Everything around me is getting costly with at least 10 % annual rate. But I can see that price for articles is getting reduced. I get sufficient work at $1 per 100 words but then there are people ready to work at low rates ($3 per 500 words or even more less) . How do you guys see this in future ? Is this expected to change or will it get worse in future ?

As far as i am concerned, article writing will never go out of demand

There are lot of clients who are willing to pay more that 10$ for 100 words

When the rates are low, the quality will also get low

So you will not have real competition if you can provide high quality articles !

Demand will increase year on year, an evergreen market!

Without written content there would be no websites...

If anything prices will increase for good quality content.

I agree with MadMaddy.

Those people who work at low rates may be desperate, but as soon as more clients will flow in, the rates will go high again.

I see this is a different perspective.

There will be even more content writers as the years pass, much more then the demand for them can provide.
Currently there are plenty of writers that can "preform" very decent work on the fly, meaning they can charge a very competitive rate and still make money.

I foresee the content getting better and better but the price for it will stay low.

Just my two cents.

This world is largely governed by a basic law of Economics: Increase in supply leads to fall in price.
In terms of content writing this would be applicable as increase in the number of writers leads to rise in competition. With respect to rise in competition, there wouldn't be a similar rise in demand for content ( it's an assumption and well-observed one), which would lead to considerably less amount of work for writers. Less work, more writers would lead to desperation, as you can see on DP and Warrior forum. Desperation leads an individual to stoop at the level, which he/she would have never imagined in his/her worst dreams. In short, the price per article would fall considerably in future due to increase in competition. There's no market force or an agency, which controls pricing in the field of content writing, so everyone has right to offer services at any give price. Although it sucks, but it's a brutal fact and we have to accept it.

But, we must not forget that there's a league of writers who would be comparatively lesser impacted by this competition. This league includes writers offering elite quality articles. So, if you want to surpass the competition, then join this league. I remember Steven Covey saying 5% of Americans earn as much as the remaining 95% of Americans earn. He went on to prove his statement. Take for instance this forum. There are certain set of members who are not active on the forum generally, but end up earning 10-20 times than an average Blackhatter. It's simple maths. Competition is fairly higher at lower level, but as you raise your level, competition reduces.

people who pay low rate for articles will regret that at the end and start looking for the good content even with high prices.

As of Dec 2012, there were 634 millions websites in the world,
And by 13 Feb 2013, there were at least 14.45 billion pages
indexed by search engines. And I believe more websites are
being added on a daily basis. So generally, I do not think
that the content writing field is saturated. I think it is a matter
of knowing how to find clients.Just because forums and
freelance bidding sites are saturated doesn't mean that there
are no clients who are willing to pay good money for quality
articles.

I have heard that some people sell their writing services at prices like $3 for 500 words or even for 700, 800 words and that the people buying them are happy with the work they get. I myself am dubious about this. If someone is looking for good content, the kind of writing they want on their main site, I think that's close to impossible to find for any less than a cent a word. Less than that is practically sweatshop writing in my view. So pitch quality at a mid-range price and you will find work.

How to find writers to pay?

Originally Posted by stocksonwallstreet

How to find writers to pay?

You can check the BST section on this website to find out good content writers. Again, there are various other forums that can help you to find writers to pay.

Good writers will always command high rates. If you're a solid native-English writer and you have things to say about topics that people are buying, go to Constant Content.

Otherwise, you can make decent money at content mills if you really really really want to. It's not easy and there's a lot of BS to put up with sometimes.

If you want visitors to stay on your site you are going to need high quality content. The $3 articles definitely cause very high bounce rates because once a visitor skims the first line or two and realize that the quality is poor, they immediately leave.

I reckon the rates of the lower quality articles (less than 1$/100 words) will decrease even more whilst the higher quality articles will stay where they are since the supply of the lower quality articles tend to increase.

I don't think the demand or price is going to change for native English speaking writers who can write engaging content. The price for crap articles is going to keep going down though IMO. A dentist in India makes $3 for removing a tooth to give some perspective.

G is always pushing to reward better and better content. Article writing is probably one of the safest things you could do in IM long term.
Eventually, G will be able to recognize poor writing which will hurt the foreign writers that are more willing to write for a lower wage. Based on that, I would guess the IMers that pay for top quality articles would be rewarded and that competition would further increase demand for good content and drive the price up. (Imagine if you could rank a website with high quality writing alone. Great writers could charge a ton for their work).
On the other hand, that increased demand might create an overflow of writers which would cancel out that effect.

Everything depends on the quality of your articles, on the niche you are writing for and I don't think that content writers will become less popular in the nearest future.