How Much Will Someone Pay To Be Blogged

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What should your budget be when you are ready to outsource some of your content creation? In other words…

Whatshould you expect to pay a blog writer?

The problem is, there's no one answer to that question. Just like you could pay vastly different prices for a pair of pants at different stores and price points, so too you can pay vastly different rates for a blog writing service. So let's break it down by what youcould pay:

Dollar Store Blog Writing Services

Let's assume you already know that if you head over to Fiverr or Upwork and hire someone to write you a blog post at $5 a pop, you're going to get what you pay for: as in, not much. Those writers are frequently not native English speakers, plagiarism is rampant, they probably have little to no copywriting education, know nothing about online sales, and you can forget about SEO. You're not going to go that route, right? I'm not sure we can be friends if you do—not because it hurts my writerly feelings (although it does a little bit), but because it's just really bad business strategy.

Wal-Mart Blog Writing Services

In doing some research into my own competition recently, I discovered a couple of services out there that do pretty much what I do: they provide a business blog posts for a fee. Except, their fee is considerably lower than mine. In fact, I've seen them as low as $89 per month for four blog posts. (Which comes out to about $22 a post.)

How do they do it? They have economies of scale on their side (just like Wal-Mart). For one thing, they hire a big team of writers. I use the term hire loosely. Their writers do what's called "working on spec," which is short for speculation, which means they write the articles with no guarantee of being paid.

The way at least one of these services works is like this: a client comes in and says, "I want a blog post about the real estate market in Atlanta," and then a team of hungry writers alljump on it, and the client gets a selection of blog posts on their topic. They choose one, and that writer is paid for her work. In theory, I suppose the writer could choose to buy all of them, maybe over the course of a few weeks, and all the writers would get paid, but there's no guarantee of that for the writers.

Well, first of all, that's pretty crappy for the writers. Based on the prices these websites charge their customers, the writer isn't getting paid very much even when their articles are chosen. Remember, the company takes a cut, too, so the writer is probably getting paid well south of $20 per post.

That means, in order to make any kind of money doing this work, they need to churn out these blog posts as quickly as possible, which means doing as little research and prep work as possible. They're also probably going to be on the shorter side of whatever is the required minimum word count for the service (where's the incentive for the writer to go longer or more in-depth?) and the content will probably be basically a rehash of the top hits on Google for the same subject. The writer can't afford to spend much time getting to know the client or her customer, and the client will probably get a different writer—different style, different voice—every week.

I can't truly judge the quality of the work being turned out by these services because I haven't seen it first hand. (Which is also why I'm not using the names of the companies—I'm not out to stir up bad blood, here.) All I can do is draw some logical conclusions based on the facts.

JCPenney Blog Writing Services

Then you come to the writers you can find out there—some on sites like Elance or even Craigslist—who will write a blog post for $50–$200.

This is the bare minimum I would pay for a blog post or article, personally.

At this price, you can probably expect the person to have some experience, though not much. It might be a college student or recent grad looking to make some cash and a name for themselves. It might be someone moonlighting on the side. It might be someone who has decided that they're going to hang out their shingle (digitally speaking) as a writer, and are just getting started.

You'll probably get around 300 to maybe 500 words for this price, maybe they'll do some research. If you cultivate a relationship with this person, they'll get to know your business and your ideal reader better over time. They may or may not have any copywriting experience. Basically, it's hit or miss; at this price you could get a great piece of work or a really bad one.

If you can find someone who writes well, is creative, does the research, communicates your business and passion, and does it all in a timely manner for this price, may I suggest that you negotiate a contract locking in that price for the next ten years? Because chances are as soon as they figure out how in demand their services are, their prices will go up. (That's what happened to me, anyway.)

Nordstrom Blog Writing Services

These are the people who really know what they're doing—and they've got the experience and the education to back it up. Their prices will probably be around $250 and up. But for that price you will get a totally original, well researched article that's specifically crafted for your business and your customers. It will probably be upwards of 600 words, contain organic SEO and longtail search phrases, and will come nicely formatted (with headlines, subheads, bullets, etc.) ready to plunk down into WordPress or your CMS of choice.

If you develop a relationship with this writer over time, her work will only get better as she gets to know you, your business, and your customers in more detail.

An ebook from Internet marketing giant Kapost reports that marketers should expect to pay at least $150 per post from a reputable freelancer. For a long-form blog post or article (2,000+ words), they suggest budgeting $2,000.

And OK, yes, I might be a bit biased here—this is how I make my living, after all. But for our clients who put us on retainer or pre-purchase a package, our rates per post come out closer to $250–$500 per post, depending on their needs. I've set my prices there because it's a price that seems advantageous to both me and my clients. We shoot for long-term relationships with our clients, and we structure our fees so that we can spend as much time and energy as we need researching and writing—without costing the clients more.

(For more information on our services and how to work with us, click here.)

Rodeo Drive Blog Writing Services

Can you find writers who will charge a whole lot more for blog writing? Absolutely.

I recently chatted with a colleague who told me she was using a reputable company referred to her by a BIG name in our circles, and they were charging her $5,500 for four posts per month. I asked her if they were doing all the research, coming up with the topics, the strategy, promoting the posts etc. for that price…

Nope.

She was literally making them a long video with all her thoughts, which they then turned into a blog post — that she still had to edit, post and promote. Plus she was the one coming up with all the strategy behind her content marketing efforts.

Another anecdote I recently heard was from a business operations specialist, who told the tale of a small company who was paying $40,000 a month to a marketing company to write their blog posts and manage their social media.

So, yeah. You can certainly pay a whole lot more for blog writing services, too. I'm just not sure what you actually get for all that moo-lah.

The bottom line: How to decide how much to pay.

As with anything in this world, there's a certain amount of "you get what you pay for" at work when hiring someone to help you create content. Could you find a great writer for a very inexpensive rate? Absolutely. They exist. But you're going to have to worka lot harder to find them, and probably hire some not-so great ones along the way. (To me, that's a waste of time and money…)

Here's what I would suggest you ask yourself as you're considering who to hire to help you out (and how much to pay them):

How much time/energy do you currently spend creating content yourself? What would that time be worth to you or your business if you could be doing other things—like serving clients or getting new ones?
Do you already have someone on staff that might be a good fit for blogging? Sometimes there's an employee who would really thrive as your company's chief content creator. Sometimes not.
What is your overall goal with your blog? If your blog's purpose isonly to help you rank higher in search listings, paying a lower price for articles that feature your preferred keywords might be fine. However, if you'd like more out of your blog (growing your list, converting readers to customers, amplifying your voice, growing your tribe), you're going to need to expect more of your content creator.
What is the ROI of a blog post for your business? If you know that a blog post that generates leads is worth money in the bank to your biz, you can more easily justify the cost of creating it.
How savvy is your reader? If your ideal readers are total newbies to your niche, you won't have to worry about how familiar your writer is with your business. If, however, your readers are more sophisticated in your topic, you need a writer willing and able to put in the time to become an expert in your field.
How much involvement do you want to maintain in the process?If you're looking to give up content creation completely—from coming up with topics to posting to Facebook (or soup to nuts as they say)—you'd better budget to pay well for that convenience. If you're still interested in being very involved in the process, you might be able to get away with paying less.
Are you comfortable creating the strategy for your content marketing? You can invest in an expert to help you with the strategy, or do it yourself.

In short, there's no one right answer here. Content is an investment in your business—just like anything else, from graphic design to the computers you work on or the manufacturer you use to produce your widgets. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, you will want to make sure that your investment is aligned with your business goals.

If you're interested in chatting with me about how partnering with a content creator could free you up to work and play in your zone of genius, I'd love to talk with you.

I know pricing talk can be a little controversial, so if you have thoughts, I'd love to hear them in the comments!

Photo Credit: Giovanni 'jjjohn' Orlando via Compfight cc