Now, I might be a little biased, seeing how I make my living as a professional freelance writer, but I’ve always believed in the value of the written word. In the context of the web and Internet marketing, it doesn’t matter how great your website might look if it doesn’t have the content to back it up. You want quality, not fluff.
Where can you turn to get this quality content for your website? One option that might consider is the service offered by WriterStream, which serves as the subject of today’s review. they promise to deliver high quality articles for a reasonable price.
Good content has always been important, but with Google’s recent updates that crack down on content farms and duplicate content, it is more important than ever that you actually provide quality to your readers. This means that the articles posted on your site should be well-researched and well-written.
And that’s the crux of how WriterStream operates. They’ve hand-picked a team of US-based writers who will provide your website with targeted articles based on your exact specifications. These aren’t just generic “SEO articles” that get farmed out and provide no value to your readers. Instead of going with “spun articles and outsourced, grammatically incorrect writing,” you get original quality “at an affordable rate.”
Taken from the “How It Works” page, “It may have been possible in the past to ‘game’ the system… but each day search engines become smarter and poor quality becomes a bigger waste of your time and money.” The articles from WriterStream will cost more than what you might be able to get from content farms and “spinner” sources, but the investment will pay for itself in the long run.
As I made my way through the WriterStream website, what I found was that I kept asking more questions about how it worked and what a potential customer of the service might get. For example, while we are told that the writers on the WriterStream team are based in the United States, we have no real assurance as to their education level or writing ability.
We’re told that “you don’t always know what you’re going to get” when you use services like Odesk or eLance, but as it stands, we don’t know what we’re going to get from WriterStream either. They say that they’ll “deal with those issues so you don’t have to,” but I think something that would provide some great value to potential customers of WriterStream is a section of the site with samples.
When you are looking for a freelance logo designer, you probably want to see some of her previous work. Similarly, when you are looking to hire a freelance writer, you might also ask to see some writing samples. These are currently non-existent on the WriterStream site. We’re also not told about the delivered format — HTML, TXT, DOC, etc. — nor are we told if any revisions or changes are included. I suppose these requirements can be spelled out in your order request, but just having the site indicate that you can make these kind of requests would be useful.
We’re also not told what sort of criteria WriterStream has in mind when it hires new writers. I’m not saying that the service is good or bad, but I would like to see more information available up-front.
There is no page on the WriterStream site where potential writers can inquire about signing up, but there is a page for joining the affiliate program. You earn 10% of each referred sale and the program utilizes a 90-day tracking cookie. However, just like the main service, there is a lack of information about the affiliate program as well. What is the payment schedule? What assets are available? What is the minimum payment threshold? What methods of payout are available?
Whereas individual freelance writers can cater to your particular needs and some other services allow for a great deal of flexibility, WriterStream is focused entirely on 500-word articles at this time. This is a good standard length, but different people may have different needs.
When you go to the order page, you’ll find that a single 500-word article is $35. This price is more than fair, assuming that the completely original article is well-researched and well-written. They research the keywords using SEMRush and then run it through Copyscape to ensure there is no plagiarism. You can order up to 10 articles at a time, but there does not appear to be any kind of bulk discount.
WriterStream appears to be a potentially solid source of original, search engine optimized articles for your websites. The pricing is fair, but until we are able to see at least a few samples, it is difficult to gauge the quality.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER ARTICLES FROM WRITERSTREAM
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