Will You Get the Results You Need?

The answer is: yes. And the answer is also: no. The correct answer will depend on what you need your content to do or to accomplish. Let me explain.

The answer is yes if:

• You have a personal or family site and don’t need professional writing. However, I don’t see why you wouldn’t write it yourself. You can do that, you know.
• You run a hobby blog or special-interest site, have cool ideas that you’d like to share, but have trouble expressing yourself. You’re not out to make money, just friends. For a couple of bucks, they can probably make you look really good.
• You have a product or service and really don’t care if you sell anything or not (see also: hobby blog).

The answer is NO if:

• You are serious about your business, your success and your profitability.
• Period.
• End of story.

What You Don’t or Rarely Get With a Discount Service

Please don’t get me wrong. There are discount article services that are legitimate, honest businesses. I know because I’ve written for one or two on occasion years ago. There are a few good writers on these sites that can write passable text, good text and even great, technically perfect text.

A few even care about the client. However, there are even more that can’t and don’t. Most write to fill an order, not fit the client. Getting the right one is a crapshoot.

Roll the dice, old buddy!

Remember this: Great sounding, technically perfect text does not automatically guarantee effective content and copy by any means. There is more to it than that.

Much more.

Actually, discount text services are better for the writers than they are for the clients. A writer can get his feet wet, test out his writing skills and get paid for it to boot! Many will figure out that it’s a good hobby for them, but not a vocation. Of course, many will just quit.

A few will discover that writing is like breathing to them, a necessity for survival. Catch them while you can because they will soon strike out on their own as real freelance writers.

There Are Other Limitations As Well

If you are thinking about entrusting the success of your business to this type of service, you need to know about some other important drawbacks as well. To begin with, the writers are usually separated into writing skill classifications, like 1 through 5, for example. The lower the classification, the cheaper the price per order. Often the writing quality goes down too.

But the real cost may end up being more than you bargained for. Go ahead, do the math: Poor writing = ineffective copy and lousy sales. Ineffective copy + lousy sales = lost revenue.

Can everybody say, “You get what you pay for”? I knew you could!

But wait! There’s more!

1.  You often can’t communicate directly with the writer. That’s bad because communication is vital for success. Many services discourage and even prohibit direct contact between the client and the writer. They only allow contact through their own in-house messaging systems.

Even then these messages are monitored and sometimes even censored, I mean, edited so that you can’t get too close to the author. According to them, this is done for the privacy and security of both you and their writers. Yeah, right!

2. You might actually get some dialog or discussion about your order with the writer on some of these sites. Usually, however, there is little or no real collaboration. It’s not the fault of the author; they just can’t afford it.

Remember that they are getting paid less than what you are actually paying for the work; the service also takes out a chunk. How much time could you afford to spend working with a client if you were getting paid minimum wage or less for your services? Tick, tock, tick, tock!

3. If you ask for a revision, you may or may not get it. If the writers’ forum on one of these sites is any indicator, most of the revision requests get tossed back into the order pile for someone else to take a crack at. Even the highest paid discount authors will admit to that. I’ve seen it in writing.

That means you are stuck back at square one, hoping someone else will pick it up quickly and get it done right. Why won’t a writer work with you on a revision? See point #2. By the way, “The client can’t write worth a flip,” is a common objection given for not revising an order. Huh? Isn’t that why they hired you, writer?

Of course, not being able to communicate effectively only exacerbates the situation. Besides, how many times would you rewrite an article that only paid you ten bucks or even less? The pace is frantic: order in/order out. Lather, rinse, repeat! That’s why these services are often called content mills. Grind it out, Gus!

Your Business Deserves a Professional Writer

You need content and copy that delivers results. You need content and copy that fulfills your needs, your goals and your desires. You need someone who is willing and able to work one-on-one with you. You need a professional, plain and simple.

Whether they write full-time or part-time, professional freelance writers have one thing in common. They know that they won’t be successful if their clients are not successful. The discount-service author doesn’t know if he helped you succeed or not; he probably doesn’t even care. Next order, please!

Discount writers get paid to put words down “on paper” in the right order. Professional copywriters make their living by helping others to succeed  with effective content, by helping YOU succeed.

Which one do you really want to trust with the success of your business?

Steve Maurer

Article copyright 2012 -  Maurer Copywriting

Steve Maurer, Maurer Copywriting
Email – steve@maurer-copywriting.com
Questions? – info@maurer-copywriting.com

Click here to go to my contact page.

PS. You absolutely will not want to miss the next post, or any of them for that matter! If you are one of the few who haven’t signed up for automatic updates, just drop your email address in the “Get Important Article Updates!” box.

First, you’ll get a friendly email asking you to confirm your totally free subscription. After that, you will get an email notification when I post a new article. Don’t worry; should you decide that you don’t wish to receive any more notifications, there is an unsubscribe link with every email. But I guarantee you won’t want to miss a single one! Thanks for signing up!