It took Leo Tolstoy six years to craft the 460,000-word War and Peace. A cheap copywriting service could churn out as many words for your website for just $9,200 (at 2 cents a word) over the course of a few weeks.

Added to this, standards of literacy and attention spans on the web are plummeting.

• We’re all illiterate More than half of American college students nearing graduation can’t understand the arguments in newspaper editorials.
• Google fixes our grammar anyway Google mostly ignores punctuation and these days it corrects spellings and shows synonyms. There’s less and less incentive for people to search using correct grammar or spelling or to even think about the search terms they use.
• Your brand’s probably invisible People don’t  know which website they’re on half the time, anyway. If you’ve never seen people in usability testing fail to realise they’ve moved to a different site, check out these people trying to log into facebook last week on readwriteweb.

Given all this, what’s the point in investing in well-commissioned, well-researched, well-written, well-edited, and well-subbed copy for, say, 60 cents a word?

At that rate, War and Peace would have cost $276,000 to commission.

Despite this, here’s when you should use an experienced, pricey copywriter, rather than a value service or an agency with claims like:

• “our inhouse copy writers will produces unique, keyword balanced content …”
• “[we're] skilled in the art of SEO Copywriting as is evidence by our clients top search engine rankings”?

(Really – Google them if you don’t believe me).

When to pay professional rates

When you need expertise

If you want your site to demonstrate expertise (or passion for that matter), you’re going to have to pay.

First up, you need some proper expertise. You don’t want to end up like eHow where people avoid its pages in search results because of bad experiences – such as an article on how to cure a cold by someone whose credentials turned out to be “having an English degree and loving to write for fun, but I’ve never made a profit yet”.

But you’re not just paying for the expertise – most writers can knock out a quick “how to” with a bit of background research.

Real experts know their subject in depth, can demonstrate this, and have lots to say.

The problem is usually getting them to shut up.

I’m not one of these people who reckons there’s some ideal length for a web page of about 400 to 500 words. The ideal length is however long it takes to say what needs saying (and SEOmoz found that 1,800+ word posts were more likely to earn links).

The issue is saying what you need to say in the fewest words. People read 25% slower on the web. And for every 100 words you add, only 18 are read on average.

So the trick with expertise is to have genuinely insightful copy that’s edited to as few words as possible – and, for obvious reasons,  few copywriting services  charge on the basis of giving you fewer words than you asked for …

If you want unique content that gets people to stay

The key measure of SEO is not rankings or traffic. It’s conversion (however you choose to measure it). So the actual cost of content doesn’t matter – what matters is your return. You can’t tell whether cheap copy is better value without experimenting.

Also, you need to ask what’s going to make your copy do well in the search results, and whether you want visitors to return? Have a look round the competition – there are 30,900 articles on ehow.com about ipod playlists, for instance, 1,550 about the ipad, 28,000 about changing a tire, and 36,300 about face painting.

Let’s take an ehow car-tire article at random – this one was 2nd in their on-site search. You think anyone’s going to naturally link to an article that essentially says “take the tire off, then put the new one on”? You think anyone’s going to think “Blimey, that ehow article was the money. I am so going back to ehow next time I need to know something”?

Yes, you can throw up some cheap, me-too copy, build links to it and wait for traffic to click on your affiliate links. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But to build an audience – repeat visitors and people who value your brand, want your newsletter, and follow you on twitter – you have to give them quality and you have to be distinctive.

Your tone of voice matters

There’s something about the guidelines for web writing that drains the life from copy. Take this example, which Demand Media were showcasing on their home page (is this really the best they’ve got?).

Leaving aside the apparently broken return key and missing bullet-list button, is that dry, monotonous, soul-destroying copy really how you want your brand to express itself?

I’m sure there are some great writers in cheap content agencies. But they’ve got no incentive to write creatively, or even to write like a human. Most, though, have probably had drummed into them some half-baked writing-for-the-web guidelines presented as if they were universal truths, without thinking about the context – and they are desperate to strip out any adjectives or signs of human life from their writing because, hey, that’s what everyone wants on the web, right

If you pay by the word, that’s what you get – words. If you pay for tone, you get tone. Last time I checked, cheap copywriting services were all missing a checkbox where you could pay extra for signs of human life.

(If you’ve ever referred to the contents of the folder containing your draft web copy as “assets”, you probably won’t get this point.)

Your press releases have a purpose

Press releases should be judged on their ROI. Why are you putting out a press release? Let’s assume you’ve got something newsworthy to say – and you want journalists to pick it up, because you want to earn links or promote your brand.

Here are two options:

• Pay someone who knows nothing about your company, the market you’re operating in, the journalists involved or their publications. Get them to write something. Maybe you can stick it on some online PR site? Then you can start a news section on your site, too. No one will pick it up, and you’ll go off the whole press-release idea. In a few months, anyone clicking the news section of your site will think nothing has happened at head office for ages.
• Or do some proper research into who is likely to cover the story and how you can grab their interest – and pay to craft the release with care to appeal to those people.

I’ll let you do the math on that one (as I believe you say in America)

Quality costs

Adweek wrote in December about how:

“the race is on to use data and automation to produce content that people (and advertisers) want at as low a price as possible.”

One of the commenters despaired:

“Every time I click on one of [AOL's] business stories, their “content” is filled with obvious typos, grammatical errors and completely unfocused, unorganized writing throughout. How can you trust anything written in a story so poorly put together? AOL is starting to resemble a cheap blog produced in some kid’s basement vs a professional content provider. “

The problem for you is that if you’re commissioning cheap content, you’re probably not investing in editing or subbing. (For that matter, you’ve probably not given that much thought to what you want in the first place, and how appropriate it is.)

These stages cost money too. If you skip them, you’re not going to improve the quality of what you produce.

Journalism.co.uk, the UK site devoted to journalism, recently worked out that it cost them £37 ($58) on average to produce an online article, and estimated that a national newspaper would pay nearer £400 ($630). That is what quality, original copy really costs if you want it done properly.

Which end of the pay scale is suitable for your website?

Short-form content is even harder

Hemmingway famously came up with this six-word story:

“For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

Similar attempts by copycat storywriters are invariably lame. But short-form copy can be the most compelling. Whether you want to just do it, get the best a man can get or are after the real thing, you’re not going to get a great six-word slogan for 12 cents.

In fact, for a given subject X, you’ll probably end up with something with “matters” at the end. Subject-X matters – get it? It means “it’s about subject-X” and that “subject-X is important”. Brilliant.

(That’s not to say the professionals always get it right – Warner Bros managed to use “Titans will clash” as the tagline for, er, Clash of the Titans. Inspiring. And UK retailer Dixons used “the last place you want to go” as its slogan, hoping to suggest that you’d visit its shops after checking online. Or as most people read it, that it was somewhere to steer well clear of.)

Want to see this in action? Dustin Curtis demonstrated how, in 4 steps from “I’m on twitter” to “You should follow me on twitter here”, he increased clickthroughs by 173%. That is copy advice worth paying for.

The same applies to meta descriptions. They affect clickthrough rates – so don’t make the work-experience guy type them mechanically into a spreadsheet. Lavish the same care and attention to them as you would to a magazine front-cover strapline.

Again, if you pitched a need for 20 150-character meta descriptions to a cheap content agency then they won’t be that interested, and very little thought will go into it.

Strategy? Huh?

One of the advantages of a professional, experienced copywriter is that they are likely to ask questions. Why is a blog a good idea for your site? What’s the long-term plan for your content? How should the content be structured? Have you thought about the artwork? Is your site structure ideal?

If a cheap copy service asked any of these questions, they’d cost themselves money. As the answers will often be, “You’re right – no one will be remotely interested in our blog”. Or “No, we haven’t given any thought to how people are gong to find this stuff – we thought we could throw it up and maybe someone would give it a twitter for us. My nephew’s on twitter, you see. Time for a rethink.”

To sum up

I’m not obsessed with ‘content-is-king’. The internet isn’t a monarchy. You can write great content, and no one will ever see it if you don’t have a way to get it found. Yet you can scrape other people’s content and clean up.

Nor am I opposed to platforms that match low-cost writers with those who need words (it’s easy to find examples of bad writing from content mills – but that doesn’t exactly prove anything as you can do the same on mainstream media sites.)

It’s horses for courses. The key when commissioning content is to think about what it’s for. If it can affect your brand, you want to build an audience, or if you want something unique, pay for quality. If not, then don’t.

Right, now what rate did I agree with Michael for these 2,000 words … Eh? What’s a guest post?

Malcolm Coles wrote this post – he does internet content strategy. You should follow him on twitter here. He’d quite like some more links to his UK website on setting up a business – as it’s currently a shining example of how good content without any promotion gets no visitors.

photo credit: Photos8.com

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

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Like most people who work in the marketing space, I’ve been hearing more and more about “demand media” and “content farms” in recent months and how they are either the death of quality writers or the greatest thing since sliced bread. Rather than sit on the sidelines, I thought I’d give it a test drive before forming an opinion.

First things first, this is NOT A SPONSORED POST OR REVIEW. I paid for this service with my own money. They didn’t know who I was or that I was writing a review when I placed my two orders. There is no incentive (past, present, or future) for writing this post.

OK. Into the nitty gritty. I’ve used “cheap” copywriting services before and, while affordable, the content was always hit or miss, usually with a lot more misses than hits. Most of the time it wasn’t useful for anything other than churn and burn MFA stuff. I’d given up on them a while ago and just started hiring real writers using services like the ProBlogger Job board or referrals from people I know and trust. But not everything needs to be high quality. Sometimes you need mid/low level grunt stuff that doesn’t suck and isn’t “dismembering infants” but doesn’t cost a fortune. This type of content is what I decided to test. I looked at few different services and decided to give TextBroker.com a shot.

On the main client page, they have samples you can read and pricing. I tested the $1.60 per 100 words and $2.20 per 100 words service after reviewing the linked examples. I ordered 4 pieces of 350-400 words at the $1.60 level. When the first piece came back, I was a bit disappointed. The writing was fine, but the piece had the wrong editorial “feel” to it.

It was at this point I remembered something I read in the 4 Hour Work Week about how to spec things out for a personal assistant. I realized I hadn’t done a good enough job describing what I wanted, which set the person on the other end up to fail. So I refused the piece as it was, gave a few suggestions about how to fix it, and fired it back. Within an hour I had the rewrite. While it wasn’t stellar, it was good enough for what I wanted. The remaining three articles, though (again) not stellar, were good enough. If I had done a better job up front specifying what I wanted and how/where the copy was going to live, I probably would have gotten better results. If you haven’t read Chapter 8 of the 4 Hour Work Week I suggest you do. If you have read it, skim the chapter again to remind yourself. Your results will be better for it.

For the next trial I went up to the $2.20 per 100 words level. I requested 7 articles. The pieces started rolling back a few hours later, and I was very happy with what I was getting. It may not have been flagship quality writing, but it was very good. Some writers were better than others and extremely good, but all the articles were better than average, and I was very happy with the results.

Pros

• Speed – You get your work back fast. Very fast. I ordered 11 articles and got 10 of them back within 4 hours of placing the order. The last article arrived in less than 24 hours.
• Value – You can decide how important the copy is and adjust the price to match your needs. There’s no need to overpay for something you don’t need.
• Quality – The copy was always in English, readable, and of good quality or better.

Cons

• Inconsistent Tone – Unless you select a specific author (which has a different price structure), your work is kicked into a general pool for all authors. This can lead to completely different editorial styles and a bit of a hodge podge feel.
• Prepay – You have to prepay for the service. You use paypal or a credit card and are billed the a dollar amount up front which sits in your account. You use this to order articles from. With most writers, you pay a small deposit up front or pay at the end of the month. The accelerated billing puts your costs at the front of a project.

Conclusion

To conclude, I can say that overall the Textbroker.com copywriting is service is one I’m very happy with and will continue to use in the future. I got an excellent value for the price, the articles delivered were of good quality, and they were delivered quickly. It won’t replace flagship content created by high quality writers, but it has a lot of value for the cost.

Bonus

If you order a lot of articles, and, like me, use wordpress as a CMS for your projects, here’s a tool to make migrating the posts in easier. Get the CSV2 Post plugin from Zack Preble. Use the article export feature from Textbroker to export your articles in batch. Then use the plugin to import in batch mode. I set the publish date in the import file to a future date, so nothing publishes as result of the import.  I can then tweak the articles, add images, add tags, or make any other changes. If you want to use the imported articles as pages and not posts, you’ll need Post to Page Converter Plugin.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

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If you pay attention to the ads that monetize most of the web, you’ve likely noticed a trend towards ads that promote content. Glance at these nifty alternatives to traditional banner ads, make some observations of your own, and then join me again at the end for my own analysis.

Is web 2.0 moving marketers to view community-building is a desirable goal?

AMEX

The AMEX ads above are the strongest affirmative answer to that question. The ads’ main goal is to drive entrepreneurs to AMEX’s Open Forum initiative, where the business owners can pick up expert tips to manage their businesses. Not only that, but AMEX has developed a ‘Connectodex’ service that helps SMB owners make connections amongst themselves.

In exchange, AMEX gets brand awareness with excellent targeting, filling the top of the sales funnel. They’ve also got a direct response effort going on at the site itself that succeeds in balancing AMEX’s revenue goals with visitors’ learning goals. You might have also noticed the subtle ‘Apply Now’ call to action in the banner’s upper right corner that ties into this.

Neutrogena

This co-branded ad with the Glam network tries to target 20- and 30-somethings, judging by the models and the text of the ad. And instead of talking about “me,” the ad focuses on “you” by offering tips presumably geared towards their audience’s interest.

I didn’t click the ad (I already know how to stay fabulous, duh), but I’m guessing by the co-branding with Glam that Neutrogena’s chosen to answer my question in the negative. They don’t want to build their own community of 20-something women.

Chase / Visa / Marriott Rewards

The ad targets an  affluent demographic of travelling businessmen who would presumably care for a hotel-rewards card with content that solicits them by name, as with AMEX’s focus on business owners. But the approach appears to be the same as with Neutrogena – sponsor content without hosting/ “owning” it.

(As an aside, I think the particular piece of content they’re sponsoring is brilliant given the bulls-eye targeting it affords Chase/Visa/Marriott.)

CLDS / Mormon.org

The Church of Latter Day Saints (CLDS) has a pretty unique situation:

• They have the express offline goal of bringing you into their community
• Their website features more content, just like AMEX
• The website’s format isn’t so much of a traditional online community where you have a multilateral conversation, but more of a guidance counsellor office type of place where you can put your questions to a missionary 1-on-1

As with other lead gen campaigns, the Mormons seem to have concluded that offering content and then gradually nurturing the lead is more effective than going for an immediate sale. This is reflected in their ‘Find a Meetinghouse [a Church]‘ call to action getting secondary treatment below the fold.

But by promoting their content (particularly with the clever flash-animated instant messaging  format), the CLDS is clearly promoting its content to build community.

What about SEO?

The lessons from these campaigns aren’t unique to banner ad campaigns.

When you’re buying or building links, you can be quite successful going with a content marketing approach. And if you own the community, you get the opportunity for both brand awareness/top of mind campaigning and your own customized direct response package. Which means you can be more aggressive with your SEO (eg by buying links) as well as reduce your dependency on search traffic. Inhouse community-building FTW!

{|- Last second update -|}

It appears the clairvoyant John Battelle called this as a 2009 prediction. In fairness, his Federated Media works with many of the companies employing this strategy, as he reveals in his 2009 Predictions: How Did I Do? post. Also, I recall Aaron Wall highlighting the foundation for this trend – advertisers creating their own content sites [not to be confused with website copy] – but it seems that hasn’t stopped them from advertising as Aaron suggested; instead they’re just advertising content.

Gab Goldenberg wrote this post for Red Fly Marketing, an Irish search engine optimisation and online advertising company. You can find Gab on Twitter @GabGoldenberg.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

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