The embarrassingly easy secret to massive website content - outsourcing

In recent years, a rapidly growing trend has emerged in the world of content writing. Companies are now outsourcing their content production to elsewhere in order to keep costs low and maintain quality. Outsourcing can be for any sort of task involving writing; large companies like Amazon have even used it to increase output of translated articles from 300,000 words per day to as many as 1.5 million words.

Here at Canopy, we've been pretty insistent on seeking out quality content writers. Earlier this year, we were approached to write a guest post for a well-known website. The site in question was aiming to publish at least one "proper" article per week and needed three articles written by us as well as some promotional writings. At the time of writing, the client's budget was less than $500 per article for Writer A and $1,500 per article for Writer B - both writers were highly experienced and had in fact written other articles for the same client before. It was extremely important to us that these writers were engaged and happy with their jobs so it made sense that we'd pick them over cheaper writers. We engaged them and sent our article over for proofreading.

For Writer A, we sent over a draft of the article. There was a lot less to proofread than what we'd usually expect: the article had been written exactly how we wanted it so no major changes were needed. However, Writer B's draft didn't mesh with Writer A's; it was very different from our own style and had mistakes in it. Editor realised that this wasn't the same writer, so they asked us which writer was to blame for whatever mistakes there were in Writer B's draft. We asked that they give us a second chance, that if we wanted to hire Writer B again for future articles then we would just have to pay her double. We said based on our experience of Writer B, she was an excellent writer who deserved to be paid.

Writer A's draft received no changes and not only did Writer B receive a check worth $400 and a month's free writing time from the client, but she also got her own article published in the same press release. It was titled "Top 10 ways to write an article so you don't make mistakes". How awesome is that? The article got over 500 views on Facebook alone. The client was extremely happy with her work and our high quality standards, but even more importantly, Writer B was very happy with the results she saw from this one article. She thanked us, saying that it had taken her over a month to write and she'd had "no idea how to write for a client like that in the beginning".

Now that's what we call satisfying work! What's my point? You can't just ask any writer who's willing to write for you or cheap prices to churn out 500 words. You can't ask any writer who will do the job just because you said so.

Conclusion: Paying a lot doesn't really guarantee high quality. To get that, you need someone with the right attitude. You need someone who has experience in your specific niche or industry. You need someone who is writing for themself, not for you. Canopy helps achieve all of these so our writers keep coming back to us time after time.

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