Ask HN: Where do you get content?

http://jobs.problogger.net has been helpful for me. You can usually get someone pretty good for $0.10/word.

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.

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...:)

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...

2.http://audienceops.com

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.