VA = Virtual Assistant (oh, and free time and easy money)
Alright, so I’ve had some pretty rough experiences with outsourcing things as far as web design and web work go. I’d link to the horror stories that I wrote about, but I decided to take them off the blog because I finally came to an amicable solution with the offending parties. But all that drama aside, outsourcing my content writing the last few months has been nothing but awesome.
My main money making websites that are netting me anywhere from $3,000 to $9,000 a month for the last few months have all been updated by my content writing virtual assistants (VA’s). My favorite VA at the moment is an actual US resident and she writes 200-250 words for $8 bones. I can pay my Indian writer $10 for a 450 word article, but my US VA’s writing is much more solid and I think the Google bot likes her articles quite a bit better.
The hardest part of my online job used to be writing content (articles) for my various blogs. I have since taken myself out of that part of the equation. Now, the hardest part of my job is showing my writer the product page that I need the article written about – which just happens to be pretty easy. 
If you’re just starting out with a website that generates revenue from the content you write, I’d suggest writing your own content for the first 6 months to 12 months of your websites life. Only when you start to make some bank on your site is it wise to invest in a content writer in my opinion. It’s just not worth the short cut. Writing your own content for a while makes it easier to know what you want to expect from your writer and allows you time to fall in love, as it were, with your site.
If you’re not sure where to run for information on how to outsource or where to find a VA, go to Elance. That’s where I’ve found my three writers.
A Few Tips:
1. Read the content submitted to you, and don’t hesitate to tell your VA if she is doing something that drives you nuts.
2. Accept multiple bids on your content writing project on sites like Elance. The more people who bid on the project, the lower the price. This is typical for other jobs, but especially for content writing.
3. When you publish the article on your blog or site, bold and link the keywords to the product landing page. Only do this like 3 times contextually per article though.
About Jeremy Blake
