How do I get an Affordable Blog Writer Brisbane?
Well, I have been writing my blog (and others’ blogs) for at least ten years, so I thought, why not find out how many affordable blog writers there are in greater Brisbane?
Turns out, there aren’t many. AirTasker has compiled a ‘Top 10 Best Blog Writers’ page and is saying that these writers are ‘great’, while the clients pay $30 – $150 per post. That is no better than getting your grass cut with scissors. It gets done, but who knows how well.
Let’s look at the industry now. The Copywriters Survey 2019 (now a bit old) said that the average experienced blog writer charges $499.50 for a post of 1,000 words. That would be $26,000 for one year of weekly posts! If you get a leading copywriter to write your blog, it may cost up to $1,500 – and you would probably get one helluva article. What to do?
Blog Costings from the Freelancer Perspective
Truth be told, it works both ways. Marketing communication experts (e.g. blog writers who write other marketing material) can command an $80,000 per year salary. If you put that into my own hourly rate freelancer calculator, using medium level costs of $110 per week, a qualified freelancer would need to bill at $89 to $110 per hour. That’s because you can only work 221 days per year and bill out 55 to 65% of your overall time, on average.
With this in mind, a fast blog writer can research and write a 1,000-word post in two hours, including link finding. But there is also briefing time, edits and email time to consider. So hypothetically, if I charged $100 per hour and took three hours in total to deliver and edit this post, I would price each post at $300.
The risk is, now and then a blog writer might need to re-write part of the article to suit the client’s goal better, and generally this blows out the time budget.
So, What are Better Solutions for Affordable Blog Writing, Brisbane?
So glad you asked. As an entrepreneurial thinker, I want to come up with better solutions. Here are some ways to ensure your blog writer (hopefully us) can reduce the marketing spend:
When you plan out a year or six months of content, and think in bulk, the copywriter can reduce the time spent in back ‘n forth of researching and client liaison. So we writers can chop off about half an hour per post and give a discount for loyalty as well. Therefore, BULK blog writing is going to cost you about $75 to $120 less per post, depending how much it costs usually.
The next option is to sift through Upwork, where you can sign up and choose to have a blog writer of good repute. However, this option is better if you make doubly sure you choose an Australian or New Zealand-born writer. Or potentially English-born and moved here. There are idiosyncrasies in the Australian lingo and culture that someone living here a long time will pick up on and use in their writing.
Why Should your Affordable Blog Writer be Well-Worn?
As we mostly use a conversational tone of voice, edging towards professional, it is imperative to use a writer who is well-worn. 🙂 A bit more experienced. Startling, but the Australian Copywriters’ survey of 2019 showed that 20% of copywriters had less than two (2) years experience. I’ve had a comparative seven years of copywriting and seven years editing books, and two years writing or editing copy while a marketing co-ordinator. I sometimes sub-contracted for an esteemed copywriter and he pointed out simple things to make the website page headlines better. It’s this learning that makes for a better copywriter.
During this stretch, a writer picks up different ways to approach blog writing. After writing blog posts to rank well on Google for nine years, I found different opening lines, headlines and techniques to better interest readers. Journalism (at Uni) also helped.
The great thing was, Google Analytics doesn’t lie. It tells you how many visitors stayed for how long on your posts. I know a quirky post worked well and was shown in Google Answers. Plus I know my comparison reviews were shown to more people.
Do Affordable Blog Writers Include Images and Formatting?
It seems not the case with the ones I saw. A low $100 offer (US? AU?) included client revisions but not stock images. The blog writer’s listing was ‘out of stock’, whatever that means.
With the Power of Words blog writing and content marketing offers, we include a free stock photo – sometimes we buy this image for it, if it seems the perfect one.
Most blog posts do not include formatting within the WordPress system. This takes an unknown amount of time so is best for ongoing team assignments, where in-house training is included.
Should a Ghost Blog Writer Include a Byline?
No. When writing blog articles, the blog writer hands over copyright for that article to the company. The management can opt to put the article under the name of the founder, CEO or technical expert.
How Long will it Take to Write Each Post?
If the post is not pre-written, i.e. it is customised and researched, then it will take about five weekdays to write. Delays would only come in for those times where the client was on a trip or we writers are on an annual holiday.
Edits to the post will take from 24 to 48 hours. The post is written in Google docs or MS Word.
How Long Should Each Blog Post Be?
The answer here depends on whether your blog is trying to be an informative thought leader in your field or if you’re trying to gain engagement on social media with different concerns of your market. Just the other day, a lady I was listening to insisted that nobody wants to read long posts, so she makes hers 300 to 400 words. I believe she is wrong, because it all depends how KEEN they are.
Hubspot gives this information, based on their readership:
“For SEO, the ideal blog post length should be 2,100-2,400 words. We averaged the length of our 50 most-read blog posts in 2019, which yielded an average word count of 2,330.”
Neal Schaeffer, a global influencer on marketing, recommends 2,000 words and he says:
“Longer post lengths get you more leads”. Nice one, Neal.
Adding to this, I’d say that 1,000-word posts are still a decent bite at the information cherry. You can answer several questions in this length. Expect to pay around $400 to $600 for this length. Ours would be $350, if on an ongoing basis.
The 2,000-word post is more for those who ALREADY have made some headway in their brand and can afford the extra costs of a writer researching, drafting, finding images, and for someone else to proofread it and create those internal links. Expect to pay about $800 to $1,200 for ghost blog writing in Brisbane, Australia for 2,000 words.
Strategic Blogging for the Smart Blog Writing Client
You might have noticed I included a couple of internal links and an intriguing call-to-action image in this very post. That’s no accident. If you get the cheapest blog writers, you’ll get zero strategic help. But if you go the next level up, to an affordable blog writer (Brisbane), you can ask for help with finding appropriate internal links to help readers find either pages or relevant posts. The idea is to keep them reading on your site.
The other strategy is to have in mind what next action you want the blog reader to take. If it’s to book in a strategy session, well say so at the end or in a sidebar call-to-action box.
An Email Marketing System tool called ConvertKit is very good at letting you put a relevant content offer at the bottom of particular posts. Say your latest three posts were about ‘content marketing for accountants’. Then your writer compiles a report about ‘ten ideas to reduce content marketing costs’ – and you offer this at the bottom of those posts. ConvertKit does this with a tiny piece of code, you just pick the posts and upload the guide. Probably Mailchimp offers much the same.
Did you see how I related the downloadable guide idea to what accountants love to do — save on costs? Relevance and meaningfulness is hyper important to succeed with content marketing overall. If you offer fairly broad guides and on-the-fence, me-too information blogs, your content marketing program will get little traction. Take a stand and keep all your content offers relevant to your targeted readers.
Why Should you Plan Your Blog, along with Your Writer?
We don’t write one-off blog posts for clients, but instead prefer the effectiveness of a continual blog writing strategy and ‘rich’ content marketing approach. We want to be able to get to know you, adapt to or create your house style, and find out the results of all this content marketing work.
If you’re serious about getting the next six months of your blog writing strategically planned, then book in for a free 1 hour Marketing Review chat with Jennifer at Power of Words or email us today.
