Today I was messing with html code for my new site – adding content, fixing mistakes, creating new pages etc etc… I’ve almost created all the pages that will bring traffic to my site. I also calculated the previous month’s results of outsourcing work and made some interesting observations.
Totally, I’ve spent 130,65$ on content creation in February. I’ve worked with 4 writers, 2 of them were on fixed rate, and 2 are working on hourly-based pricing.
1 writer wrote 5 articles at 2$ each = 10$ (+ Odesk fee, total 11,11$)
another fixed rated writer wrote 5 articles at 6$ each, yes quite expensive, total 33,33$ with Odesk fee.
Now lets see how my horuly writers performed:
1st writer – I hired him in the late Feb so he managed to write 2 article packs (1 original + 2 rewrites). 6 articles total. It cost me 15,61$, so each article cost me 2,6$. The quality of articles was great, the writer really cares about the quality and his english is perfect.
My main writer – she produced 14 article pack for me (3 articles in each pack), bringing total # of articles to 42. Her work cost me 70,60$. So, each her article cost me 1,68$.
The conclusion – hourly-paid writers typically cost less, and since I give them daily work, they typically deliver pretty fast. I’ve agreed to get the article pack (original + 2 rewrites) written within 1.5 hours, which is not the best, but acceptabe for me. I can write article in 20 minutes and rewrite it in 10 minutes. So I’d usually spend less than 1 hour per article pack. But it takes lots of my time, if done on a daily basis.
Now I have 2 writers that are writing at 3$ per article, one of them is the same that wrote 2$ articles, another one is new.
I’d like to know your experience with outsourced writers as well, we can discuss this and maybe find some great tips to optimize this kind of work? Thanks for reading me 
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Makes sense – what do you choose for the hourly rate? Is there a time tracker on oDesk?
I’m still new at this. First article writer was at $12/article…yeah…I thought the price was fair, wanted to get some articles up for sites – $60 = 2 websites up, I had other content ready.
Then I found oDesk and Guru were much cheaper than Elance (1st writer was from Elance, I make $ there so I just transferred out from my account) – but they’re all piece-work.
Thus:
Writer #2 8 articles $38.90 (w/fees)
Writer #3 15 articles $58.80…whoops, over paid, didn’t want to re-nig…yeah…
Writer #4 15 articles $35.80 (keeper!)
These are all content pages, since I’m being lazy. Then I had my daughter re-write some UAW submissions for me (3 x ea)…I won’t say how much I paid her for the 4 re-writes since it should be criminal (I figure I’m training her for this) – definitely going to keep her.
My Article Express…direct to UAW, $16/submission…nope…
My Human Rewriter…4 submissions ready for UAW at just under $25…not too bad, but still expensive.
Going to stick with my oDesk dream team and my daughter for the little bit they’re paid. All that money I made on AdSense this month went to growth and marketing. Not bad. Not in the hole…and I sold about $400 this month again. From 3 sales. Need to increase my sales funnel and put up other aff links on other web 2.0 sites, targeting the same product, I think – just need to find other keywords to target.
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By the way – $544 and change in the CommissionJunction account, on my sniper site. I’m happy with it, since I have really done some active marketing with UAW submissions to my sales page, and especially considering I’m using the xfactor adsense template, which isn’t conducive to aff sales per se – OH YEAH!
I keep thinking that I’d see more conversions if I had built an authority site. Any suggestions on that note? Would you go with a product like NVU or something, to generate sales pages and sites, or XSite Pro2 for a guy like me – I really think affiliate marketing is pretty fun, all told.
I just need the right tools.
Otherwise, I’ll just use a hosted WP site and make the site.
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Hi James!
Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been busy with lots of offline stuff.. Really keeps me off working on building the business.
Congratulations on CJ income growth! I’ve recetly reactivated my CJ account but still haven’t made a sale still. Need time to promote CJ affiliate sites now))
I think XSitePro 2 is amazing soft – I’ve seen many sites and people tell that XSitePro sites rank as well as wordpress blogs. If you are short of money, let me know your contact details, I can send you something for free
)
Btw human rewriter and article experss are a bit expensive, I agree. I tend to find writers who will rewrite their own articles for 1$-1.5$ max. Found one writer who’s writing brilliant articles and costs 3$ per article. Nice, really. Odesk is the way to go!
Here’s one cool UAW trick – you can simply take 1 article, spin it well with The best spinner or magic article rewriter and then in UAW panel paste the spinned version (with {blah|blah} stuff) 3 times, where you usually paste in your 3 variations.
Hope this helps
Hear from you soon James!
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I’m game, Grand – thanks for the offer.
And the UAW tip – anything to save time.
Much appreciated!
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So- what’s the “free software” you’re talking about? WOuld love it.
Will send you my contact details.
I’m hiring someone for backlinks on oDesk – I have some new sites and don’t have time to sign up on OpenWire (Onlywire? What is it again?) – but I DO plan on using your system with OnlyWire, or OpenWire, whichever it is.
I’m so glad you posted this, because I never considered the hourly vs. fixed rate…though I ALWAYS work fixed rate to make more money – just never put the two together.
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Hi James!
I’ve tried wp robot on one of my sites with a male enhancement related content. What I found is the very high bounce rate of people visiting my site. I’ve set the blog with this plugin 3 months ago and now I’m averaging 2 visitors a day on it =))))
As for deep link engine, I still haven’t tried it, but I plan to. I’m going to hospital in Monday, hope to get back a week or two weeks later so I won’t be posting here for some time… Just need to postpone all the work for that time. Btw, my goal is also hiring people for backlinks, not only for article writing. Just need to be free from this hospital/surgery stuff…
Onlywire – this is easy way to bookmark some content with a Onlywire button that you install into the browser. I have Bookmarkwiz for social bookmarking, but often just use this Onlywire button and SB the content within 3 minutes. I’ve installed the plugin they require to insstall on my blogs, to use this Onlywire for free. Very fast & easy way to bookmark something )
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I posted a job opening on oDesk for link building.
Pretty sure the whole entire world applied…
Now it’s a matter of taking my pick, but actually the package at developer-hut is extremely well-priced.
The whole time I was thinking that setting up OnlyWire would save me 100% of this experimental money. Time prevents it.
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btw, hope your surgery goes well?? yikes.
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Tomorrow going to the hospital, hoping for success.. THanks James!
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Hi there, i stumbled upon on this blog post and i just want to share my idea.
well for writers, hourly rate really are cheaper but of course if the rate is fair. this will surely bring good result since they are assured that every hour they spent will be paid.
by the way, i am a website designer, a wordpress developer, SEO expert and software engineer. hope i could work for you someday. i also new at odesk but new to it, my user name there is christian_net.
best regards,
christian
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@Christian Martin, Hi Chistian!
Thanks for sharing, I’ll be aware that you offer these services! Still didn’t need some custom soft or wordpress, but who knows!
yes I currently have 1 writer that works at 2$ per hour, and 2 writers that I pay per article. I established a long term relationships with them after their overall commitment to work, and high quality of content. Now I’m ready to pay what they ask per article, since I know they deliver quality.
My hourly worker – I usually try to give him easy articles that I need on ongoing basis.
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Keep up the great work , I read few blog posts on this site and I believe that your blog is really interesting and contains circles of fantastic info .
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