If you have ordered content in the past, you’ve probably chosen a content mill or bulk content creation site. There are a plethora of them out there to choose from at a variety of price points. Some of them charge monthly subscription fees, and some do not. Your choice of content mill usually depends on your budget and ease of use. What you probably aren’t considering is custom content creation from an independent freelancer writer, but you really should.

Why You Should Choose an Independent Freelance Writer for Your Content Creation

1. There’s No Hoping You’ll Get a Good Writer

Content mills have thousands of writers available, and if you use the open order queues, you don’t get to choose your writer. Instead, whichever writer sees it first will grab it. This means that if you place 20 article orders, you may just get 20 different writers. While that ensures fast content creation, each writer’s style is slightly different, which means you could get 20 pieces of content that look like 20 writers wrote them.

When you choose an independent freelance writer, you are ensures that each piece of content is written by the same writer. This will give your website and blog a uniform look and feel, which will add to your business credibility.

2. You have Limitations in How You Can Communicate with Your Writers

Most content mills demand that you only communicate with your writer via the specific platform. This means that you have to log into the system, go to your messaging board, find the writer, and send them a message. Once you hit send, that message may or may not get read by a person at the content mill. It depends on the content creation site, but several have employees whose sole job is to read messages before they are sent to the recipient. They are looking for taboo information, like contact information and items that go against the site’s TOS.

When you send an email to a freelance writer, your email is going to get sent just like any other email. There won’t be a delay. You also have other communication options, like Facebook and Twitter. If your writer allows it, you may even be able to direct call them or send a text message to their cell phone. 

3. The Money You Intended for Your Favorite Writer Isn’t Making It in Its Entirety

Your writer isn’t getting all the money you intended to pay, especially if you frequently bonus or tip your writers. If you pay $80 for an article on a content mill, about $40 actually gets to your writer. If you love the article and bonus another $50, your writer gets somewhere between 50 and 65 percent of that. That’s right, the content mill even has its hands in the tip jar. You just paid $130 for an order, and your writer got somewhere between $65 and $85.

Now, of course, content mills need to take a cut of the proceeds. That’s understood. They need money in order to continue to remain in operation. What’s new is the content creation site taking a cut of the tips. This standard came about due to a few unscrupulous clients ordering low-level content and offering to pay writers bonuses if the client loved the article. This means that the client probably paid about $20 for the initial article. The content creation site took 35% of that or $7. Then, upon acceptance, the client bonused another $50, which the writer got in its entirety. The $50 plus the $20 was probably the rate for the highest level available on the site, and the content mill lost $17.50 in fees for that order. If enough clients operate like this, you can see how the financial losses would mount.

When you hire an independent freelance writer, there’s no need to do all that math or think about how much you are paying and how much your writer is getting. The writer gets 100 percent of the money you pay, which means they are 100 percent motivated to give you the best quality content.

4. Your Writer Isn’t Working on 10 Other Articles for 10 Other Clients That Day

Independent freelancer writers don’t need to write 10 articles a day. Instead, they might write one or two. This means that your writer is always fresh when writing your content, and the content quality is more consistent. They’re also willing to go above and beyond. This often means you get detailed research, external and internal links to the article if they are needed and a fully formatted article that you do not have to extensively edit, rewrite or send back for a revision.

A content mill writer is going to go brain dead before they finish the 10 articles they have to write that day. If you are the first article of the day, you’ll get good content. If you’re the last article, you may get content that you have to send back for a revision or that you cannot use at all.

5. Your Orders Are Going to Get Sent Immediately

When you order content from an independent freelance writer, your order topics and your directions are going to get sent immediately to the writer.  For most content mills, there is a verification process that each order must go through before it is sent to the writer.  This means that once you place your order, it is put into a verification queue until an employee can look over the order to determine if it needs work or if it can be sent to the writer or open order queue.  This can take hours, which means if you place your order at 8AM, it may not actually get to the writer until noon or later.  If it's on the weekend, your orders may not get sent through until Monday.

6. Your Orders Won't Get Dropped

Many content creation sites allow writers to drop orders at any time.  This means that even if a writer claims your order, which implies they will write it before your deadline, they can still drop that order at any time. this means that if you need your order in 24 hours, that writer can hold it until it times out, or they can decide at hour 20 that they don't really want to write it, so they send it back into the queue.  At this point, you have to wait for a different writer to claim your order and write it.

By contrast, your independent freelance writer is not going to drop your order without talking to you first.  maybe they need additional clarification, or maybe they can't complete it by X date.  Whatever the reason, they are going to communicate with you before telling you they cannot write it.  They'll also do it in a timely manner.  Most professional freelancers will ask any questions or address any concerns within a few hours of you placing your content orders.