Resources for Articles and Other Written Content For You To Use

Not sure you have it in you

to write articles, eNewsletters, hubpages, and squidoo content regularly?

Do you find yourself not looking forward to the 2 days a week you have on your schedule for writing? Or worse, are you skipping your writing altogether?

Not to worry! If you're not the creative genius you always hoped you'd be, you're in luck. You don't have to be a writing machine if you know where to look and what your options are.

In addition to the content you can write on your own, here are some resources to help you create content without having to be a creative wizard 24/7. Plus, they have the benefit of being real time-savers, which is always a good thing, right?

These sites provide you with a ton of content for free or very inexpensive. These can be used by you to build on a topic that you either have some of your own content to add to or not. They can and should be modified before you post them. These can be a great resource to add more "meat" to your content and to build on an idea you already have. You'll want to tweak and optimize the articles to help search engines find them.

Often the articles have not been written with any particular keyword density in mind. This is a good thing. It's means your articles will be unique. You can also add your own tone and personality.

The downside is that you are not the only one using these. If you leave them completely as-is, you'll have competition out there for the same content, which is bad, but only if you want to rank high in the search engines for that content. If you do, you'll need to add a lot of additional value for users that isn't available on any of those other sites. It's also fine to syndicate content without adding value if your site's business model doesn't rely on search engine traffic.

Doing a search on "plr articles" or "private label articles" brings up a lot of sites. Some of them are niche oriented, such as Food articles, or Real Estate articles. You'll even find a variety of PLR content types for purchase, such as E-Books, E-Courses, AutoResponder series, etc.

To top it off, many PLR sites restrict the number of members, thus narrowing the chance you'll be using content that 1000's of others are also using.

Here are just a few:

1. http://www.allprivatelabelcontent.com/
2. http://www.niche-content-packages.com/
3. http://www.yescontentisking.com/
4. http://www.niche-health-products.com/index.php?afid=26
5. http://www.infogoround.com/
6. http://www.fresh-niche-content.com/
7. http://www.plr-direct.com/
8. http://www.financeplrcontent.com/
9. http://www.plrpro.com/
10. http://www.onlyplrarticles.com/

If you want completely original content, consider using these resources. You'll pay more for this type of service than you would for PLR content, but you can get great quality original material for less than it would cost you in time if you wrote it all yourself. Always ask for samples of their work and references, if they have some. You'll want to make sure their writing style is a good fit for you and that there are no language barrier issues. Not all matches are made in heaven and you may need to go through a few writers before you find the one (or two) that suits you best. Cheaper is not always better and generally speaking, for articles of 800-1000 words you can expect to pay from $18 to $50 per article. If this seems high to you, always stop and ask yourself this simple question -- "How much is my time worth?"

1. http://www.need-an-article.com/ You pay $10 a month, plus you have to buy credits to have certain kind of articles written. Example: a 550 word (or less) article costs $5.52, and it goes up from there. You provide a title, outline of what you want covered in the article, a list of resources for them to gather research from (other articles, blog posts, etc.), and let them know what type of audience the article is intended for. You'll be spending some time yourself just getting this information together, but it's worth it in the end.
2. Hire a student. You don't even have to go any further than your own backyard. Look for writing classes at a local college and see if students need any intern work or real-world assignments. Or perhaps a teacher is looking to make a little extra money.
3. http://www.craigslist.com/. Not just for buying your next dining room set, Craigslist can be a place to look for people hiring out their writing skills. Students post here, as well as budding or hobby writers.
4. http://www.elance.com/.
5. http://www.guru.com/
6. Google 'article writers' or 'ghostwriter' to get a list of potential writers.
7. http://www.warriorforum.com/ has The Copywriting Forum where you might be able to find writers offering these kinds of services.

If you want the best of both worlds, try these ideas on for size:

1. hire a writer to rewrite your PLR articles
2. try an article rewriting or spinning service, such as http://www.humanspinner.com/ or http://www.dupefreepro.com/
3. use Microsoft Word's synonym feature to swap words in your articles for other words that mean the same thing. This is pretty time-consuming, but if you're not in a position to pay anyone to do this for you it's better than nothing. To find synonyms of a word, simply right click on the word>point to Synonym and select one of the new words. Simple, effective, free, but time-consuming. Not sure what versions this feature is in, but I've used it in Word 2007.

If you're feeling a bit like you want to explore other options for maximizing PLR content and juicing up a blog, check this out - http://blog.plr-articles.net/ . There's something new there that they are talking about called Syndicate Kahuna - posted 9-22-08. It's free and there's a limit to the number of people they'll allow to sign up. Now, I'm not endorsing anything. I've never even tried it, at least not yet. It just looked interesting enough for me to share it with you. http://www.syndicatekahuna.com/. This is time-sensitive, so you'll want to check it out soon.

Use something like http://www.copyscape.com/ to see if you're getting something that is already in use or is something that is unique. Also, I've just copied and pasted a few paragraphs of an article into Google to see if it finds those exact same words on other sites. This will be a red flag that you'll want to find someone else to do your writing, and quickly.

Many of the resources and ideas I've just listed are a direct result of answers I received from a LinkedIn question I posted on the subject. It is a fantastic testament to the power of using your social networks. I couldn't have been more pleased with the quantity and quality of responses I received.