How I Make $200/Month Using Outsourced Content Writers

First off, I know $200 is a very small amount of money, but the example is from just one of my niche sites that is pretty much on complete autopilot.  Also, I am writing this for people that either have been afraid of stepping up and creating niche sites, or that have but haven’t made any money yet.

I know the buzzword of the day is content.  Content is king, but most of us tend to spew it out like it was written by a court jester.  The goal of content is to make your site more engaging and interactive… so you can make money from it!  But if you stink at writing, how can you get enough traffic to the site to make $200/month or more?

Niche website builders run into this issue all the time.  At least I do.   My writing stinks.  My interest level in some of the niches I build is zero.  Do you really feel like writing a 2 thousand word post about electric shavers? (Jason Hill does, but Im sure most people aren’t interested in writing about it!)

So what do you do then?  The answer is OUTSOURCE it.

One of my niche sites is about Family Picture Ideas.  The site isn’t ranked #1 on Google anymore(Damn you Penguin 2.1), and isn’t even on page #1, but I still manage to make about $200 per month from it. In October, I made $202.07.  See below (please note I cut out other sites ‘that made more and less than this site‘ from this list and I scratched out metrics other than earnings, otherwise no photoshopping is involved)

Adsense October 2013

I know, I can read your thoughts.  Outsourcing is going to get me an article with horrible english and will look like it was written by a 2nd grader.  Sometimes, yes!  If you just go onto fiverr and don’t get specific about what you need, then yes, that is absolutely the case!  But as you can see from my site, the content is decent enough to drive traffic.

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To help make sure you get the right kind of content, I put together a short list of things you should do to make sure you get quality in return for your investment dollars.

Be Specific.

Always try to include “special instructions” to the writers when you submit your projects. Don’t just tell someone that you want an article written about Niche Site X.  Tell them what keywords to focus on, what type of quality you expect and what perspective it should be written from.  The more detailed instructions you include, the greater chance you’ll get exactly what you want, the first time.

Timing is Everything With Writers.

Monday’s are typically the best day to submit article requests to content writers, as that is when the writer’s project queue is at its lowest during the week.  If you want, you can also send in your requests during the weekend.  The lower the queue, the faster writers will write your articles.  If you are looking for a quick turnaround, it’s best to not submit your requests mid week when the rest of the working world does it.

Find a Favorite Writer.

Most content writing companies have a large network of writers at their disposal.  Often times, you will have a specific writer assigned to your project, and the company will share that persons name or assign some sort of code for the writer.  This will allow you to go back to that same author for future projects if needed.  The benefit here is that the writer will become more familiar with what your expectations are, and even more importantly, they will be familiar with your content already.  This will keep the articles from being superficial pieces every time.  After a while, you may find that you have built your own network of quality writers.

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You Get What You Pay For.

It’s great to be able to say that you only pay three dollars for a five hundred word article.  But if it looks like the article was written by someone from Indonesia, then it really isn’t worth the three bucks even.  The best way to work with content writers is to look for someone that will cut you a deal for the first few articles, with the understanding that future articles will cost more.  For instance, find a writer that will charge you $10-15 per 500 words if you are looking for decent quality, but tell them the first 2 articles need to be written for $5 each so you can evaluate their quality.  Show the person your website and let them know you are looking for a long term writer.  If the writer is decent, they will go for it because they see the value in more consistent work.

To Err is Human.

I’m not talking about letting your writers off for poor work… though you should be fair and considerate when dealing with them.  What I am talking about is the fact that people make mistakes all the time when typing things into the search engines… and sometimes you can find you have a better ranking position if you use the misspelled words in your article.  I try to avoid doing this too much because my OCD kicks into high gear when I see stuff like this, but it actually can work.   So if you happen to be writing an article about electric shavers, electic shavers, and electric shavrs, you may find that you get more traffic than you would if you spelled it right.  This is also a good method for use when building content for web 2.0 properties where it might not be as important.

Avoid Article Spinning.

If you want to put content out there and you really don’t care how good the content or english is… rather than spinning articles I would suggest you just have the article rewritten a few times.  You can find very affordable writers out there that will write a 500 word article for $2, so why not use them?  Google has gotten tougher on sites that have awful content (spun articles) and you should avoid them.

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Be Prepared To Invest.

If you are really looking to $200/month from a niche site, then you need to be prepared to invest.   I set a goal of $500/month for every website I build… so why should I only be willing to spend $50 on the creation of the site and its content?  The answer is I shouldn’t!!

Anyone investing money offline would be thrilled with a 10% return usually, but when it comes to the web people expect returns that are a minimum of 500%.  Why?  Be realistic with the business/niche site/project you are building and shoot for a 100% max return.  If you invest $100 a month and get $200 back, you are doing it right!!  For $100, you can get 10 articles written per month for $10 each.  The truth is, for this site, I don’t invest in 10 articles per month because I prefer to squeeze out as much profit as possible.

One last thing, be patient and be prepared to work hard!  Don’t expect to make $200 from your one hundred dollar investment the first month.  Stocks rarely double within a month, so again, don’t expect those kinds of returns.  If you can be breaking even after 90 days, you should be in the black in no time and ready to move onto another project with this one basically on auto pilot.

Am I missing anything? What have you found works best with content writers?  Tell me in the comments.

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