This is why. I’m not sure if this idiot really believes he’s getting “High Quality Article Writers” for $1.75 or whether he just tells himself that over and over again, believing that if he chants it enough times it will come true. He probably watched The Secret and is expecting great things from his misadventures. He will be disappointed, become a laughingstock and will probably be open to lawsuits from the garbage he gets for that price. I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost.
Press releases are an incredibly inexpensive way to get an enormous amount of press. A well-written press release can get a company or small business person the kind of publicity that literally can’t be bought. Writing a good press release requires experience, education and no small amount of business knowledge. Or, you can just throw five bucks at someone and waste your time with a piece of crap that won’t sell anything and will never be picked up by anyone. Either way.
This useless “press release” is really just a crappy article. But, since the person who wrote isn’t well versed in press releases, copywriting or business, they don’t know any better. The person who commissioned the press release doesn’t care what is says as long as it only cost a few bucks. The formatting is wrong and no one really knows what the hell is being sold. Read through it and tell me what they are selling. If you can, I’ll send you a buck through PayPal.
This wreck is particularly awful because it looks like it was commissioned by a legitimate company with an actual business plan rather than Don Smiley and his Giant Business of Doom that has made him sooo successful that he will do you a favor and pay you $2 for every 500 words. No, the company is huge and likely has a PR firm that handles their marketing. So what the heck is this? If the company is looking for a way to waste time, they ought to turn on a TV. If they want the most complicated way to waste time that they could have possibly devised, it looks like they’ve found it.
I usually see the result of foreign Web writers on the actual sites that bought the $3 articles. But this time I ran across the work before it happens. This is the blog of an Indonesian Web writer. He has plenty of fantastic advice for people wanting to get into the field. For instance, “Many freelance exchange websites have openings for this kind of projects with an increasing trend.” Good to know.
The sad part, sports fans, comes at the very end. That’s when it’s revealed that this Indonesian writer who gives out advice on writing didn’t even write this piece of junk. He scraped it from Articlecity and reprinted it without the resource box. Not being a native English speaker, he evidently thought it was a high-quality article that would bring him business. It won’t. But if he offers to write content for $3, I’ll bet you cash that some idiot will hire him.
Ebooks are big business these days. They’re expensive, they’re helpful and they can make a writer a heck of a lot of money if they are marketed properly. The problem is, getting that marketing can be expensive. A good sales letter for an ebook can easily cost over $1K. So, of course, a lot of people outsource the work overseas. The result is often like this.
In describing the ridiculous pointlessness of this site, it’s important to note that the site makes it sound like they’re selling The Secret, which they’re not. Copyrights and bait-and-switch techniques aside, this outsourced gem has brought us such classics as:
“If you learn the answers to these two questions you will infalibly get rich, get a loving couple, a new house, a luxury car, or whatever it is that you want in your life.”
and
“The powerfull people of the world have been using The Secret for centuries in their benefit, now you can have access to it because there’s a system, there’s an explanation, there’s a secret formula, and with it… YOU CAN BE, DO OR HAVE ANYTING YOU WANT”
If there’s anything I want it’s an end to crap like this. Apparently they don’t have spell check wherever that writer is from. Sad. Just- sad.
Taking a break from the foreign-generated crap that outsourcers often use, let’s take a look at mid-priced domestic content. Don’t fool yourself. If you pay mid-price, you will not get top quality. There are no exceptions, no matter what you keep telling yourself. Anyone you would want as a customer (educated people with money to spend) can spot poor content from a mile away.
Take a look at this mid-priced site. It’s actually cheap as content goes, but since there are so many people who think $5 articles are reasonable, let’s just call this mid-priced. They’re selling $10 articles in bulk quantities to anyone who wants them. And, all of the articles are supposed to be written by Americans. Great! So, you can go there anytime and get cheap articles. But wait- there’s a catch. There always is, isn’t there?
The copy of any site has to be as good as possible in order to get customers. And, what these guys are selling is words. So therefore, the best of those words will probably be on the site, right? On the index page I found 17 grammatical errors, not including the testimonials. That is an enormous amount of errors for such a small amount of copy. I can imagine what the actual articles look like…
Unfortunately, a higher price doesn’t always mean higher quality. These guys have some of the highest prices I’ve ever seen. The prices are so outrageously high they are beyond the realm of even the copywriting greats that have dozens of books under their belts and get paid just to look at you. These people want hundreds of dollars per page, but take a look at their index page.
Yeah. Not only is the first sentence ridiculous, the page is full of grammatical errors. It also blends styles, suggesting a lack of professional training. From the trainwreck of a first paragraph to a nonsensical list of colleges with no indication of whether any of these people graduated from them or even attended them, the whole situation is a mess. It’s just my opinion, but I’d rather not pay for sub-par writing. But, given a choice, I’d rather pay $10 for it than $200. Just saying.
I doubt that this needs any further explanation. If it does, take a look at the product name. I’ve written a lot of product descriptions in my time, and I have never let one go out without a careful examination of the specs to make sure everything is correct. But then, I’m not an idiot. With a bad product description, no one is going to buy it. Will anyone buy this? I would worry about anyone who does.
Someone who loves buying cheap content recently pointed out this article as being one that’s a great writing example. Seriously. It’s such a great writing sample, apparently, because the writer obviously knows so much about the topic.
What he knows is how to read the back cover of The Millionaire Next Door and then to slap together an article as fast as possible that barely touches on the back cover content. Aside from the patronizing and offensive rhetoric being espoused here, it also contradicts itself and gives no actual information of any kind. Great sample. If that guy gets any business from this article I’ll eat my own head.
The second-worst line from this has to be, “Rich people, on the other hand, may not actually even have any money.” There’s a well-known wealth concept under there, but it’s not explained adequately for the audience. In other words, it’s not Web writing.
The worst phrase is, of course, “The rich can be horrible people, but not because they make so much money and they get to drive fancy cars, but because rich people poor, rude attitudes.” Not only does this guy write poorly, he is also judgmental and desperately jealous of the rich. And yet, he wants to teach others how to make lots of money and then presumably insult them for doing it. Great plan.