Over the summer I decided I needed to get some help with bulk content creation. I wanted to make sure I used a service that worked best for me and my site.
I’m a bit of a control freak and have a tendency to not want to involve third parties in my processes. But if I can’t reliquish some control, it’s going to affect my ability to scale the site I’ve worked so hard on for the past 18 months.
I decided to place some test orders with content creation services. In the end, I wrote so many notes about what was returned to me, that I decided to blog about it. Why waste the expenditure of all that angst?!
Why Use a Content Creation Service Now?
I’ve put in “sweat equity” in buckets. Literally and figuratively. I have a writer who does a few articles here and there. The site is finally gaining traction, and I’m confident it’s going to be a financial winner for me. BUT I’m not great at planning and scaling content efficiently (yet).
So I’ve got a major bottleneck on my hands whilst I skill up and build my processes.
What Does a Content Creation Agency Do?
Whenever I chat about content writers with people who don’t use them, there’s a common expectation that writers should “just know” what to include in a piece to get it bang on quality.
Nope. That’s the site owners job, and the time and processes involved can be extensive.
This is where content creation agencies step in. Their service is not just providing content, they’re taking on a lot of your briefing, research, and basic optimisation. For the most part, they will also provide preformatted content ready to publish.
There’s a lot of time in that!
The Contenders
I Looked at:-
There’s an AI service in the mix too. All the cool kids are using it, so this was a good opportunity to take it out for a test and see how it’d fly.
The Topics
I came up with a set of articles within a single topic. The key information points needed to cover the topic are structurally similar for each piece. That meant I could see the differences in approach and quality between the content providers.
The subject area is complex. There’s a lot of facets to covering off the topic, not all are obvious at first pass. I felt choosing an in depth topic would be a good stress test, as much for myself as the agencies.
The Briefs
I abandoned my perfectionist tendencies and gave each agency limited briefs. I’m looking for a service that’ll fill in the gaps so I can brief out at scale and know quality will still be maintained if I drop the ball on the fine detail.
My big fear as a site owner is handing over responsibility for content production, and it resulting in a drop in quality. At best this can lead to reduced traffic due to topics not being covered properly. At worst, I’ll get zapped during a core update and live to regret swapping scale for attention to detail.
So with a healthy dose of “the fear” I gave each of the agencies a brief for 1k words and supplied:-
- Article title.
- Target keyword.
- Tone of Voice.
- 2 core headers.
- 2 or 3 suggested keywords.
- Site & article mission overview (couple of sentences).
Most agencies understandably don’t allow revisions based on things you’ve missed. So I felt this was a decent test to see who’d be a the best partner to grow my site
WordAgents
- Cost: $0.12 per word.
- Apply extra credits for Surfer SEO $0.04 per word.
- 30% off coupon for new customers.
My first impressions on the site were good, the pricing was clear and ordering looked simple. They are very vocal about North American writers, but after a support ticket I was assured that they could cater to the UK market.
I was taken aback that Surfer SEO was an extra $40 on a $120 article. I personally couldn’t see that value in the service. I’d not be prepared to pay that price at scale. So I went ahead without the optimisation to see how it would go.
- What Other People Say: I couldn’t find any user reviews.
- In Their Own Words: “Our mission? To help our clients grow by writing human-friendly SEO content at scale.“
- The Briefing Process: Briefing set up was good. Their submission form catered for those who have a preferred system and offered a spreadsheet template for those who don’t.
- Turnaround Time: 5 Working Days
URL: https://www.wordagents.com/
Quality of Content
The output from Wordagents was solid enough. The article seemed to cover the topic relatively well.
Most of the additional headers the writer had added were useful to the reader. Some were a bit cookie cutter being “other advice” and “final thoughts”. I felt there was some filling going on to reach the 1k word count I’d booked in. There wasn’t anything wrong with them or the info included, but they were obvious to me and felt somewhat forced.
I had been nervous about being too tight to pay for surfer seo optimisation, but the piece came out pretty well overall and looks natural.
Factual Accuracy
The research was reasonably well done, and on the face of it the writer did a good job overall. All the info in the article was correct.
However, there was a connected topic area that I felt should have been mentioned. It was core to covering the broader topic with authority. It could have been covered in a sentence or two, or it could even have been one of those extra paragraphs.
Customer Support & Communication
When I asked my pre-order question support were back to me within 2 minutes, despite it being out of US business hours.
A little while after I’d put in my order, a support ticket was opened up for me by the customer success team to reply to if I needed any help with anything.
Fat Joe
- Pro Cost: £0.08 per word for 4 star writers, Surfer SEO optimisation, and thorough subject research.
- Basic Cost £0.04 for 3 star writers and basic subject research.
My first impressions were positive. Site slick and easy to navigate, clearly stating they had UK writers. I went for the pro package which also included meta description and a royalty free image. Nice touch that, even more time saved.
- What Other People Say: 82.9% excellent reviews on ShopperApproved – Fat Joe offers a lot of different services, so it’s difficult to pick out which are for the content. Most 1 star reviews seem to be people complaining of payment / website functionality issues rather than bad service.
- In Their Own Words: “Engage your target audience and boost your SEO with original, magazine quality articles.”
- The Briefing Process: The briefing form was clear, and easy to use. Their minimum input requirements were easy to navigate.
- Turnaround Time: 2 Working Days.
URL: https://fatjoe.com/article-writing/
Quality of Content
At first glance I felt the writing quality was ok, but the research fell short. It did not have the depth or topical coverage I would hope for. There were 4 headers in total. The other articles had a lot more.
The sentence length was off – 58% of sentences had more than 25 words. That made me feel it had been poorly compiled, so I decided to look more closely.
After doing a test search, I realised the featured snippet on Google was reading very similarly to one of the paragraphs in my article. There were also more areas in the piece where I could see text snippets that were close to the content from the same source.
I considered asking for a revision, but after struggling to find the words to describe my issues to the author, I put it in the too hard basket. I decided to contact Fat Joe support and requested a refund. I flagged my concerns about the similarities.
Customer Support & Communication
They responded within minutes and gave me a refund as part of their first order guarantee. I hadn’t realised they offered that when I asked for a refund.
They pointed out:-
“We use Copyscape Premium to spot-check orders and this article passes with only 2% noted (a standard figure for stock phrases and such).
It is natural for a writer to need to source their information from existing articles as they are not subject specialists but instead are experienced generalists who will research subjects as needed. ”
I appreciated the quick refund and response. That was great service.
They said they’d look into the issues with the piece further. When I replied to the support ticket and said they should look at the first couple of paragraphs which had a very strong similarity to the URL I’d flagged they displayed willing to “look into it further” and reiterated the piece passed Copyscape.
Factual Accuracy
The topic was not covered as fully as I’d have liked. What was there was accurate and read OK.
My Content Pal
- Cost $0.08 Per word, Surfer SEO optimised.
I was lucky enough to win a My Content Pal contest a while back. The prize was a batch of their content, and I was pleased with the output. But rather than blindly continuing to use them, I wanted to look at them compared with other providers.
I was very happy when I was getting the content for free. However, I was keen to see how I’d feel when I was paying for it and comparing them to other services.
Their ordering process is sleek, and straightforward. Note: since I made my test order, they’ve increased their minimum order to 10k words.
- What Other People Say: Trustpilot has 100% excellent reviews. Not a single bad word to be found. Glowing halos all round for team MCP.
- In Their Own Words: “High-quality content that’s optimised for SEO and doesn’t break the bank.”
- The Briefing Process: MCP provide a spreadsheet asking for key information. Their mandatory fields are more in depth than the other providers I reviewed. A few minutes extra work.
- Turnaround Time: 7 Working Days.
URL: https://www.mycontentpal.com/
Quality of Content
The content was well researched and structured. They were the only company who identified a point of information that I felt was important to include to make the content truly “helpful”. It was something other articles in the top 10 didn’t necessarily include. Nice.
I also liked the inclusion of some formatting that was likely to attract those featured snippets we all love so much.
MCP gives you access to the Surfer SEO document when returning content. There’s a lot of transparency there. I was able to check the quality of the optimisation without any effort. A bonus timesaver.
If MCP needed to create any filler content to meet my booked word count, it did not show. There was a beautifully formatted how-to section which went into a lot of detail. In terms of finding a clever and relevant way to meet the word count without engaging in fluff? Bang on.
The keyword variation throughout was rich and in depth. The phrases needed to cover off the key topics in the piece were incorporated seamlessly. There was a depth of keyword usage in the MCP that was missing in the other pieces. This really exceeded my expectations, and honestly – they did a better job than I could have done. Humbled.
Factual Accuracy
Everything I felt that was needed to cover the topic was there, including key references to related topics.
Overall, the topic was covered to an extent I had not dared hope for from an agency. So many spinning plates on the facts front, not a single miss. Internal linking opportunities? Killed it.
Customer Support & Communication
Customer support was quick and friendly throughout. Nikki, my content manager, was personally in touch at every stage of the process.
This personalised service as opposed to automated “your content is ready” type emails was a point of difference I appreciated very much.
CopyAI
- 2k words per month free.
- $49 for 40k words.
It’s a brave new world, so I decided to try out an AI service to see if it would work well, and save me time. I saw a bit of buzz on Twitter about Copy.ai, with positive opinions expressed. I’m a skeptic, but as the technology has had a few years to mature I thought it was time to give it a go.
It helped immensely that Copy.ai were offering a free trial. I am Scottish after all.
So. How did the robots go?
- What Other People Say: Trustpilot has 79% excellent reviews for Copy AI. Only 4% of reviews were “bad / 1 star”. The most common complaints seemed to be about the quality of the output.
- In Their Own Words: “Faster, Fresher, Better Copy Introducing the end of writer’s block. With CopyAI’s automated creativity tools, you can generate marketing copy in seconds.”
- The Briefing Process: To use the service, all you need to do is enter a cue and then you can sift through multiple options of generated text, choosing the one you like the best. I’d prepared some basic headers that represented what I thought the core of the content was. I used these to create the cues for the ai, and they seemed to work OK.
- Turnaround Time: Instant gratification baby!
URL: https://www.copy.ai/
Quality of Content
AI is only as good as the cues you give it – so I’ll be missing info which I’ll need to research.
It took me all of 10 minutes to self generate an 850 word article. Most of that was the time I spent putting in cues, then pasting them in under headers.
I was relatively surprised at how well the content read at first glance. The content was quite repetitive, it’ll need a lot of editing to make it into a well formed article.
The AI managed to get the basics right and I could see the core topic covered off in there. The article needs so much work that it’d be quicker to write it myself.
But this was interesting. If I hadn’t known anything about the subject, the AI would have helped me understand the key components. That’s got potential value for me, even if I don’t see it as a viable content generation option.
Factual Accuracy
My niche is procedure heavy. So accuracy is important. The inaccuracies that crept in weren’t just hilarious – they were actively dangerous. There was advice there that could have killed someone.
I’ll have to check each and every fact to make sure it’s correct. I think my conclusion is that you can’t trust most answers to questions from AI sources. Honestly, was better than I expected overall. But still not good enough.
Customer Support & Communication
Well, it’s self service – but it was quick and easy to sign up for CopyAI. The interface was smooth and easy to use. Everything was intuitive, so I was up and running within a couple of minutes.
Good bot.
The Undisputed Winner…
For me, My Content Pal is coming out on easily on top with the combination of cost and quality. They’re offering competitive rates, and providing a LOT more for it. MCP has included everything a search engine wants to see without compromising value to the user.
This exercise has been great. I find it very difficult to hand over control, and before I delved into what was on offer I felt like agency content was priced well outside of what I was happy to pay.
However, having seen the quality baked in by MCP and just how much time it will save me, I can say I feel a lot more confident about the value that it can add. No training writers, no agonising over briefs. Finally, the all important trust factor. MCP is a smaller agency than the others I compared it against.
I felt like a valued customer during my dealings with them.
The other agencies had very efficient support, but I was aware they were volume businesses. I think that was reflected in the experience I had when I hit problems with content quality.
Whilst the support was very polite and effective, I felt it was an inflexible cookie cutter response. I have complete understanding of the need for this, and if there was no alternative, I would build my own systems to catch the poor quality articles and get them submitted for revisions.
However, fortunately for me there is an alternative. I’m excited to work more with MCP to scale up and grow! I’m sure they are planning their retirement as we speak now that they’ve scored my tiny (by comparison) content budget.