Being Realistic About Outsourcing Content Creation
Outsourcing content creation is popular with website owners, bloggers, and article marketers.
Many of whom do not create all or even any of their own content.
They use a ghost writer to do it for them.
Whilst outsourcing content creation is popular, those commissioning the work need to be realistic in their expectations.
I will illustrate the point I am making with two recent examples of requests for outsourcing content creation made to a well-known website, or content mill as such sites are pejoratively called.
The first example was...
A blog post This particular job was to write a 300 word blog post about online qualitative studies for a research company, which paid $1.
63.
Further more, the job was to be completed within 3 hours.
The requester had given some special instructions that must be fully complied with.
These instructions can be summarized as requiring:
I knew almost nothing about the subject.
So I had to find out quickly and, after an hour's researching, I had amassed more than sufficient material to begin planning the article.
Thirty minutes later saw the completion of understanding and sorting my source material, which was primarily scientific in nature, and the creation of a plan for the article.
Twenty minutes later saw the completion of the rough draft of the article, which was too long and needed editing.
Another twenty minutes saw the completion of the writing stage of the 300 word article.
Proofreading and correcting spelling and grammatical errors took a further 10 minutes.
A final check was made to ensure I had complied with all of the requester's special instructions.
After two hours and twenty-five minutes of work, I was ready to upload the completed article.
Uploading takes a few minutes.
So from start to finish, this job took two and a half hours.
For me, this was a research exercise.
However, somebody did accept the job.
If that person was in the USA, at minimum wage rates, the task would have to have been completed in just seven and a half minutes, which is impossible.
That leads to some interesting conclusions:
My second example comes from the same content mill, and is...
A non-fiction eBook The job was to write a non-fiction eBook of not less than 20,000 words on a given topic.
The pay was $450 and the book was to be completed and delivered to the requester in no more than 5 days.
The requester had given some special instructions that must be fully complied with.
These instructions can be summarized as requiring:
I knew quite a bit about each of the subjects I wrote about.
Nevertheless, researching the longer of the two books took me five days to complete.
I had to be an expert on the subject, which meant amassing a great deal of material on the topic.
Before I could even plan my book, I had to know far more about my subject than I would have space to write about.
Understanding the material, sorting out which of it I was going to use, and creating a plan of the book took a further day.
On day seven I started writing the rough draft of the book.
Writing at the rate of 7,000 to 8,000 words a day, this draft took three days to write.
Initial proofreading, editing and correcting spelling and grammatical errors, of which there were many, was done on the following day.
Day eleven was spent in proofreading the printed manuscript again to pick up any errors missed on the first run through and re-editing the script.
A friend proofread the script on day twelve and found errors I had missed.
These were corrected and I read through a printed version of the corrected manuscript again.
I could have combined the actions on days ten, eleven and twelve so that they took place on one day.
Alternatively, I could have outsourced this part of the job and six working days would have been required to complete the task.
A realistic price would have been charged for this work to be done.
If I had outsourced the proofreading, it would have taken at least 16 days to get to the point I was at.
Writing a book is not the same as writing a short article or blog post.
The level of skill, and the attention to detail required is much higher.
Expecting a freelance writer to research, write, and deliver a good quality, error free manuscript of 20,000 words in just five days is unrealistic.
What can we learn from these examples? I think there are two points about which we must have realistic expectations:
Instead, it should be a harmonious relationship in which high quality content is created in return for fair reward.
Many of whom do not create all or even any of their own content.
They use a ghost writer to do it for them.
Whilst outsourcing content creation is popular, those commissioning the work need to be realistic in their expectations.
I will illustrate the point I am making with two recent examples of requests for outsourcing content creation made to a well-known website, or content mill as such sites are pejoratively called.
The first example was...
A blog post This particular job was to write a 300 word blog post about online qualitative studies for a research company, which paid $1.
63.
Further more, the job was to be completed within 3 hours.
The requester had given some special instructions that must be fully complied with.
These instructions can be summarized as requiring:
- good quality;
- original article;
- based on the writer's own research; and
- written in American Standard English by a native English speaker.
I knew almost nothing about the subject.
So I had to find out quickly and, after an hour's researching, I had amassed more than sufficient material to begin planning the article.
Thirty minutes later saw the completion of understanding and sorting my source material, which was primarily scientific in nature, and the creation of a plan for the article.
Twenty minutes later saw the completion of the rough draft of the article, which was too long and needed editing.
Another twenty minutes saw the completion of the writing stage of the 300 word article.
Proofreading and correcting spelling and grammatical errors took a further 10 minutes.
A final check was made to ensure I had complied with all of the requester's special instructions.
After two hours and twenty-five minutes of work, I was ready to upload the completed article.
Uploading takes a few minutes.
So from start to finish, this job took two and a half hours.
For me, this was a research exercise.
However, somebody did accept the job.
If that person was in the USA, at minimum wage rates, the task would have to have been completed in just seven and a half minutes, which is impossible.
That leads to some interesting conclusions:
- Contrary to the requester's instruction, the writer was unlikely to have been a native English speaker and probably lived in a country where wages and the cost of living are low.
- Instead of doing original research, it is probable that existing content was recycled.
My second example comes from the same content mill, and is...
A non-fiction eBook The job was to write a non-fiction eBook of not less than 20,000 words on a given topic.
The pay was $450 and the book was to be completed and delivered to the requester in no more than 5 days.
The requester had given some special instructions that must be fully complied with.
These instructions can be summarized as requiring:
- good quality;
- original content;
- based on the writer's original research without using PLR content; and
- written in American Standard English by a native English speaker.
I knew quite a bit about each of the subjects I wrote about.
Nevertheless, researching the longer of the two books took me five days to complete.
I had to be an expert on the subject, which meant amassing a great deal of material on the topic.
Before I could even plan my book, I had to know far more about my subject than I would have space to write about.
Understanding the material, sorting out which of it I was going to use, and creating a plan of the book took a further day.
On day seven I started writing the rough draft of the book.
Writing at the rate of 7,000 to 8,000 words a day, this draft took three days to write.
Initial proofreading, editing and correcting spelling and grammatical errors, of which there were many, was done on the following day.
Day eleven was spent in proofreading the printed manuscript again to pick up any errors missed on the first run through and re-editing the script.
A friend proofread the script on day twelve and found errors I had missed.
These were corrected and I read through a printed version of the corrected manuscript again.
I could have combined the actions on days ten, eleven and twelve so that they took place on one day.
Alternatively, I could have outsourced this part of the job and six working days would have been required to complete the task.
A realistic price would have been charged for this work to be done.
If I had outsourced the proofreading, it would have taken at least 16 days to get to the point I was at.
Writing a book is not the same as writing a short article or blog post.
The level of skill, and the attention to detail required is much higher.
Expecting a freelance writer to research, write, and deliver a good quality, error free manuscript of 20,000 words in just five days is unrealistic.
What can we learn from these examples? I think there are two points about which we must have realistic expectations:
- We should expect to pay the proper rate for the job required to be done.
Good quality, original research based content cannot be obtained for a pittance.
If we are unwilling to pay someone else a realistic rate for doing the work for us, we should do it ourselves. - We should not under-estimate how long it takes to do the work properly.
That means we should allow sufficient time for the task to be performed.
If we genuinely have need for the task to be performed in a shorter time, we should expect to pay a premium for this service.
Instead, it should be a harmonious relationship in which high quality content is created in return for fair reward.
