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Christina Gleason, M.A., Digital Media Creator

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Ubervu Steals Your Blog Posts AND Your Comments

April 29, 2010 By Christina Gleason 19 Comments

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I started getting pingbacks from sites like Topsy a few months ago whenever I tweeted to promote a blog post I’d written on my mommy blog. I checked out Topsy and saw that it only showed a brief excerpt of my posts with a link back to my site along with all of their little bells and whistles that justify the site’s existence.

I thought that the pingbacks from Ubervu meant that they were the same sort of deal. I was wrong.

I don’t know what compelled me to click the link yesterday, but I went to see what Ubervu had to say about one of my posts yesterday…

And I found my post there in its entirety. With the entire comment feed as well.

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Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: blog posts, blogs, comments, content theft, Web content

Google Says Quality is Dirt Cheap, Don’t Hire Copywriters

June 10, 2009 By Christina Gleason 65 Comments

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According to Matt Cutts of Google, Internet marketers should avoid the unethical practice of buying links by paying a few pennies to the folks who complete tasks via Amazon Mechanical Turk and scoring free links from their efforts. Let me rephrase that: Google says it’s wrong to pay for other people to link to your website, but it’s totally cool to score hundreds or thousands of links – not by paying a professional copywriter to create an awesome resource for you – but by spending about 20 bucks for a handful of people to perform cheap labor for you with Amazon Mechanical Turk. Don’t believe me? Watch this video.

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Filed Under: content creation Tagged With: blogging, content creation, Google, paid links, quality, SEO writing, Web content, writing services

Check Your Sources – The Prevalence of False Information Online

March 2, 2009 By Christina Gleason 5 Comments

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I’ve been working on a lot of content for my article writing clients.  There is a lot of information “out there” on the Internet that writers like me use for their research.  Some topics have more information available than others, and we all have a short list of Web sites – or classes of Web sites – that can be considered trusted sources.

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Filed Under: content creation Tagged With: accuracy, article writing, content creation, quality, Web content

What Are You Paying For When You Buy Content?

February 18, 2009 By Christina Gleason 3 Comments

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I have to admit, the whole concept of what to charge for content creation can be quite confusing for writers, which makes the concept of how much to pay for content confusing for content buyers. There are all sorts of different methods used to bill for content creation, and I’d like to take a look at some of the most popular.

Pay Per Hour

Some writers get paid by the hour. Most often, these writers are hired on a full-time or part-time basis by a specific company.  Their whole job is to write whatever the company needs them to write, whether it’s Web site content, sales letters, press releases, blog posts, or any other hundred things needed by one department or another.

These writers get paid quite literally for every minute they spent brainstorming, researching, preparing, writing, formatting, editing, and finalizing the content they create. If a writing project takes longer than expected, the writer does not get shorted for going above and beyond the call of duty to do things right. On the other hand, companies may not know if all the time they are paying for is  time being well spent. While many writers are quite diligent and work very hard, others are not as productive.

Pay Per Word

The prospect of getting paid by the word can be quite exciting for some writers, especially those of us who have a tendency to be quite verbose. Getting paid by the word encourages writers to fully develop the subjects they are writing about. When writers are asked to deliver 300 words, they know they will be creating a far broader, more generic article than they would when asked to deliver 750 words on a subject.

The problem for both writers and those that hire them is that of filler.  Writers may try to stretch their word count with unnecessary words and phrases that do not add to the overall value of the piece.  While some writers may do this intentionally to squeeze some extra money out of their work, others may do it out of perceived necessity.  If they are contracted to write 750 words on a subject, where they are getting paid specifically to write 750 words, they may struggle to add more when they discover their fully developed article comes up short at 625 words. Paying by word does not take into account time spent doing research on subjects with little information that is readily available.

Pay Per Page

Many writers opt to be paid by page written.  While the definition of a page is open for interpretation, freelance writers often define a based based on a word count range. As they are not being paid by the word, this grants the writer the freedom to determine the appropriate length for each individual topic.

When companies pay per page, they may wonder why they are paying the same amount for a 550 word page as they are for a 950 word page. The answer lies in the fact that the amount of time spent on each page is probably pretty comparable. While pages of 500 words or less are often generic overviews of a topic, and are thus billed accordingly because of the minimal research needed, pages up to 1,000 words are generally written as comprehensive resources on specific topics.  Some topics have more information available than others. When an abundance of information is available, writers may find it easy to come up with 980 words. When informational resources are scarce, it may take just as long to research enough to write 450 words as it did to write the previous 980 word page.

Essentially, when you pay for content by page, you are paying for the amount of research, time, and effort involved to create each page.

My Rates

This all, of course, applies only to general Web content, the type of content designed to provide information for your visitors. Sales copy, press releases, and other types of promotional content are a completely different  animal. But with that disclaimer out of the way…

My article writing rates were created on a per page basis. I have separate rates for up to 500 words and over 500 words. This has very little to do with actual word count, and more to do with the extensiveness of each page.

If you hire me to write 100 of the <500 word pages, I know you want some pretty basic content that won’t require much research. You are billed accordingly, even if I happen to go over 500 words on some pages.

If you hire me to write 100 of the >500 word pages, I know you want me to do some pretty extensive research, going into as much detail as possible, up to about 1,000 words. Basically, I will do everything in my power to make your page a better resource than any other single page online on the topic. Sometimes I’ll hit over 900 words, but other times I may not scratch 500. But rest assured, I probably spent just as long on the shorter page – maybe even longer – than I did on the 900-word page, just trying to find enough material to make each page as informative as possible.

Your Thoughts

What are your thoughts about content creation pricing? I’m interested in hearing from both writers and people who hire writers.

Filed Under: content creation Tagged With: article writing, content creation, Web content, writing services

Formerly Known as QualityGal

February 11, 2009 By Christina Gleason 5 Comments

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In case you missed it, my name is Christina Gleason. You may be more familiar with me by my former identity, QualityGal. Until February 9, 2009, I was the Content Manager at We Build Pages. Oh sure, that wasn’t my official title. But I created the content writing team from the ground up, recruiting and managing over 250 writers and editors to write thousands of pages of content, so I think it was a fairer description of my job than anything else that was bandied about.

I helped develop a  proprietary writer panel for the management of writer assignments. Sadly, I only got to use the new incarnation for two business days before I was let go. This tool had been in development since July 2008, and I’m sad that I won’t be able to enjoy it without all the bugs.

I developed an online style manual along with two of my editors, Jen and Michelle, which helped promote the quality of the content we produced. I also developed several very basic tutorials about SEO writing.

With the experience I gained from my time as a Google Quality Rater, I’ve always ensured that the content produced by the writing team I managed was valuable to users. User intent is so firmly ingrained in my brain that I would never, ever attach myself to any “content” that could be construed as spam or trickery. And that’s not because Google penalizes spam and trickery; that’s because it’s the right thing to do. I want to help make the Web a better place.

I’m now a solo act. I’m available for freelance work. Keep your eyes peeled for more information about my services and introductory rates.

Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts Tagged With: quality, SEO writing, services, Web content

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