How to Outsource Article Writing: Freelance Writing Sites

Hiring somebody to write articles for you can be great when you want build up a website's content more quickly, if article writing is not a strength of yours or if you simply have too many ideas on what to write about and not enough time to write them all.

Outsourcing your content can be a great option when done right, but finding good quality freelance writers can be a minefield, especially if your budget is not very high. This article lists both very cheap places to hire writers from, as well as more expensive websites.

For every good freelance writer, there are dozens of people who are not native English speakers or producing spun content.

Spun content is when an existing article is altered to try to fool search engines into thinking that it is a different article. It is done usually with programs, which do things such as use synonyms for words.

It is almost always poor quality that doesn't quite make sense.

Google has cracked down on spun content, and having it on your site can be damaging.

Many online forums have people offering to write articles very cheaply.

Most guarantee that the content is original, SEO friendly and high quality, but the old saying 'you get what you pay for' is usually true. Reviews posted in the thread should be read with a grain of salt- it is easy to fake reviews in a forum. However, since the content is so cheap, it's a small gamble to take.

Order a small amount of writing first to decide whether or not the person's writing is up to your standards.

Two forums to try are:

• Digital Point Forum
• Warrior Forum

It can be a challenge finding good quality photos to use on your website for free legally. Click here for an article that lists some of the best places to find free photos to use.

Fiverr has thousands of people offering to do various things with a base price of just $5. Mixed among the novelty gigs like 'I will sing happy birthday dressed like a homeless person' or 'I will draw your pet' there are many gigs that could be used to help your business such as:

• logo design
• banner design
• website design
• testimonial videos
• translations
• business card design
• getting Facebook likes
• getting Twitter followers
• backlinking
• article writing

with a base price of just $5. Sellers have the option to charge more for 'extras', which many of them do. For example, a testimonial video may cost you $5. But if you want it in high quality, that's an extra $10. If you want them dressed professionally, that's another $10.

Fiverr can be a great place to find writers who will write articles cheaply, but be aware that lots offer low quality articles with either spun content or nonsensical English.

For the best chance of success, choose a seller with lots of reviews on the gig (preferably over 1000) and read through the negative feedback before ordering.

Once you have received your article, check if it is plagiarized through Copyscape.

Constant Content is a website that has very high standards. All their submissions are proofread by people with very high standards- they will stop reading the article and reject it if it has even a single grammatical error.

Quality comes at a cost, however. For a unique article, expect to pay at least $30-$50. Some specialist articles are priced at over $100!

The authors set their own price for their articles, and you can also make a request if none of the articles on the site fit your needs. You can include budget information in your request.

You have the option to pay less and just pay for usage rights if you wish. I do not recommend this if you are hoping to get search engine traffic to your article, because Google will likely penalize your article for being duplicate content if your article can be found elsewhere on the web.

Elance is a very well established website where you can find freelance programmers, mobile developers, marketers, designers and writers. It boasts that over $900 million dollars has been earned through their website to date.

Elance allows you to contact several writers with the details about what you are after, and they can provide a quote on how much they will charge you for the work. You can see lots of information about the person you are hiring, such as what tests they have passed, feedback from previous customers, their portfolio and more.

Odesk is similar to Elance in that there are many people searching for freelance writing jobs, and you can view the work history, feedback and test scores of the potential writers of your content.

Work can be paid for either hourly or with a fixed price for the project.

There are many places where you can try to find ghost writers. In the end, there may be a little bit of trial and error as you try to avoid article spinners and find a good quality content writer who is within your budget range. However, the good content writers are out there, and if you manage to find one this can significantly improve your website by speeding up the content creation process.