“Content Marketing” is a buzz word that has been doing the rounds over the last year or so. Call me cynical, but it is just a fancy word for blogging to me. It refers to using blogs to help promote a brand, product, or service. It also refers to using content to help retain your customers.
One of the reasons I have got more freelancing work over the last few years is because of the growth of “Content Marketing”. The changes made by search engines such as Google meant that SEO companies could no longer rely on sneaky black hat techniques that had been working before. They had to either start producing content for clients or getting links to their clients’ websites into content on other websites.
Anyone who owns a website will know that finding the right writer for your website can be a time-consuming task. The standard of submissions from applications is generally poor and the process of emailing possible writers back and fourth is tiring. Then you need to spend time editing and correcting articles that have been submitted.
I have spoken about this issue extensively in the past in such articles as “8 Reasons Freelance Bloggers are Not Finding Work” and “The Problems You Face When Hiring Bloggers“. I was reminded of this struggle recently after reading an article by my friend Jean Galea in which he spoke about the poor submissions he received for a job he advertised.
It does not take long for a website owner to realise that a good writer is worth his wait in gold.
That being said, there is an alternative route to go down. Rather than dealing with writers directly, you can purchase articles directory online.
There are a few services online that do this but the one that I keep coming across is Constant Content.
Constant Content – How it Works
The concept behind Constant Content is simple.
The service has a huge pool of writers at their disposal. Their home page claims they have over 100,000 writers on their books, but I imagine that number refers to the number of people who have signed up and not the number of writers who are actively working through the website.
A quick look at their writers search page shows that most articles are being written by a small group of people.
As a website owner, you can choose to acquire content in a number of ways.
If you need need something unique covered, you can order custom content. This works in a similar way to hiring writers directly yourself, but you save yourself a lot of hassle with screening writers and dealing with time wasters.
The big selling point of Constant Content is the ability to purchase content instantly. You can buy unique copyscape checked content on dozens of different topics instantly.
You can search by keyword, by category, or both. You can also define factors such as usage rights, cost, and article length, to help you find your perfect article.
A preview of each article is displayed to website owners. This preview is displayed as an image so that no part of the article is indexed by search engines.
Each article listing shows the number of words in the article, the number of downloads, the article category, and the writer.
I really love how you can see a profile of each author. It allows you to see the total number of articles they have completed and contact the author directly about a possible writing job.
If an article has never been purchased, you will see an option to buy the article outright and gain full rights to the article and you will see an option to simply buy usage.
In my opinion, you should always buy the article outright. It makes sense from an SEO point of view and there is normally little difference between the two in pricing. For example, with some articles the cost of gaining full rights to the article and the cost of simply using it are identical. For other articles there is only a slight difference in price.
If someone buys an article outright, it is removed from Constant Content and no longer available for purchase. If someone buys usage, the option to buy it outright disappears but others can still choose to purchase usage rights. I came across some articles that had been downloaded several times. This is obviously good for the author who wrote the article, but it makes me wonder why those website owners didn’t simply purchase another article.
The cost of purchasing a pre-written article varies. There are articles around 500 words that can be purchased for around $25. There are also articles that are over 5,000 words that cost around $400. As you would expect, the better writers tend to charge more.
Please bear in mind that when you purchase an article from an article directory you just get the text and links etc. All you need to do is add images and videos to brighten the article up and make it look more professional.
Writing for Constant Content
From a time perspective, there are many pros to writing for Constant Content.
If you are simply submitting articles to the directory, you don’t have to spend time emailing clients back and fourth. Anyone who does a lot of writing will understand the benefits to this. It could make the difference between producing five articles per day and producing three or four.
If someone chooses to download your article, you could generate a commission multiple times for one article.
The problem with this setup is that you do not generate any income unless someone buys your article. There are thousands of articles in Constant Content’s directory and your articles could sit there in their directory for months or even years before being sold. They might never be sold.
On the Constant Content writer frequently asked questions page they note that you only have to earn $5 in order to be paid. Whilst the payment threshold is low, Constant Content take a commission of 35%.
Article directories are frequently used by SEO companies and there is sometimes a race to the bottom for pricing. Whilst $25 for a 500 word article seems great for the buyer, it means the author is only making $16.25. That’s just over three cents per word; which is a pretty terrible rate.
You do, of course, have the ability to set your own rates, however setting your article prices too high makes it less likely your article will be sold. If you’re lucky, your article will be downloaded multiple times to help offset reducing the cost of your articles.
When you contribute an article for Constant Content, you do not have to spend time cropping images etc. Therefore, you should be able to complete articles much quicker than you would for a blog.
If you can churn out articles all day long and not burn yourself out, you might be able to make money through Constant Content as an author, but my advice would be to bloggers would be to first find work directly through job boards such as ProBlogger and BloggingPro.
Final Thoughts
Constant Content is by no means the ultimate solution for producing content online, however I am sure that many of you will find it useful. If you are looking for content for a new project you can purchase unique articles instantly and fairly cheaply.
Writers may find making money through Constant Content difficult and inconsistent; particularly in the beginning. I suspect income gets better once you raise your profile. The main downside to this is that you are only raising your profile on Constant Content instead of getting your name out there on multiple websites.
I encourage you to check the service out and keep it mind for future projects.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin