If you’re lucky enough to have $5 in your pocket right now, read on.
I got an email the other day from someone who wanted an SEO article written. Here’s the initial query:
“Hi,
I would like to know how much is the price for one common SEO article?
I’m looking forward to hearing from you soon.
<name>”
I just happen to be somewhat busy right now (don’t let that stop you from contacting me for SEO content projects), so it took me a full 24 hours to get back to this person about their query.
I offered what I thought was a decent price for 500-to-600 words – and left a little room (not much) for haggling.
It turns out the person was just price shopping. You see, they were already spending the astronomical amount of $8 per article and were searching for something more in the $5 range.
Because I know that you miss every chance you don’t take, I just HAD to ask this person if they would send me a sample of a $5 keyword article they had paid for.
I got exactly what I asked for:
“Thinnest, lightest and yet the strongest is what describes the best of the new Mac Air Book. “Whether to or not to – take your laptop with you” – the usual dilemma is a thing of bygone days with the ultra slim Mac Air Book weighing just about 3.0-3.4 pounds and 0.76 inch thick. Mac Air Book has been deemed as revolutionary by the standard of designs that people with lots of extra cash would like to add yet another eye-candy laptop to their collection. It comes along with an Aluminium chassis which is much more fingerprint resistant than the usual standard Macbooks. Apart from it the aluminium body lends the Air book a very sturdy and robust construction much in line with the kind of games Apple engineers likes to play with any of their products.
The 13.3 inch display, fitted with a built-in iSight camera, mic and an LED-backlit display has certainly taken the innovations in laptops to a new level. The LED-backlit display is controlled by the ambient light sensor which automatically adjusts the screen brightness in response to the light in the room. The apple trackpad has also got quite a facelifts. The new Air book’s trackpad measures 5 inches diagonally making it comparatively larger than any of the Mac book’s trackpads and has features that lets you use three fingers rather than the usual two fingers.
This multi-touch gestures enables the user to go forward and back within their Web browser history, and just like zoom-in and zoom-out features in the iPhone, one can do the same with Mac Air Book. “
I’ll spare you the rest of the 661-word cluster-fick-of-an-article.
Ok, so a few things to note here – besides the fact that the above article is wrong on soooo many levels:
- This person who sent me the SEO article query got what they paid for. Maybe less. And I doubt the copywriter had change for a $5 bill.
- The content writer did zero research. It’s a MacBook Air, not? Mac Air Book.
- The effects of this article will be negligible beyond filling the Internet with even more shitty content.
- You can find a better way to waste $5 at Starbucks (with tip).
People who think a $5 SEO article can be as effective as a $100 or $200 SEO article are only fooling themselves. If your customers are buying in English, then you better market in English – coherent English.
Speaking of $5, I’m grabbing lunch.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
If you want a $5 article, then you are going to get a $5 article. As we know as SEO copywriters, we take our time and research, edit, revise and then the article is ready. Not this $5 per article wanna-be article S***.
Thank you for making the distinction between a $5 SEO article and a $100 or $200 article. As copywriters, our level and standards are much higher; please don’t insult us.
Good job! :)
You spend 100 to 200 an article? How’s that working out for you? Do you find yourself profitable? I mean if you rely solely on ads for income, how does that work when you’re forking over that much cash per article??? Do tell b/c I truly would love to know.
Hi Amanda. Here’s the beauty of it. I’m not actually buying the $100 – $200 keyword-optimized articles. I’m the person writing them. People use articles for far more than making money off PPC ads. The right article with the right keywords, messaging and angle can drive traffic, get you links from high PR sites, and improve sales.
I have clients who buy five articles at a time without hesitation because they know the results they’ll get. In fact, one of my clients just had a 1,000% Return on Investment for the last round of articles they bought from me. The articles were for an affiliate site where the product sold costs thousands of dollars. Spending $5 on an article for a $3,000 product simply makes no sense. Nobody can write (in my opinion) keyword optimized* articles that perform well for $5, let alone an article that makes sense.
*keyword optimized means researched using Wordtracker, Market Samurai, competitive analysis, Google Keyword Tools and more. So there’s far more to a good article than simply writing. Hence the price tag.
Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions.