It’s a fact of life that not everyone writes well enough to convince readers to act.  There’s no shame in that. We all have different skills and gifts. Always have someone evaluate your articles and give you honest feedback on their reaction – before you post those articles anywhere. Don’t ask a friend who will tell you what they think you want to hear! Ask someone whom you can rely on to be impartial and honest. If the feedback is less than positive, and you have given it your best shot, get someone else to write your articles for you. Barter if you don’t have the cash. But, don’t risk your business and reputation with a less than convincing article.

2. Always test. Yes, I know it takes time but it is time well spent. Test article title and also test your author’s resource box. Prepare a number of alternative ‘about the author’ paragraphs and test them. You are looking for the one that attracts the most click-throughs.  Conduct enough trials to be sure it is your resource box content that is working and not just the article itself.

3. If your articles are not driving people to your website, ask yourself ‘why?’ If you cannot be objective, ask someone else why. Is the article dry and uninteresting? Is there no compelling call to action at the end? Have people fallen asleep before they finish reading the article? Start tweaking and testing. Don’t be afraid to be provocative in your articles. Spark a debate or a thought process in your reader. Also try to give your reader something new. Don’t just spend 500 words telling them what they already know.

4. Whilst there are many tools and scripts that claim to be able to post your article to directories, it’s worth making manual submissions to those that really provide the links. www.ezinearticles.com springs to mind as being one of the best article directories and, because of the high standards maintained by Christopher Knight and his staff, the quality of the articles on the site can be relied upon totally. Don’t risk your relationship with them by trying to save yourself a few minutes in article submission. Yes, there are many article directories that will not mind automated submissions but decide which ones you want to establish a strong relationship with and take the time to submit your articles manually.

5. It may sound obvious, but you need to schedule time into your working day to write and submit articles.  If you are serious about using article marketing to generate valuable backlinks to help your SEO efforts, you need to have a determined article marketing campaign, writing and submitting articles on a daily basis – and I don’t mean spamming the directories, I mean excellent quality thoughtful articles that provide unique and valuable content. Once you have submitted a new article every day for a month, you can reduce your submissions to weekly and then monthly but you will need that boost in the beginning. Ensure you allow sufficient time in your day to do the required writing.

6. Good spelling and grammar are essential.  Never submit an article until you have checked it at least twice for spelling errors and grammatically incorrect sentences.  Don’t always rely on spell checkers – they may not save you. Print your articles off and read them out loud. You’ll be surprised at the errors you spot! Write your articles and leave them overnight so you can return to them with fresh eyes – once again you’ll spot previously unseen typos and mistakes.

So there you have 6 very simple tips which, if followed, will improve your article marketing results. They are not rocket science. They are not ’secrets revealed’. They are just good, old fashioned common sense that we implement at Philoscribe every day – simply because they work.

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