Article marketing: how much should I pay for an article?

Whenever I read a thread in marketing forums I always need to remind myself that most of the posts are made by newbies. Nothing wrong with that. The Warrior Forum is a great place for newbies to learn how to make money on the Internet.

A topic often brought up is about how much marketers should pay writers to create articles for their websites. These people know that you can go to eLance or GetAFreelancer.com to get articles written for very low cost. How low? Maybe $2 per article.

But what you end up with is a $2 article.

Buying cheap articles and adding them to your website without reworking them never satisfy your blog or website visitor who is likely to exit immediately on seeing the crappy article. This will only increase your "bounce rate" (how many people stay on your website for less than a minute.

If you are in business to make a living then you better be prepared to write articles for yourself, if you can, or pay a good ghostwriter to do that. Even sites that are mainly pictures (porn sites come to mind) need good text copy around those pictures to get you to buy something.

I know a ghostwriter who charges 10 times what many other web writers do for a single article. But then, he spends as much time just researching the article than those other writers spend writing four or five articles.

Tip for writers: You can make some money writing cheap articles. If you are happy with a substandard living, go for it.

Tip for buyers: find the best ghostwriter that you can afford to write your articles. If you can't afford that, write your own articles or sales copy. The alternative is to find a different way to make a living.

Your call.

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles (wahm membership site)
Wahm Search Engine (low cost advertising)
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