Outsourcing website

Judging by the popularity of our blog post about how much social media marketing costs, people are very interested in how much agencies and freelancers charge to manage social media. In fact, that post is currently ranking #1 in Google's search engine results pages (SERPs) for a variety of keywords associated with that phrase. So, we decided to write a post about how much professional web content writing costs. This pricing guide has been updated for 2015, and will tell you how much it costs to outsource landing pages, blog posts, press releases and other web content – both for our agency and in general. We did quite a bit of research, so you won't have to!

Side note: if you just want to know about The Content Factory's web content rates, click here to review our generic proposal that outlines everything we do and how much it all costs. PR, social media marketing and content marketing is also included in our larger packages.

How Much Does Web Content Writing Cost?

There are many different types of web content writing, each with different price points. Most of our web content writing services involve one of the following:

• Landing pages — Involves writing content like you see on our home, about and services pages. They should have distinct calls to action, include the SEO keywords you're trying to target and be somewhere in the range of 250-450 words long (depending on the design of the site). The purpose of landing pages is to convert browsers to buyers, and having amazing content can make a huge difference in your conversion rates. Poorly written content can seriously affect your sales. Landing pages are the most difficult to write out of all the web content, which is why they're so expensive.
• SEO blog posts — SEO blog posts (also known as SEO articles) are one of the easiest ways to increase your website traffic. They drive SEO, fuel social media marketing campaigns and are a good way to introduce people to your brand. Blog posts give people a reason to visit your website, and once readers are there they tend to click around a little. In a directly indirect way, blog posts drive sales — or at least, they do when they're written correctly. To see what it takes to write a blog post that ranks in SERPs and converts site visitors into buyers, read our guide to writing blog posts that convert.
• Mini blog posts — These are the same as regular blog posts, only e-mailed to the client as a Word file. Most of our clients have us post the posts directly to their websites (we include relevant tags/categorization, social bookmarking and other extras), which saves them time and costs them more money. Choosing the mini blog post option takes the client a little more time, but saves them some cash. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.
• Link bait and "in-depth" articles — These are like standard SEO blog posts, only twice the length and hyped up on awesome. Designed to go viral, link bait articles tend to be provocative in one way or another. There's a huge amount of effort and talent involved in writing link bait articles, but the traffic payoff is often worth the per-word rate.

So, how much does all this web content writing cost? It's hard to say, because most companies don't advertise their prices. Here's what we were able to find out, though:

How much do landing pages cost?

Landing page content is where you want to drop your money, since it acts as your website's silent salesman. If your web content is coming off like a sweaty and desperate used car salesman, it's not going to convert and your sales are going to suffer. Who cares if you're getting a ton of traffic if none of it is converting into actual sales? With that said, how many Benjamins should you expect to throw at your website copy?

This is one instance where it's difficult to tell what companies really charge for landing pages. For example, at The Content Factory, we only write landing page copy. We don't develop or design websites — instead, we specialize in writing the words that go on the pages and outsource the design aspect to one of our agency partners who (surprise!) specializes only in designing amazing and functional websites. Many web design businesses roll the cost of the content writing into their design fees, and then scratch together the content themselves. This is why so many websites have such crappy landing page copy.

There was a really interesting forum discussion about it, though — and some professional landing page writers quoted $1, 500-$25, 000 per page of content.

From the forum:

John (in response to somebody who said that landing pages cost ~$100 per): "The missing part of that sentence '…and earns about that much per month.'"

And that's because the clueless know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So they think low price equals a good bet the way a lotto player with a flimsy grasp of odds does. You have about the same chances of winning either way.

Cherilyn: "I like your thinking. A landing page for under $100 – that's a fantastic idea.

Hey, while we're at it, cars take a lot of effort to build and provide a lot of value – lets start selling those for $500. You're sure to get a reliable vehicle for that price!

Another day as a copywriter, and yet another unrealistic pricing expectation from a potential client…"

Plainwords: "I'd have to agree with John. If your client is serious about a landing page that converts and makes money, you'd be looking at $3000 to $4000 all up. There's a huge amount of time involved in creating a successful landing page."