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Cheap writing services
I was just reviewing the Love Santa blog for my client, including cleaning up the spam folder. In amongst the other spam was one offering a writing service based on one cent per word ($5 for a 500 word article!) from (apparently) US residents.
It annoyed me on a number of levels:
- who would think they will get quality results from a $5 article? Those prices are just cheap and nasty
- implying that because someone lives in the USA they have good English and can write professionally is just ridiculous – what about immigrants for starters? And even those who speak and understand good English may not be any good at writing it
- nobody should be paid such low wages and my conscience wouldn’t let me buy such work. A 500 word article on a topic I know well would take me at least 20 minutes – and I write fast. A topic that requires more thought and some research would obviously take longer. So at best, they are offering $15 an hour and not many would make that much is my belief.
As a business person, I also don’t think much of their marketing. If promoting your services to a blogger, why not offer blog writing instead of article writing? Promoting your service will generally do better if you give some benefit or value to your offering, not just listing a very cheap price.
How about you – would you grab such a cheap offer if it was presented to you as an unrelated comment in your blog?
Promotional articles
I admit that with my blog and a lot of client work, I haven’t written as many promotional articles recently as I used to, but I still think they are a valuable way to promote your business very cheaply.
I have done little to market my website online, yet it ranks quite well because I have so much content on there and many sites link to or use my promotional articles on their site.
Melissa has also had positive experiences with article marketing – she got radio coverage from an article she wrote 5 years ago! I also was approached by a major TV show about one of my articles, so it is amazing what can happen from a simple article!
What specific results have you gained through article marketing?
P.S. As part of my promotional articles presentation this weekend, I prepared some notes for the conference handbook. I believe that copies of the handbook will be available afterwards from the workshop notes section of the Business Mums Guides site if you would like my tips on writing and using articles, plus notes from many other speakers.
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