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Article Syndication is a great way to increase your incoming links and drive targeted traffic to your site. Most small business owners don’t have the time or the writing skills to produce quality content on a regular basis, making article writing a prime candidate for outsourcing.

Outsourcing isn’t as easy as it sounds though. A search for Freelance Writer on Google turns up millions of results, with many of them having equal claim to being the best for you. Here are a few tips and questions to ask when you are looking for a freelance article writer.

Who is doing the work?
Make sure you know who is doing the actual writing. They may well be outsourcing it, which is fine, as long as you know where it is going and are ok with that. Many 3rd world countries product very good work, but the cultural understanding of the topic is so different it make the writing almost useless. For example, authors in conservative 3rd world countries cannot convincingly write about online dating.

Qualifications?
Qualifications are an important consideration but not essential. There are lots of writers that don’t have University degrees and produce very high quality work. Of course, writers with a University or College degree in North America are highly desirable, but hard to find. If you can find them, they should be at the top of your list.

How Much?
Many writing agencies claim they can produce quality blog posts of 300 words for $1 or $2. Don’t believe it! Look for prices in the middle range. Here are a few factors that will affect the price.

Audience: If you audience is very general, you won’t have much to worry about and it won’t affect the price. The more specialized your audience is, however, the higher the price, and the more careful you are going to have to be. Articles about online dating for a mass market audience are going to be easier than articles for Car Dealers or Engineers. If you have a specialized audience, and a writing agency quotes you the regular or standard price, they don’t know what they are doing and it’s time to move on.

Content: Like audience, the more specialized the topic, the higher the price. If you have a specialized topic that you would like a freelance writer to write for you, be prepared to provide them with background material to assist them with their job. This will make a huge difference to the quality of the final product.

Where is it being written? Think about how long it would take you to write 500 words, or about one page. Probably anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. If the price that you get is ridiculously low, when translated into an hourly rate, that will tell you something about who is writing it and where they are writing it.

This requires some careful analysis that few people understand and often overlook. If writers are real professionals, with College or University degrees, and a lot of experience, then they can produce quality content very fast. The price may seem low, but that is because the writers are professionals, not because they are outsourcing.

Developing a long term relationship with a writing agency, is one of the best things that you can do for you website and your business!

Brian Stocker is a writer, editor and online marketing specialist. Visit his website for more information about Affordable Article Writer