How Much Does It Cost To Hire Writers For A Blog

So, you need a writer for your blog and don't know where to start.

Before you start spending your hard-earned money…

Let's look at costs.

The amount you pay a ghostwriter to write a blog article can range from $25 to $250 depending on the quality of the writer. Ask yourself these questions before you hire a ghostwriter:

What level of experience do you need?
How much research is needed into your business and industry?
What ROI do you need (how important is this article for sales)?

Where to find blog writers

You have 5 choices when hiring a writer for your blog.

Use freelance hiring services. Services like Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr allow you to post your job, hire freelancers, and manage your communications and payments through the service. The advantages are access to a huge selection of freelancers, the disadvantage is you have to sort, test, and manage the quality of the work.
Hire directly. You can use services like the Problogger job board, or Indeed allow you to post your job and hire writers directly. You still have to screen and test applicants, but, once hired, you save the commission that would have been paid to services like Upwork or Freelancer.
Use a content service. There are lots of content writing services (see below for pricing) that offer a wide variety of writing from copywriting for press releases or website to blog writing. Most of these services separate you from the writer and all communications are funneled through the service portal. In other words, you do not know who your writer is and you have limited opportunities to coach your writer.
Use a specialized blog writing service. This is where BlogWorks comes in—we only write blogs, As a specialized service we have developed unique approaches to research and SEO to get better results for our clients. Our focus is on traffic conversion to sales.
Advertising/Marketing agency. The final and most comprehensive solution is to engage an agency to design and manage your advertising and marketing. One component of their overall strategy could be to write, publish, and promote your blog.

Price comparison chart

As you might expect, when it comes to hiring a writer for your blog, you get what you pay for.

As you might expect, when it comes to hiring a writer for your blog, you get what you pay for. Click To Tweet

At the low-end, there are "content mills" that advertise crazy-low rates, often priced per word. At the high-end, many advertising and marketing agencies will include blog writing as a part of their overall strategy for your company.

In this chart, I've attempted to give you a rating guide to help make your hiring decision easier. Note, I haven't included agencies simply because it would be too difficult to compare their services.

A big distinction to consider (I've added a column to show these results) is the source of the writers. Most of the writing services outsource the writing to, in most cases, thousands of writers. The writers bid on your job by submitting their work. You select the draft you like and finalize the work.

This model is great for getting low-cost work, but every job you get will be from a different writer (some services will dedicate a writer to your ongoing account). At BlogWorks we have a small team of in-house writers and one writer will always be the one working on your account.

Having a dedicated writer means you get consistent quality of work, your writer gets to know your "voice" and your feedback always goes directly to that writer.

Getting started

The most important first step when hiring a writer for your blog is to get started. The mistakes you make in the beginning (like trying a low-cost "content mill") won't be very expensive and you will at least learn what you don't want.

Start with the 3 questions I opened the article with, set a budget, and get started.

The clients we serve at BlogWorks have usually been writing their blogs themselves. Typically they can't keep up with a consistent publishing schedule and they suspect there are better ways to use their blog to attract leads.

Once we do our analysis we almost always find that they have great articles but they are not optimized to attract new (organic) traffic or to convert traffic to leads.

Getting articles written and published on your site should not be the goal. The goal is more business.

Getting articles written and published on your site should not be the goal. The goal is more business. Click To Tweet

What you want are carefully designed articles that attract new traffic, educate readers (solve their problems) and influence them to take one step closer to a sale.

Your blog is a valuable part of your sales funnel and needs to be fueled with great articles to make it all happen.

Now, it's time to get started.

To learn more about updating and republishing your old articles and getting new, original, published articles, start here.

Enjoyed this post? Here are 3 more articles all about getting better results from your blog.

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