Before I decided to hang up my shingle and be a freelance content marketer, I was an editor at a B2B magazine with a tiny team. For most of my tenure, I worked exclusively with freelancers and subject matter experts who were eager to contribute in exchange for building their personal brand. If there is one thing I know it’s that when it comes to writing, you get what you pay for. 

As our content budget got smaller and smaller, I had to rely more often on inexperienced writers and people who were willing to contribute content for free. I put my budget toward hiring experienced freelancers to write our print features, which meant that shorter news stories, columns, and web stories fell to the less experienced freelancers in my stable. This led to a few problems:

• Missed deadlines — Writers who aren’t getting paid tend not to care if they miss deadlines and throw off your entire editorial production schedule.

• Bad copy — From stories that clearly missed the point of the assignment to the drafts that made me wonder “How is this person making a living as a writer?” I saw it all. One time I actually found myself wondering, “Was this person drunk while writing?” (I guess he forgot the edit sober part.)

• A lack of depth — Inexperienced writers often turned in shallow content that didn’t demonstrate an understanding of the topic at hand or failed to ask the right questions of the experts. I often got the impression that they were used to writing click-bait for $50 a pop, and could not switch into a different mode, even when they were being paid more.

• Recycled content — It wasn’t just the unpaid writers, but I regularly ran up against columnists who thought it was OK to recycle content they had written and published elsewhere as a submission for my magazine (which asked for 90-day exclusivity).

I hated not being able to pay the writers I worked with more, especially the ones who turned in flawless copy that I barely had to edit. They deserved to be rewarded for their good work, but the economics of publishing didn’t always allow for that. Meanwhile, platforms that claim to connect brands with content creators started popping up like dandelions in April — promoting a race to the bottom and letting mediocre writers churn out short-form content for low prices. And the industry as a whole has suffered for it. 

Budgeting for your content marketing program

Your content is only as good as the people who create it. So when you’re creating your content budget, be ready to put a majority (or at least 50%) of that toward creation. In the past, some have advocated spending just 20% of your content marketing budget on creation — and 80% on promoting the content. 

This is outrageous! 

That means if you have a $35,000 budget you’ll spend $7,000 of that on paying the people who create the content and $28,000 to promote the content, likely on massive platforms like Google and Facebook. If you’re paying experienced content writers who are bringing more than a basic understanding of grammar to the table, $7,000 is not going to get you much.

A high-end white paper can cost up to $10,000 — a more typical range is $3,000 - $6,000. Add in a few blog posts and your budget is darn near spent. 

The easiest way to arrive at a realistic budget is to assign word counts to each piece of content and figure out what per word rate you can afford to pay. Generally, you should be paying at least $.40 - $.50 per word if you want a writer who not only turns in clean copy but can put in the time to understand your industry and display a working knowledge. Anything less than that and you’re taking a gamble with the quality of the work. If you have a skilled editor on staff who has the time to fix the content, you may be willing to roll the dice. Personally, I’d rather pay to get it done right the first time. 

More to the point, if you pay any less than that you are deeply undervaluing what a competent writer brings to the table. 

If consistently creating good content was easy, you would do it yourself. 

If you want to find a bargain, put a writer on retainer. Freelancers love predictable income and they are often willing to work for a lower rate if they know they can count on regular assignments (and payments). 

Ultimately, you have to decide whether you want to prioritize quality or quantity and then budget accordingly. There is no contest, in my mind. You always want to put quality first, but ultimately your content team will have to choose. 

How to find a good freelance writer

In my experience, writers exist on a spectrum. There are people who are terrified of writing and are paralyzed by their fear. On the other end, there are people for whom writing is second nature. And then there are people all along the spectrum:

• People who are good writers but perseverate over every word and can’t make a deadline 

• People who think they are good writers but turn in sloppy copy that needs extensive revisions

• People who are OK writers but bad at research and interviewing and don’t end up with what they need to turn in a good article

• People who are so used to the internet culture of click-bait that their ideas about what constitutes a good article are out of whack

And it’s nearly impossible to know which of these people you are dealing with if all you’re looking at is their portfolios. As an editor, I know that the end product the world sees doesn’t always reflect what a writer turns in. Some of them seemingly ignore word count — which is mainly a problem in print, but can also be an issue if you have, say, a case study template to fill. Others require extensive revisions and hand-holding from an experienced editor to make sure the right facts and supporting content make it into the final piece.

No need to fret, though, your friendly editor has a few suggestions for finding the right writer for your company:

• Raid your industry’s B2B publications. It’s very likely that the reporters already working in your industry have in-depth knowledge of the trends and issues impacting your industry — and they’re probably underpaid. 

• Talk to editors. Most of us hate not being able to pay our favorite writers enough, and are happy to recommend them for other paying gigs.

• Skip the platforms! Anywhere writers are competing for scraps is an objectively bad place to find the best writers. (I’ve actually made writers — ahem, Rebecca! — join these platforms just so I would have someone decent to hire for clients who insist I use a particular platform.)

• Ask around in your industry. There are probably lots of companies in your industry who aren’t direct competitors and they may be willing to introduce you to their favorite freelancers. 

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a plug for just reaching out to a content agency (like ours) that not only knows how to create content people want to read, but can help you with your strategy, and usher each article, infographic, video, etc. through the production process so you don’t end up with unnecessary bottlenecks. 

Before you set out on your next content marketing adventure, be sure you’re prepared to pay for what you need. A good content creator is integral to producing great content, and they deserve to be compensated for their time and effort.