Need content written to boost your SEO, product listings or affiliate marketing efforts? Here’s the ones we tried recently.
There are so many reasons for needing to hire content writing services for your website. The question is how do you go about choosing who to get to write for you and how do you get what you need?
It could be you have an eCommerce site and you need unique listings written for your product pages.
It could be you are a brand that wants to increase the traffic to your website. Your product listings might be covered but you need regular ongoing content.
If could be you run a content blog or affiliate website where you want to grow traffic and need some help getting content written on a regular basis.
Content writing websites in this list
- Human Proof Designs
- Content Refined
- Textun
- Content Development Pros
We’ve spend some time recently trying out a few of the regularly recommend content writing websites and trying out their services.
Here are the ones we’ve tried and how they performed on our first orders.
Fundamentally I am:
- Time poor
- Have some cash to spend, but can’t afford top shelf writing services (yet)
- Want quality posts over 1000 words, but ideally 2000 words.
1: Human Proof Designs
Human Proof Designs were one of the first sites I came across that offered what I needed. The do an incredible amount of things that I didn’t even know I might need too. These include:
- Buy a ready made affiliate website
- Regular monthly content writing services that includes keyword research, writing and uploading content to your website. Ideally WordPress
- Keyword research packs – let someone else do the research for you
- Training services to learn how to build your own affiliate empire
- Link building services
I signed up for a regular monthly 2000 word package that included them doing the keyword research and choose whether it might suit 2 x 1000 word articles or 1 x 2000 word article.
What I like about Human Proof Designs
- They do the keyword research for me. I’m time poor.
- The content uploading was excellent. I didn’t give them a template but they looked at other templates on my site and copied them very well. That included the use of the AAWP WordPress plugin without me asking. Awesome!
- You get regular emails updating you on the status of your writing – Researching, writing, editing, uploading, done.
- You get an email with the suggested keywords before they start writing
- It just ticks along and they write the content
- The project managers are great. A really nice bunch.
What I don’t like as much
- The writing felt a little formal despite my trying to make it more casual. We’re probably up to our 8th article with them and it still feels a bit stiff.
- The formatting is good but there isn’t a lot of out of the box writing to break up the flow. If it’s a list there is little foreplay before the list starts and very little text at the end of the list other than a short conclusion. Sometimes it’s nice to cuddle a little while at the end, you know?
- The stock images they have chosen have been pretty uninspiring. This isn’t a prerequisite for success but I like things to look nice.
2: Content Refined
I was so impressed with the Content Refined marketing pitch that I signed up on the spot. Their process flow and project management sounded like heaven.
Not only would someone do the keyword research for me, they would put it through Marketing Muse and project manage the whole thing for me.
I figured I had nothing to lose so I signed up for a regular monthly 4 x 1000 package.
Immediately I noticed the cost was higher than what I was paying for Human Proof Designs but I was optimistic the writing would be a set up. It was.
The first keyword research I got back were well researched, interesting and the titles they had chosen for the articles was interesting. Much more…journalistic.
Thought had gone in to it from people who do this alot.
Content Refined also offer a lot of really interesting services. You can:
- Sign up for regular content packages that include keyword research, title creation, writing service and uploading. The keyword part is optional so you can save some money there if you want to.
- Content surge is a cool offering where they can write an enormous amount of content for you in a short time frame.
- Content upgrade packages were they can take existing articles and give them a bit of a rewrite and lift
- Keyword research packages
- Blogify packages where they take a YouTube video or similar and convert it to a blog.
What I like about Content Refined
- Maddie and the team are lovely
- They create blog ideas and titles like editors – engagement and smart titles that entice the reader
- The writing I’ve received so far was almost all fresh and creative. Not all posts were bright and fun to read but on the whole they were good.
- They upload and format the posts for me.
- Overall, I feel confident and in good hands with the team at Content Refined.
What I don’t like as much
- One of the listicles I ordered chose products that didn’t make sense for the list. They were not products that people in that niche would buy
- They, unfortunately have like a monthly timeline for writing and so far they’ve been really late on all orders. Let me clarify – if you order this as a set and forget then you can expect good content monthly. But if you want it in a hurry, like this week, then they might not be able to move that fast. I think on the whole they have grown so fast, take more care with their writing and so you need to be prepared to wait on your content.
- Price is a little higher, which I understand for the quality of service but if you can do you’re own keyword research you might find cheaper places to get content or, you can use their services but do your own keyword research.
- The Blogify service did what it said but there were errors in the writing and you could possible get it done cheaper from a VA.
- CR didn’t format the posts as well as Human Proof Designs, I had to change quite a lot. This is really my fault for not providing a template to follow so I’ll own that one.
If you’re not in a hurry, don’t want to do your own keyword research and want good writing then Content Refined is a good choice and with trying out.
3: Textun
Textun offer a very cut and dried offering. They write content, you write the title and supply the keywords. That’s it. But it’s really quite brilliant.
At the time of writing there isn’t even an option to create an account on their website. You just select a service and enter the title, keywords, length of article and any notes you want them to consider.
It gives you the cost and delivery date (usually within 2 days) and you pay and that’s it.
The content we got back was probably as good as Human Proof Designs and much cheaper but we had to do the keyword research and create a title idea. They might also do the title if you leave it value.
Textun are not new to this content writing thing and I like their no-frills ordering service.
I could get quite addicted to ordering something daily as it’s so easy and fast.
What I like about Textun
- The writing is good quality
- It’s fast. Really fast
- The ordering process is simple
What I don’t like as much
- You have to do the research. But if you are using a tool like keysearch or Ahrefs (keysearch is cheaper) then it’s not that hard.
- You have to upload, format and arrange the posts yourself. I don’t love doing this but I don’t hate it and I’m always going to tweak it a bit.
Textun impressed me with their speed and the overall quality of the article. I gave very little instructions and they smashed out a good article.
I ordered a listicle post and while I was hoping for a little more uniqueness in the layout, I also could have given a better writing template for that.
I will certainly continue to use Textun moving forward.
Affordable, fast and good quality – so far.
4: Content Development Pros
The Content Development Pros website is as busy as a myspace page in the ’90s. It’s hectic and there are services popping out in every paragraph.
They offer writing services for everything offline and online you can imagine.
They also offer a fully managed service for blogs which includes content writing, keyword research, project management and the best thing of all? Analytics. It’s more expensive but seems quite robust.
Their fully serviced blog model includes monthly reporting on how the articles they have written have performed. This is amazing as it shows they are confident in their services and writing.
What I like about Content Development Pros
- The live chat on their website helps to answer questions fast
- It’s affordable content
- The writing we’ve received is slight more creative/unique in the template
- They seem to have a lot of experience
What I don’t like as much
- The content we got back was good. It was a really nice, creative template and it included FAQ’s and other nice touches to it
- The detail in the writing document returned to us was awesome. The included information in the template included metadata fields, titles, keywords and more. This shows their experience.
- My suspicion is it wasn’t written by a native English writer. Some of the wording was too verbose and at times seemed…awkward, for lack of a better word.
I’ve signed up for a monthly article on Content Development Pros as it’s affordable and puts another quiver in my content writing services companies list.
I’ll keep this going for a few month months and see where it ends up.
That’s all she wrote…
With a clear brief and some practice, any of these services have the capability to serve you content that will boost your website.
While some offer a set and forget service, you really shouldn’t be that hands-off if you want to be as successful as possible.
If you have any questions on these content writing websites specifically do feel free to ask in the comments below.
I’ll add some more content in the future that will cover:
- What to look for in a content writing service
- How to prepare and provide a clear writing template
- How to do your own keyword research
- The best, and most affordable, stock image libraries to avoid copyright issues
