Outsourcing Articles: First Experience - Not So Good

So I am new to outsourcing articles, and just got my first set back. Ordered 3x100 words and 2x 250 words.

Got them a day late, which isn't bad but I told my client I was working with they would be there and they weren't. Bad on my part.
Read the articles and the grammar was terrible, misuse of common saying and other weird uses.
Whatever their home language is, I guess "playground" and "stadium" are the same. So an article about Texas Football Stadiums turned into Texas Football Playgrounds.
Which was kind of funny, but rather annoying having to fix.
Tense, there is no consistency of present-tense, past-tense, etc etc.

I had to go through each article and change 50% of it just to get them to be readable. I asked for "texas sports news (like football, basketball, baseball, soccer, etc) and got articles about the history of different teams.
History isn't news, and I'm pretty sure my client will ask for a refund, and I will probably do so and be out the cost of the articles as they were not what was asked for.

This is my first time outsourcing articles, is it typical for them to be very poorly written, not about the topics asked for, and have a title about one thing but content about another? (Texas football news but written about Negro National Baseball from the 1920s). Or did I just get unlucky?

Let me know your opinions

Hopefully you didn't pay more than $.50 per 100 words for that type of work.

Yeah you get what you pay for. Here are some buzzwords you might hear and how to make sense of them.

Unique: spun repeatedly until it passes copyscape.


Readable: sentences have a subject and predicate, and if you have the telepathic skills of Professor X, you can figure out what it's talking about.


Native: Foreign writers who also learned in English, so they understand basic usage but may have awkward phrasing and will misapply idioms.


"My Team": a group of mTurk or iWriters working for dirt cheap prices.


"SEO Optimized": we'll stuff your article full of your chosen keyword, whether or not it actually makes sense in context.

Were they Indian?

How much did you pay?

There are places where you buy articles, and IMHO, this is not the site for it.

That sounds an awful lot like spun content.

gjcontent said:

Hopefully you didn't pay more than $.50 per 100 words for that type of work.

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Bought them off here, was $1.1 per 100 words -_- figured he had great reviews and has been around for a while so it was worth it. It was not...

neverquitting said:

Yeah you get what you pay for. Here are some buzzwords you might hear and how to make sense of them.

Unique: spun repeatedly until it passes copyscape.


Readable: sentences have a subject and predicate, and if you have the telepathic skills of Professor X, you can figure out what it's talking about.


Native: Foreign writers who also learned in English, so they understand basic usage but may have awkward phrasing and will misapply idioms.


"My Team": a group of mTurk or iWriters working for dirt cheap prices.


"SEO Optimized": we'll stuff your article full of your chosen keyword, whether or not it actually makes sense in context.

Click to expand...

Is it possible to find good writers on here? or is that just not something you can find?

ThreadKiller said:

Were they Indian?

How much did you pay?

There are places where you buy articles, and IMHO, this is not the site for it.

Click to expand...

Not sure, they were from this website, and $1.1 per 100....

Summary: are there any worth buying on this website?

there is an old saying as you get what you pay for, It looks as spun text.

Consider this. If you were a good writer would you bother working for 1.1/100?
I think the only way to get a good writer at this price is catching him at his first steps when he's trying to build a client base.

Hey buddy,

I have a lot of experience in buying content from oDesk, iWriter and Textbroker both in French and English.

Here are some tips and comments:
1) You get what you pay for
2) On oDesk, don't hire content writers from India, Bangladesh or Pakistan, unfortunately, their English isn't good. In my opinion, the best place for cheap and good english writing is the Philippines.
3) On oDesk, I pay approx. 2.5$ to 3$/100 words for good quality.
4) On iWriters hire only at 4 stars or more.

Here's how I'm able to get the best content writers.

1) Post a job on oDesk with very detailed instructions. Ask a few very simple questions in the job posting that will require them to write a custom answer. (to help you narrow down your candidates)
2) Invite 200 writers that qualify for what you want and ask them to apply for your job.
3) Select all the best candidates (about 20) and ask them to write an intro of about 75 words to see how good they are.
4) Keep the best 10 candidates for a paid test job and ask them to write a 500 words article on a specific topic.
5) Keep the 2-3 best and ask them to write 5 articles each
6) Keep the best one for long term

Yes it takes time and will cost you money to test but I now have full-time content writers that write amazing content. Just make sure you need and can reuse what you give them as a test.

Hope it helps!

@Kintoups, thank you very much for that in-depth response. I've never been good at outsourcing either so that helps a ton!

I like that, I may have to give that a go.
So you recommend the philippines?

I found this service here http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...t-writing-service-phd-students-lecturers.html

Can anyone comment on them?

@philly3. You're welcome. I really love outsourcing. I've spent more than 30,000$ over the last 2 years on oDesk alone for writers, developpers, social media experts, seo, etc. and I always use the process I described. The key to outsourcing is in 1) the person you hire and 2) the instructions you give them! Make sure you have a repeatable process and that your instructions are clear. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me an IM, I'll be glad to help you.

@DFWI Reaper. Yes I do recommend the Philippines but sometimes you can also find people in the US, Canada or the UK that are willing to get 2.5$ to 3$ / 100 words. Just invite them and you'll see what they say.

Most article services on BHW are pretty bad (there are exceptional writers here but you're looking at least $3-5 per 100 words).

I've received spun content, non legible content, and even 100% copy/pasted content from writing services here with lots of great reviews. The only explanation I could think of for this is that a lot of IMers themselves are not English natives, so they have no idea how bad the articles they purchase really are. You can sometimes even tell from their positive review that English is not their first language.

I recommend outsourcing articles to iwriter (4.1+ rating writers minimum and give very specific instructions). You still get some bad articles, but you get the option to reject it if you don't like it and not pay. Every now and then you will get a fantastic writer, and when you do, add them to your favourites and be sure to tip them whenever they produce you good quality content.

If you do decide to continue buying from BHW, here's a quick tip: look at the service providers sales letter for quirky grammar mistakes and wording. If he's not a native writer, he's probably outsourcing it and has no idea himself if the quality is good or not. In other words, you pay him $1/100 words, and he goes out to odesk and gets a writer to write it for $0.3 per 100 words (this is what I payed Filipino writers for articles when I first started in IM and the quality was about the same as the ones I purchased here).

EDIT: I've switched to iwriter for all my tier 1 articles now so I have no clue about these new writing services from BHW. I'm just speaking from experience when I used to buy here. I've used oDesk too (Filipino writers are the best if you're looking for low priced but decent content), but I found it less flexible than iwriter for my purpose.

I've tried a dozen affordable writers and only one of them did a good job. Unfortunately, she soon realized she is doing too much for the money I was paying her, so she quit.

I typically pay about $10 for 400 words on TextBroker.com. There are a lot of great writers. I have a couple that I really like and use them all the time.

Going to give iWriter a chance and see how it goes.

Else I will try oDesk and give it a shot!

Thanks for all the quick feedback guys

EDIT: wow put up 2 article requests on iWriter and already being worked on, that's some cool stuff.

That was definitely spun content.
Most of the writing services on BHW are only suitable for first (at best) or second tiers (in today's SEO climate, that is). Just think about what you're ordered and what you're paying, and imagine how long it would take to write a quality article to those specs.
Then figure out what you're paying as an "hourly rate" - and think about where that rate would be considered a "liveable wage." That will give you a start on realizing what you can expect as a final product.
If you're looking for English content which you can confidently show to an client who is in the US, Britain or Australia, you're going to have to pay for it. A quality writer simply isn't going to work for $5 to write 500 words.
Everyone has already said "You get what you pay for" which is true - I prefer to think of it as "An amazing deal usually isn't," at least when it comes to content.

make sure to check seller repu and reviews etc at first and pricing it offer and then throw some bucks

BHW marketplace worth to try

BassTrackerBoats said:

That sounds an awful lot like spun content.

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reallife said:

That was definitely spun content.
Most of the writing services on BHW are only suitable for first (at best) or second tiers (in today's SEO climate, that is). Just think about what you're ordered and what you're paying, and imagine how long it would take to write a quality article to those specs.
Then figure out what you're paying as an "hourly rate" - and think about where that rate would be considered a "liveable wage." That will give you a start on realizing what you can expect as a final product.
If you're looking for English content which you can confidently show to an client who is in the US, Britain or Australia, you're going to have to pay for it. A quality writer simply isn't going to work for $5 to write 500 words.
Everyone has already said "You get what you pay for" which is true - I prefer to think of it as "An amazing deal usually isn't," at least when it comes to content.

Click to expand...

Well, I guess we'll just see if the client accepts it or not. Lesson learned unfortunately -_-

Guess I see why BTB does his own writing or has hired his own writer. Also BTB when are we going golfing?

extremeboy said:

make sure to check seller repu and reviews etc at first and pricing it offer and then throw some bucks

BHW marketplace worth to try

Click to expand...

I tried the BHW Marketplace with my first outsourcing, didn't work well :/ lol

DFWi Reaper said:

EDIT: wow put up 2 article requests on iWriter and already being worked on, that's some cool stuff.

Click to expand...

Yeah it's nice to see the power of crowdsourcing websites. The only problem with iWriter is that it's hit or miss. You have some amazing writers and some really bad. If you find one that you like, make to add them to your list and request articles from them.