Community Discussion - Should low-cost content providers be seen as viable options for content marketers?

[ronell-smith]

Hello there,

In the latest YouMoz post, "Case Study: How We Gained More than 100 Links for a Travel Website via Content Marketing," Tom McLoughlin recommends an idea for content creation that is sure to elicit strong opinions from all sides:

"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are fantastic resources for finding freelancers who do great work. It simply takes a bit of initial time to sift through and separate the wheat from the chaff. Once that’s done, give the freelancers a detailed brief and tell them exactly what you want."

What's your opinion? Have you had good experiences using these sites? If so, what have you found as the keys to making the working relationship a success.

[ronell-smith]

I'm a huge believer that you CAN find a great writer on these low-cost sites. But I'm an even stronger believer that you'll (a) have to be very lucky (b) spend a lot of time weeding out low-quality providers and (c) be better off hiring an in-house writer/team to handle the duties.

Based on my experience, however, most agencies creating in-house writing teams fall short in one of two areas:

1. Even though they have the staff to create worthwhile, meaningful content, they refuse to commit to quality, focusing more on speed than precision, delivering anemic posts that clients soon see through. When the clients bolt, the writing team is disbanded. The problem was neither the writing team nor the clients. The agency simply lacked the heart to do what was right.
2. They create a team of ONLY inexperienced writers, which means the quality of the content is likely to wane over time, and no one is likely to notice until it's too late.

RS

[Chris_Hickman]

Finding a high quality content writer can be difficult, but it's important to find the perfect fit. I would recommend staying away from Fiverr for content, you can find other skills from the site, but I would recommend hiring a well-known writer.

It depends if you want them to work in house, but usually you can find a decent writer on Craigslist, just make sure they provide examples of their work. Another example would be using LinkedIN, the quality of writer you receive from these two sites will be much higher than Fiverr.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I found an amazing writer on Fiverr. She is based in the US and writes content that need no editing on my part at all.

By the same token, I have tried to find others and they have been absolute pants!

I would say you need to trial a few in order to see who comes up with the best work, and for me, I took a dozen writers gigs and gave them all the same article to write and then reviewed these for originality, research, ease of reading, punctuation, etc. Only 2 stood out and the one I chose was the one who kept me updated and asked me questions.

I don't mind if an article is a day or two late in the slightest, but communication was key.

-Andy

[MattAntonino]

I have a couple of great Upwork consultants who freelance with me who you'd have to pry from my cold, dead fingers. I love Upwork and I use it to find new talent. Yes, you do have to sift through some bad but it's worth it. When you find the right people to complete your team it's like magic!

Freelancing, I believe, is the way things will mostly all move in the future. I am happy to jump in now and get ahead of those who don't embrace that future.

[AdamSitePoint]

I've had great experiences finding contributors of all stripe on Upwork (never used Fiverr) — illustrators, copywriters, etc. The best writers won't necessarily be inexpensive, though. It's a recruitment platform like any other.

[ChrisAshton]

We're in the same boat, Rk.

We did toy with this idea simply because it would mean reducing the cost of a piece of content for us meaning we could increase profit and lower our prices at the same time - the perfect solution, right?

We now have a strong in-house content team because, as you said, you really want to have those SMEs that understand specific client needs and topics. We figured the money saved outsourcing content to Fiverr was likely to be lost several times over in lost clients and additional editing time so the real end result wasn't as great as we'd hoped.

Of course, this is pure speculation - we never did try it out.

We also provide regular in-house training to keep upskilling out team - something you can't do with a Fiverr gig.

[kbos2hm]

I work as a freelancer and part of my work became content writing. I was very lucky to be picked up from a London agency It takes a lot just getting the content right for the right audience. It took almost four weeks to get to the part where the content will be used.

Fiver freelancer upwork any others

You don't have to pay until you are happy,i would take full advantage of that.Give a good detailed brief and plenty of time. Use star ratting as a guidance. If you can try to have contact before you start jobs definitely worth using that. One though try these words "long term relationship rather than one off".

I have at the same time used writers and had great results. Common sense dictates on getting work done well. If it looks to good it probably is.

[wealthyminds]

After trying out dozens of content writers from Fiverr and UpWork, we have hired an in-house content team just because the quality of the articles from those websites lack consistency. We are a digital marketing agency, and our clients are suckers for consistency - so we had to hire our in-house teams so we can follow the guidelines on the tone of the article, and create subject matter specialists who knows the client's business like the back of their hands.

I am however interested to know if we can create standardized processes, so we can hire any content writer and make this work with consistency and engaging.

Rk