Articles are a form of content that can be taken advantage of and used in a number of different ways. Utilizing them is just another way to make money. People use them for traffic, to be an affiliate and to get notoriety, among other things.
Good quality articles have been in demand online ever since I can remember and will continue to be in demand, in the future. Instead of creating these articles and charging for them, there are plenty of other ways to start making quick money off of this process.
I contacted one of the best if not the best freelance writers on one of the freelance worker sites. She takes in six-figures a year, just from one freelance site. I don’t know if she is involved in other sites or projects, but she really rakes in the cash. I know that because it lists how much she has been making on that one site.
I asked her some questions and she was nice enough to answer them for me. I want to keep her anonymity because I don’t want a ton of people bothering her and sending her e-mails, I’ll explain the strategy and how I’ve expanded on it.
I observed not only how much money she was making, but how many writing projects that she was taking on. I’m a writer, currently working on two novels and I’ve written hundreds of articles and dozens of reports and e-books in the past couple of years and I wouldn’t come close to being able to write as fast as it seemed that she was.
The answer was that she wasn’t doing all of the writing, she was probably doing just some of the writing. She had a team of writers in place that she would let do the majority of the writing. She would pay them a portion and keep the rest.
Basically free money. Once she had a dependable team of writers in place, all she had to do is bid and win writing projects and assign them to her team of writers.
How is this possible?
Having an understanding of supply and demand and simply taking advantage of that and being the middleman or controller. Tons of people seek good article writers and are willing to pay handsomely for them. A controller finds these people for them and appeases the demand (buyer). The controller appeases the supply (freelance writer) by giving them consistent work, allowing them to make a living.
The controller builds up a good reputation. Reputation is so vitally important for freelance work. It makes all the difference when getting work. People won’t hire people that don’t have good reputations. The good reputation also allows you to charge higher rates.
The controller has a huge advantage in the amount of work that they can take on. The shortcomings of many freelance writers is that they can only take on so much work because they are one person. With a team of writers the controller has a huge advantage.
Where do I find the demand?
At the sites that I listed earlier. The freelance worker sites and the Internet Marketing forums.
Where do I find the supply?
I also find the demand at these sites that I listed earlier. The freelance worker sites and Internet Marketing forums.
Why would they allow a middleman?
The main reason is that both parties are satisfied. The customer gets their order delivered on time and is of good quality. That is the main two things that they are looking for. The freelance writer gets work and gets paid and that is what they want. Steady work is very important to a freelance writer.
All a buyer cares about is that a project gets done when they want it done and it is what they’re asking for. If you deliver that, you’re gold and there is a possibility of a lot of return business.
Reputation is key. It is everything to a freelance writer. Without a good reputation, you either don’t get work, don’t get steady work or have to work for dirt cheap. When freelance writers start out, they have no reputation. They either never get jobs and give up or they get dirt cheap jobs and work their way up or give up.
You provide this reputation. You allow other people to do the manual labor and you just submit the work as is or make some changes and turn it over to client. That reputation continues to grow and grow and the rest is history.
The buyers are always there and they are always craving more work in various niches. You can develop a relationship with them and get that all important repeat business. It boils down to several joint ventures, forming a very prosperous online business.
What I Look For in Article Writers
The price is the first thing that I look at. If they don’t say what they charge per article, I ask them. Don’t be afraid to get into detail and negotiate with them. You always want to do the numbers, obviously.
Writing talent is obviously important. I want their work to be great, so that the client is very happy. I also don’t want to have to hire someone to make corrections to their articles or have to make the corrections, my self, but sometimes, that is necessary.
The turnaround time. You obviously want article writers that have quick turnaround times. That is for many reasons. You want them to get their work done on time, but also in time for a correction, if need be.
The ease of working with them. I don’t want to work with joint venture partners that are always in a bad mood and taking it out on me. I won’t put up with that, I want to have a positive relationship with them.
How much work they can take on. If you have a lot of work, it obviously helps if you can find people that will take on a lot of work. I’ll get into this more later, in my scalability section.
Mastering Joint Ventures
Mastering joint ventures is all about research, being proactive and courteous. Those are the three keys to mastering joint ventures.
Study how people like to be contacted. That is the best way to contact people. Some people never read their private messages or they have an assistant check their e-mail for them. You want to speak directly to them.
Be courteous. That is a big thing. Be respectful and complimentary and don’t be too pushy. You don’t want to sound desperate. You want to seem committed, but not desperate.
Introduce their benefits early. People want to know what is in it for them. You don’t have talk business immediately. You can compliment them first, but introduce how you can benefit each other.
Use social proof to show success. People are skeptical, especially when it comes to people that they don’t know. Once you have some success with joint ventures, you can show them that social proof through testimonials and earnings.
Scalability and Article Arbitrage Conclusion
When I talk about scalability, I’m talking about scaling up the profits and your operations. When you generate more revenue, you can in turn, invest that in your business.
This strategy that I just covered can be applied to any number of other outsourcing activities. Copy writing, web site development, working with scripts etc. There are reasons why I like the article arbitrage strategy better than using it on other outsourcing techniques.
The first is that you can get started with minimal investments. You can start out small and only do a few articles a day and keep reinvesting and scaling up activities. It isn’t that expensive to outsource a few articles a day, when you first start out.
The second is that it is pretty easy to cover the people that you use to outsource. What I mean by that is if they don’t get the job done or you need to make some changes to the articles, it isn’t that difficult.
The third is that the demand is so great. There are so many people that want articles, in so many different niche markets.
The fourth is that there are plenty of article writers, to recruit. Sure, article writing takes some skill, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or have this rare skill, to do it.
Scaling Up
There are a few different strategies for doing this. I’ll run through them and you can see what works best for you when you start to have some success and make money and scale up operations, at your own pace.
Getting creative through Internet Forums. One thing that you can do is sell packages of unique articles and give buyers private label rights to the articles. Limit how many you sell, but it can be quite lucrative.
Hiring more article writers. You either do like I said with The Internet Forums or you take on more work. You can take on more writing assignments and hire more writers to write them.
Taking on writing jobs yourself. If you want to take on some writing jobs to give yourself some more investment money, go for it.
The last tip that I’ll give you when it comes to scaling up is to be organized. Keep track of what it going out and what is coming in. That is very key to your success.
