Ever wondered how bloggers and small businesses determine how much they will pay for content writing every month? Ever wonder how blog and website owners decide on a monthly budget when they want to start outsourcing content creation to freelance writers? Read on to learn more. Take some of the tips shared in this article:

• Start a blog with quality content
• To help you revamp your blog
• To take advantage of inbound marketing using blog posts to find buyers / clients / customers from search engines like Google and Bing.
• To grow a high domain authority blog that can help your shop / product pages rank even higher on search for some of the most valuable search terms in your niche

Things to do before coming up with a monthly budget for content

If you want to embrace content marketing as a blogger or business owner, there are some things you need to prepare.

Keyword research. So, looking at some of the search terms customers and prospects type into search engines when looking for informational content, reviews or products / services to purchase. You can do your keyword research using tools such as Ahrefs, KWFinder, SmallSEOTools, Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush.

Some of these tools are free while some require a paid subscription. Use these tools to find suggestions for related terms, to find keywords to target in your article and to find keyword difficulty scores.

Also make sure to just type some of the keywords you find in Google Search, scroll down to the bottom and look at some of the suggestions displayed there. If you are a business owner, do this using the search bar on Amazon.com as well. Look at how people use the keywords you are interested in in their product titles.

Competition research. So, looking at things from other businesses doing similar things. You can do some research on competing products and services. Or lookup websites owned by companies that sell these products.

Use the research tools I mentioned to find more ideas for content. Look at product description pages, blog posts, landing pages, reviews, FAQ pages and any tutorials published by other websites / businesses in your niche / segment of the market.

A list of article ideas. So, just titles for posts you will later outsource to freelance writers over the coming months. Once you have done the exercise above (keyword and competition research), you should sit down and figure out a list of questions customers and prospects in your space usually ask.

Then use the research you did to help you craft headlines that can do well on search. Come up with at least 50 article ideas. If you like, you can also creates an outline for each article idea – adding subheadings in most cases.

Determining how much money you should put aside for freelance writers

Once you have your list of article titles and outlines for each, you can decide on the general word count you want your writers to target when creating the content. Then you can also decide how much you want to pay.

For example, you might want your writers to create blog post content between 1500 words and 2500 words.

Then decide on the method you will use to calculate how much you pay per article. Most people who outsource blog post writing to freelance writers usually just pay per word. So, you might decide to pay writers rates between USD 0.03 to 0.10 US Dollars per word.

Then you can multiply the per word rate you come up with the number of words you will require in an article. So, on the low end, a 1500-word article will go for 45 Dollars (1500*0.03) and on the higher end, the same article will cost 150 US Dollars (1500*0.10).

Then you can multiply these with the total number of articles (50) to determine how much money you will have to pay your writers. So, on the low end, the whole project will cost you 2250 US Dollars ($45*50 posts) and on the higher end, you will pay 7500 Dollars ($150*50).

Here is when you decide how much content you will outsource every month in order to get your monthly budget.

For example, if the whole project is going to take you five months, your monthly budget will come to $450 ($2250/5 months) on the lower end and $1500 per month on the higher end ($7500/5 months).

You can use this same formulae for posts that are longer (more than the 1500 words used in this example) to figure out your monthly budget.

Also know that if you are going to spread your project over many months (more than the five months used in this example), your monthly budget for content creation will be much lower.

Hiring freelance writers

Once you have figured out how much you can afford to pay for content every month, it is time to get the word out there and see pitches from writers willing to help you create the content you need.

On Niabusiness Classifieds page, go to Freelance Writers / Content Creators category to see listings by various freelance writers. Reply to the ads you like. When a writer messages you back, tell them about your needs / your project and how much you are offering for each article.

Take a look at some of their past work (their portfolio) just to see if you like how they put words together.
Then ask them about the number of articles they would be willing to create every week / month. Reach an agreement. Then do so, with rates as well.

Agree on deadlines and then just send the first article. Just send one first. Let them work on it, and pay them.

Then you can send them more work if you like the quality of the content they create.

Also decide how you want the work sent back to you. Should they use email attachments, Google Drive / Google Docs or are you going to give them access to your WordPress dashboard area.

Once you get that first article and you like it, pay them (usually via PayPal) and keep sending them more work.

If you find a good writer, just send them most / all of the work over time.

Also know what you want from your writers besides the content they create.

Ask yourself if you are going to need them:

• To interlink the blog posts they create
• To source for images to be used in the articles
• To write SEO titles and descriptions for your blog posts
• To upload and schedule posts on your site
• To create lead magnets to accompany some of the posts (as a separate service)

See, if you will need these extra services, and find someone that can help you with them. Or go to the Classifieds page to find a VA (virtual assistant) that can take the work from your writers, upload it to your website and make it ready for your readers.