
Ask HN: Where do you get content? - nemexy
Hey, HN!<p>I searched but couldn&#x27;t find any discussions about one of the most important parts of any given business - the content. Your blog content, first page content or e-mail newsletters. I am pretty sure that everyone here agrees that this is important for the success of a startup.<p>So, how do you get that content? Do you outsource and to whom&#x2F;where? Would you consider hiring non-natives to write for you? How much is, lets say a blog post of 750-1000 words worth to you?<p>I am asking, mainly because I am facing a few challenges with my own project and I could really use some additional content, be for blog posts or marketing needs. Till now I have written every piece of content myself but it is time to rewrite some pieces and write some new ones. What is the best way to act in this case?
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mrweasel
I have question: You seem to be addressing "content" as some sort of bulk
item, as in "I would like to buy five contents, please".

Are you looking for content that can just pull in a lot of traffic, so you can
get ad revenue? Or are you looking for someone to write technical
documentation, or something in that nature?

If it's the first option then I consider you a bad person. For the second kind
of content, I honestly think you would be better for having the experts in
your business, even if it's just yourself writing the content.

~~~
nemexy
My definiton of content is pretty simple, actually. 5 blog posts per month,
which are posted on our website in the Article Sections/pretty similiar as a
blog, but my customers perfer having it like that/. Also I need like 5
additional pieces like these ones for guest posts/articles in
magazines/newsletter.

My goal with the articles is to keep building a brand and potentially attract
new clients.

Right now these 10 pieces take over 40 hours from me, research/write and
collobration with an editor as English is my third language. This is insanely
huge amount of time, which I have to do instead of working on the product.

------
mod
There's marketplaces to hire writers.

A company I worked for in the past would often hire a writer and give them a
topic to research & write about. That particular writer was a highly-
knowledgeable person in the industry and put out really amazing content which
was primarily used for SEO purposes.

We also wrote a lot of content ourselves--the vast majority of it, actually.

~~~
nemexy
This is pretty much what I am looking for, though I am afraid of hiring in the
big marketplaces like oDesk, afraid of not having any way to make sure these
are good writers with a good knowledge in the niche that I work.

I tried once in oDesk and was flooded with offers for half a cent per word
despite my budget, which was way higher. Once I talked a bit with the people
who offered me my price range /40-50$ per 750-850 words and I am really not
sure that this is the right price range/, it was very obvious that they were
not native speakers and made random mistakes.

~~~
hluska
Unless I walk into a writing project knowing an immense amount about a topic,
banging out 750 words looks like this:

\- Primary research:> I can't just bang out 750 words and have it mean
anything, or even be remotely useful. I need some knowledge, I need to form
opinions, and I need to read what that particular field's experts have to say.
The alternative is a Wikipedia-esque survey, which is okay sometimes, but
won't drive much more than kids who will use you in their homework.

\- Finding/researching citations:> Assuming that you aren't a complete
dickbag, I'll want to make sure that your finished piece has some actual
intellectual merit. So, I'll need to find good quality citations. This is more
than Googling the topic and linking to the entire first page of results. It
involves reading important, useful works and making sure that I understand
what the writer is saying enough that I can use it to back up my points. If I
don't understand a writer, maybe she is mistaken, or maybe I don't understand
the nuances enough to use that point.

\- Outline:> My process usually starts with an outliner now (fargo.io is quite
good), but I used to write outlines in notebooks. I like to make a list of my
points, include citations (or carefully note if this is just my opinion) and
start to figure out what the narrative will look like. You'd be surprised how
often this stage shows me that I have absolutely nothing to say.

\- First draft:> Hopefully this explains itself.

\- First edit:> You meet lots of writers who send their clients first drafts.
These are either superhuman writers or they never get paid. I have an editor
who I send EVERYTHING to. In exchange, she sends me her stuff and we
absolutely rip each other apart.

\- Second/third/\+ draft:> Sometimes I can nail it with one round of feedback.
Other times, I'll struggle with one paragraph for an entire afternoon.

\- Your feedback:> What you think is a first draft should really be a second
or third draft...:)

\- Finalize the article, publish and promote:> Some people like my writing and
tend to get excited when I email them to let them know about something new.

Long story short, writing 750 words that actually mean something would take me
a minimum of eight hours to really polish. For me, $6.25 an hour ends in
homelessness...:)

~~~
nemexy
I understand your point. My pricing is entirely based of what I learned about
the sphere in a hour that most of the cheap writers charge half a cent/cent
per word, which would make around 5$ per such article and multiplied that by a
big number/10x sounded good/.

I am curious though, what an article written using this outlined process will
cost? How much would you charge about that? I am pretty sure that I won't be
able to afford you though as anything above 100$ per article will put my
startup back in red, which is a scary prospect for now.

~~~
brudgers
Just to look at a business analysis of what $100 per article means:

1\. 40 hours of your time is equivalent to $500 worth of work.

2\. 40 hours of your time writing articles adds $500 of value to the company
assuming you don't have any take home pay.

The end result is that the articles don't appear to be adding much value to
your business and therefore writing them only pretends to be work. In my
experience people do things that pretend to be work because the pretend work
is easier than the hard work...like developing leads, qualifying prospects,
closing sales and developing products people want.

On the other hand, if the articles are actually adding value for your
customers, then raise prices to keep adding value via the articles. If you
can't justify raising the price for something then it's not worth pursuing
from a pure business standpoint.

Good luck.

------
taprun
I keep a blog centered around a niche topic (the pricing and positioning of
software applications). I created a backlog of 300+ ideas for posts, but
rarely look at it.

Once I got into the habit of writing something every day, my posts became
easier to write. The discipline I gained by writing a book on the same topic
helped immensely.

It's extremely risky to go with low-bidders for blog content. You'll wind up
with low quality articles that make your company appear sub par.

How much is a blog post worth? As with all things, it depends. That's like
asking how much a car is worth. Are you buying a Ferrari or a Toyota? Do you
want to create content for SEO or to interest potential customers? How much
research is required for your articles? How original do you need your content
to be?

A link to your site would allow us to provide more detail.

~~~
nemexy
I offer web sites and different web/desktop systems for hotels and restaurants
and I have reached 2,000$ monthly revenue/most of it is profit/. This includes
web sites, booking systems, some legal documents, specific SMS services. Also
I partner with a marketing company, so there are additional commisions, which
is what I use to pay the bills, so everything that I make through the main
startup gets into a fund, that I want to use to grow the product.

I am looking for good content with useful information, that could attract
clients. Posts that will be published in high traffic blogs or magazines. I
tried with 40-50$ for 750-850 words in oDesk, but didn't work out that great
as I received only offers from people, who were clearly not native English
speakers.

Is it worth hiring people, where English is the second language/it actually is
my third language/ and get a editor, who would polish the content for me. This
is what I used to do for the last 4-5 months.

I like writing, I really do. But I reached a point, when I am not sure it is
worth doing that, instead I could focus at sales/programming, which is what I
do right now.

------
daok
The best content is about real content and if you are the owner of the product
it should be you to at least draft the content. After that you may want to
have someone to text proof your text.

~~~
nemexy
This is how I worked till now, but it doesn't seem feasible to keep doing as I
feel my time and attention will be more useful building additional
features/fixing bugs, aka programming /which is the thing I prefer to do
anyways/.

~~~
implicit_none
on this - the best thing you can do with your time is talking to your
customers and writing down what they say about your product. Then, use those
exact words in your content; in essence have your customers write your content
for you. If you are really pressed for time, just pay a copywriter to write
your content but definitely give them a copy of your customer's words.

~~~
nemexy
This could work on a certain level/like front page, AdWords, FB Ads/, though I
don't really know how can I trick my customer to write a blog post for me or
an article that will be published in a magazine/blog.

------
janpieterz
I'd look for a couple of high quality writers that you can fire a couple of
ideas over. Looking for them might take some time and cost you a little, but
having a small group of valuable writers where you appreciate the quality is
very valuable.

I often use my girlfriend as well, who is a native speaker (I'm not) to do it.
She has done this for a range of other companies as well, from food/beverages
to legal, political and to a certain level technical. Don't shy away from
paying decently for better articles. If it's just a simple thought being
published that can be written quickly, pay less. The good thing about
establishing a group of trusted writers is that you can look to other payment
methods than per letter/word. Some blogs are very easy to write, some are very
hard and require a lot of research. Paying per hour might then be a better
fit, where the better writers will cost you a 100$ an hour, and paying per
hour with a trusted blogger works, because if you feel they didn't deliver as
expected you can talk about it, and they know they want to keep you, a trusted
client, so they'll less quickly engage in dodgy practices.

------
dchmiel
You can look at outsourcing creating content for your company. What you write
about should be beneficial to your readers and users so simply just putting up
posts week after week isn't as effective as well researched content that has
direct benefits for your readers. Just mindlessly putting up "content" is not
a great strategy.

I just read about this today, Audience Ops [1],[2], and the approach to
helping busy founders provide valuable content looks refreshing. It could be a
good place to start thinking about how to get help with your content.

(I'm not affiliated with this, but thought it was something that could help
you).

1\. [https://casjam.com/introducing-audience-
ops/?__s=ihfp4xetd9k...](https://casjam.com/introducing-audience-
ops/?__s=ihfp4xetd9k3zuprvxam)

2.[http://audienceops.com](http://audienceops.com)

------
andkon
[http://jobs.problogger.net](http://jobs.problogger.net) has been helpful for
me. You can usually get someone pretty good for $0.10/word.

~~~
nemexy
That seems pretty interesting, will probably give it a try.

------
gesman
The best ever approach that worked for me is after i solved a problem - write
a blog post about it.

In fact I am doing this again right now.

In fact I am dedicating the whole weekend to it.

Why? Because my past blog posts landed me serious consulting requests and
serious job interviews.

Outsourcing or writing fluff and fillers never worked for me.

------
AlexOrtiz201
Self Promo:: but
[https://www.rallyverse.com/showcase.html](https://www.rallyverse.com/showcase.html)
you auth twitter and then we see what you like and recommend content around
your three top topics.

------
touchingwood
A trick I often use is to get cheap content written by a topic expert whose
first language is NOT English. Then I get a cheap native speaking editor to go
over it before it gets to me. This can work out very cheaply if you're lucky.

------
diminoten
Surprised no one's mentioned this yet -- ideas are _very_ common on HN or
Reddit, but not from the submissions.

So very often I find people posting very long, well-cited articles as comments
on Reddit, and I wonder why they're just giving that content over to a _very
small_ subset of folks who might be interested. The entire concept of
/r/bestof, for example, is in an effort to highlight well-written comments.

Find a topic related to your business, visit the subreddit, read the
discussion in the comments of an interesting submission, form an opinion on
either the submission itself, or the ensuing conversational topic, and post
that as an article on your blog.

An example might be the "unlearning helplessness" submission currently on the
HN front page. The discussion in the comments section has a few opinions about
what is missing from the posted article. Perhaps you could write an article on
that topic, providing some of the missing practical examples folks seem to be
looking for. Also mentioned is the concept's relationship to stoicism. If that
interests you, instead of commenting, write a blog post about it.

Another example might be this very comment! If I were to expand more, provide
additional examples, and punch up the language a bit, we could see ourselves
at 750 words in no time flat.

It took me ~3 minutes to get to 250 words, we could say it'd take me ~30
minutes to come up with a passable 750 words with a few citations -- I'm sure
you can do about that (if not better), too.

