In a recent thread at webmasterworld, when asked if members had 10 people to assist promoting their website, what would they do. This interesting question produced the surprising answer by one member that they would have 9 people writing articles and one person linking.
Articles are a great way to get theme related one-way links, linkable content and can be contracted for around $10 per 400 - 500 word article. Prices vary though, and so does the range of qualifications.
Article writing, like link building, is an excellent candidatate for outsourcing, or perhaps more correctly, Outtasking.
Why Outsource?
Oursourcing is great because you can purchase services you need when you need them. You don't have to worry about meeting payroll, or providing computers, desks or equipment. While a freelancer is researching and writing you can take care of other things.
Often, a freelancer represents a group, allowing you access to the more resources and expertise.
Misconceptions
One of the biggest misconceptions is you can 'just give it to them' and it will all be good. Nothing can be futher from the truth. In fact, the more time and effort you put into it, the better the chances of success.
Example Project of 10 articles.
Before talking to my partners in the Philippines, I research keywords and use the keywords to set up the titles and content of the articles. This usually gives me 6 or 8 of the article titles. Since not all articles get syndicated, I go to several articles syndication sites and research which articles in my area have the most links in YAHOO. This give more data for article topics and titles and general tone. Next, I decide what type of article suits the titles best. Is it to be a "information about this" article or a "how to" article with a bulleted list of actions the reader can take right now?
Once all this has been written out, I send it to my partner and ask to see 4 or 5 articles right away so that I can confirm everything is on track.
Or course, I have specified in advance the articles must be original, and I make periodic checks to make sure. Once you have dealt with a freelancer a few times you can ease up, but it still pays to check all the time.
Don't use software
There are lots of people offering software that scrapes article syndication sites and/or the web for content, re-arranges it, and spits out hundreds of articles. My experience is it would have been easier and certainly faster to write the articles myself, or hire someone to do it.
Automated re-writes of scraped content seems to work on the Search Engines for now, but how long it is going to last is anyone's guess. The achilles heel of automation is that it has to use templates and will always leave a footprint that other automated systems (ie bots