I’m clicking around my LinkedIn groups and checking out the discussions the other day, and I noticed a thread about “article marketing.”

The idea behind article marketing, of course, is to post content on your Web site that help generate search engine traffic, links to your site, authority for your brand and so on. Here’s one of many sites that specializes in articles. Here’s another. And another. The Web is lousy with them: Google returns more than 3.6 million results for “article marketing.”

Anyway, in the course of the discussion someone wrote: “Professional writers generally charge anywhere from $4 to $8 for an article depending on the word count and research involved.”

Yep: That got my gears grinding. Which got me to responding, which gave me today’s post:

As an editorial professional since the Reagan administration, I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, the notion that people are waking up to the idea that quality content matters is a welcome one.

On the other hand, the notion that hack wordsmiths will swoop in and thoughtlessly churn out SEO text as opposed to real articles and content is profoundly troubling.

I’ve written dozens of SEO-optimized articles for a variety of companies over the past year. I’ve written countless magazine articles, press releases, Web pages, email newsletters and more (including about three dozen books) over the past two-and-a-half decades.

The cost of professional copywriting today is in the neighborhood of a dollar a word.

Sorry, [name redacted]: With all due respect, the idea that “professional writers generally charge anywhere from $4 to $8 for an article depending on the word count and research involved” is patently absurd — not to mention deeply insulting to any editorial professional.

Let’s talk about the high end of your fee range, though. How long does it take a real professional to write an article? Let’s assume the article is brief: about 250 words. Let’s further assume it takes 90 minutes to research and write the article. That’s $5.33 per hour. Given that, you’re better off washing dishes or flipping burgers for minimum wage — you’ll get paid almost 23% more for your time.

I’ve seen too many “editorial services” that churn out articles for pennies on the dollar. All of them are pure unadulterated crap.

What’s most disturbing about all this, though, is that (a) too many “marketers” simply don’t care if it’s crap, and (b) too many clients (and members of the general public) are too stupid to know the difference.

Takeaway for marketers: You get what you pay for.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Rants 'n' Such.