Creating an Article Writing Service

[mgallone]

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I was idly scanning through the DP forums when I saw a website and decent domain for sale at a BIN of $12. The website content itself was of no real interest to me, however the domain was a nice two worder that I feel I could easily brand- and it gave me an idea for a business.
As a result, I'm setting up an article writing service, and have already been in touch with a number of freelancers who have been 'added to the books' as it were.

I'm posting here to pick everyones' brains. Has anyone done something like this before? Where is the best place to promote such a service? How much wold you be willing to pay for something like this?

Thank you for reading

Marco

[tke71709]

The issue with running an article writing service is that you often spend so much time managing writers and editors that you end up working for peanuts.

I've considered doing the same but I couldn't get the numbers to work.

[Clinton]

tke71709, maybe it's just a matter of scale. Some of the big ones and specialist ones seem to do quite well. mgallone, can you tell us more about the business plan?

[mgallone]

Thanks for the replies

Sure thing Clinton.

Nothing set in stone yet, and it is still very much a work in progress, I'm altering my notes all the time :P
At the moment, my idea is to have a team of freelance writers who are on my database/mailing list. The website will ultimately serve to attract clients, though I envisage a while of going 'door to door' contacting prospective clients as it were in the early stages. When a request is recieved from the client, the job would then be sent out to everyone on the mailing list, and awarded on a first come first serve basis. For pricing, the basic level would be $6-$8 for 500 words, of which $4/$5.50 goes to the writer and $2/$2.50 is retained by the writing service.
As well as having a basic level, I also plan to have 'premium writers'- those with a wealth of experience and skills and who clients would be willing to pay a higher cost for, perhaps to write ebooks and academic articles.

Please let me know what you think

[petertdavis]

tke71709, maybe it's just a matter of scale. Some of the big ones and specialist ones seem to do quite well.

Tell me more about the ones doing quite well, and don't forget the links!

[meathead1234]

I have a friend who nets 5 figures a week with an article writing business. Her articles are cheap, too. She has big teams of writers in Eastern Europe who pump out articles for little cost. There is a ton of demand for decent articles at $5 per 500 words - but as mentioned it is all about scale. You would need a really good system for managing your clients and writers as the only way you'll make it profitable is with a ton of volume going through.

[petertdavis]

I have a friend who nets 5 figures a week with an article writing business. Her articles are cheap, too. She has big teams of writers in Eastern Europe who pump out articles for little cost. There is a ton of demand for decent articles at $5 per 500 words - but as mentioned it is all about scale. You would need a really good system for managing your clients and writers as the only way you'll make it profitable is with a ton of volume going through.

Linky?

[meathead1234]

Linky?

She doesn't publicly advertise very often - most of her clients are word of mouth. I'll send you her email address, although am warning you in advance she's always got various projects on so never know if she's taking on new clients

[Clinton]

Tell me more about the ones doing quite well, and don't forget the links!

Let's put it this way - at least two of them are members here and can drop you a PM if you're in the market for these services. I did look at a business like this last year that wasn't doing too badly but I didn't go ahead with the purchase partly because I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to buy a business that encouraged word monkeys from India and Eastern Europe - not to mention our own home grown semi-literates - to compete with machine generated garbage text.

Sorry, didn't mean to put you off, mgallone. From your point of view, what matters is the sustainability of the business model. I take it you're automating whatever you can including the allocation of writers to clients on a project by project basis. Apparent risks to me seem to include clients doing deals directly with the writers and tempting your writers away (even if you annonymise the parties in your backend writers could still figure out the client from the subjects they're required to write about and the links they are required to insert). I suggest you sign up with a couple of sites that currently offer this service and see how they run it. http://www.wlmarketing.com, for example, has a very slick operation.

The issue with running an article writing service is that you often spend so much time managing writers and editors that you end up working for peanuts.

There's a member here called Ajeet who has had such frustrations managing a workforce like this and could advise on where the main problems lie. His main complaint, if I recall correctly, was the extraordinary unreliability of writers at this cheap end of the market. He would be a good contact for you, drop him a PM if he doesn't find this thread himself.

[Ajeet]

There's a member here called Ajeet who has had such frustrations managing a workforce like this and could advise on where the main problems lie. His main complaint, if I recall correctly, was the extraordinary unreliability of writers at this cheap end of the market. He would be a good contact for you, drop him a PM if he doesn't find this thread himself.

Yup. I did not find my way here. So PM me and I will tell you about my experiences with plagiarism, disappearing authors, machine-spins, and oh, LANGUAGE!