The Core

I have had the idea for a little content (initially written content) business floating around for a while.  I think I have spent more money on content than anything else over the years and I really want to offer something 'better'.

I'm going to try and take this from idea to first customer in a month.  I am not sure if I am going to take the route of matching writers with customers and taking a percentage, or manage everything myself, but the ultimate aim is to build something which runs without me, but is so firmly structured and procedural that the quality to the customer remains the highest I can possibly get it, and is the number one priority.

So if you buy, or have bought in the past, I have a few questions -

1. What do you hate most about buying content?

2. Have you found a supplier you are happy with?

3. Have you found one supplier who can deliver everything you need?

4. How much of a factor is price?

5. Do you usually look for quality or quantity?

6. Where do you look when you need to buy content?

Bonus question - Do you want to buy any content? 


Thanks for your help on this.  I'd love to hear any feedback, positive or negative.

I have bought content. I've also written for hire - everything for scholarly research on grant money (7 books) to dashed off blog posts to people looking for cheapish blog posts.

1 (and 2 actually). What I hate the most.
Quality. Most content I've bought has been disappointing. I've typically paid around $25-$40 per 1000 words, so not total bottom feeding, but it just never really measures up. When I look at places where I've bought some of the content and written some of it myself, my content usually wins on traffic by a huge margin and typically it's much better in terms of traffic quality too.

I also agree about images. When I'm doing the writing, I find that identifying a good image I can afford often takes me longer than the whole 1200-word article. So if I buy and article without an image, I still have a lot of time to invest in many cases.

4. Price
A big factor. At a certain point, I would just pay myself. So whereas a top-notch writer will want $50-$75 per 1000 words, in an area where I have some knowledge I can usually churn out 1000 words in under an hour and half. So if I add all the admin time I spend to tell a writer what I want, edit the copy and so forth, I find that I can't justify going over $40/1000 words (I might if I were hiring a top copywriter who might get 10x that, but I've never had the occasion/budget).

5. Quality vs Quantity
Quality

6. Elance, Writer Access, some content provider whose name escapes me. I have liked Elance. I've found journalists between jobs, book authors and  a husband wife translation team - her English, him French and both highly educated. But back to #1, they were only really good for a first pass before sending the material (a book introduction in French) to my publisher. The editor in chief at the publisher still had tons of corrections, but someone like that is over $100/hour.

I had a fairly hard time getting writers who truly understood the concept of evergreen.

I've had trouble finding writers who understand the concept of original (or derivative)

If you want quality, you need to be willing to pay for it.  Not just for the words, but for the research time as well.  If you're not willing to do that, then forget getting something that is original or isn't rehashed.  Because for writers, it just doesn't pay NOT to rehash.

I've been on both ends of it.

From the writer perspective:  I hate that it is expected to churn out awesome quality, but it has to be done in a ridiculously short amount of time. 
I hate when people don't tell me *exactly* what they want and then b###h that they didn't get it. 
I hate that they want awesome but don't want to pay for awesome.  A few cents per word is not going to get you awesome, it is going to get you rehashed sh## because frankly, you're not paying me to do otherwise.

I think that's my biggest b###h:  that most people don't want to pay for quality.  And then b###h when they don't get quality.