James Roome

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PLEASE NOTE: The information in this blog post is dated, particularly that relating to the wages paid to copywriters.

You may already be aware of the Copify.com debate - if not then it's been summed up at Unmemorable Title.

Copify is a Lancaster-based firm which advertises itself as a way to "source content quickly, easily and cost-effectively". It is a platform via which businesses seeking content (both online and offline) can find copywriters and vice versa, to write press releases, articles, website content, anything.

The crux of the debate is the rates the site pays its copywriters - for a 'standard' copywriter 0.02p per word, for a 'professional' 0.04p per word and for a 'premium' copywriter 0.08p per word (Ed: rates no longer accurate). Many copywriters took exception to such low fees via Twitter and other Social Media sites over the weekend, as well as the fact that Copify.com suffers from a fatally flawed business model - you shouldn't pay for copy by the word.

Paying by the word can only lead to sloppy, ill thought-out copy, as writers will rush through jobs in an effort to get paid more money by accepting more tasks. A 'standard' copywriter will earn just £10 for a 500 word document, so you know that document is not going to be of an outstanding quality.

Copify attempts to dodge this issue by saying that if a document isn't approved by the client, the copywriter won't get paid. However, what if the client approves a piece of copy that is just passable; that perhaps doesn't represent their business in the best light or is poorly optimised, and they just don't realise? Is that fair? Absolutely not. The client should be able to have confidence in the quality of the copywriter's work, and if that copywriter is paid on a by-word basis, that confidence disappears. It's just not good customer service.

Another valid argument against the idea of paying for copy by the word echoes a point made at Unmemorable Title: paying by the word encourages verbosity. Copy should be tailored to the client's needs; as a rule it should be short, snappy and aimed squarely at their target audience. However, if you're going to get paid more for being overly verbose... well, I know what I'd do.

A previous employer of mine paid its content writers on a commission basis, and I saw some pretty horrendous work approved and published such as documents that had taken just minutes to write with no mind paid to potential duplicate content issues. Sites like Copify.com are a complete quality lottery - you have no idea what you're going to get for your money.

Good copywriting is worth investing in, particularly from an SEO perspective. Properly optimised and well-written copy has the potential to drastically increase your site's traffic, by displaying properly optimised tags and page text to the search engines, not to mention increased usability, by telling visitors to your site exactly what they need to hear. Copify.com is based on a good idea - a site which allows publishers and clients to directly contact copywriters, but if you ask me, their business model is all wrong.

P.S. Also, Copify claim to possess "vast experience of working in online marketing", yet their website is sadly lacking in meta information… I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

Tags: Blogs, Copywriting, Social Networks, Twitter, Website Content

Discussion

Posted by Martin Harrison on Feb 16th, 2010
james,
Thank you for your take on things. If you'll allow me, I'd like to clarify a few points which I think are unfair.

As with many of the blogs that have been written on the subject, you provide no evidence of the quality that has been delivered by the site. Fair enough you are expressing an opinion, but at the moment this is little more than an assumption.

To address the issue of cost per word, this is something we have been roundly criticised for. However, there is a reason why we have done this and it is for the purposes of standardisation. As copywriters, we know that 100 words can be just as, if not more effective than 1000 words. However, you try and tell a client who is less than single minded about quality that they should pay the same amount for 100 as 1000 words and that's where you have problems.

In terms of verbosity, I feel you are contradicting yourself slightly. How exactly does charging people per word encourage them to ask for more? If anything, it will encourage the client to seek brevity, in order to drive down costs.

You make reference to a 'quality lottery' which again I feel is unfair. All of our writers are screened before we let them accept jobs and have proved that they have what it takes. Why would we approve them, and run the risk of the client rejecting their copy. This would be in no-one's interests.
Posted by James on Feb 16th, 2010
Hi Martin, Thank you for your swift reply to my blog post. You are correct that i have not seen examples of work provided by Copify, this is an assumption based on my experience of other businesses offering extremely quick turnaround times on content.

What I will say is that I feel the pay-by-word attitude encourages sloppy work on the part of the copywriter.

"How exactly does charging people per word encourage them to ask for more?" I think you've misunderstood, I'm suggesting that copywriters will purposefully make copy more verbose than necessary in order to get paid more money, and they'll do it as quickly as possible in order to up their hourly rate. Otherwise, as a 'standard' copywriter working at a rate which assures quality writing, they'll be earning around £5 an hour (this could be even less if they need to research the industry in which the client operates prior to writing the copy).

"...try and tell a client who is less than single minded about quality that they should pay the same amount for 100 as 1000 words and that's where you have problems." - Are you saying that you have no issue supplying poor content to clients who don't know any better? Surely it's at this point that you explain to them the value of the copy does not lie in the word count, but in the quality of the writing and optimisation (in SEO terms)? Do they really want their business to be represented by sloppy, poorly pitched copy?

I'll also re-iterate my point that in many cases the client is approaching you for a service, and that service is the provision of good quality writing. This may be because they can't produce good copy themselves, and wish to employ a skilled professional to do this for them. They need to be able to trust that that copy is of a high standard, and that's not guaranteed when good writers are being given such low rates, and their work is cheapened by a 'pay-by-word' approach.

Like I said, I think the idea is, on the face of it, a good one. It's simply the pay-by-word method which I, and many others, have objected to.
Posted by Martin Harrison on Feb 16th, 2010
Hi James,
Just to re-visit the issue of verbosity if I may. There is nothing to show from the early work that we have processed that this is the case. If it became an issue for us then we would certainly address it.

Many copywriters have expressed concerns on the per word issue and this has caused us to consider this. Conversely, however, many agencies have responded positively to this approach. We will have to carefully consider both sides and who knows, we may revise this policy at some point in the future.

It is a sad fact of life that many businesses, particularly in your industry, treat copy as a commodity and are far more concerned with cost and speed rather than quality. I should know, because I have found myself in this position myself, working for an agency who operated on the principle that the more copy I could produce in a day, the more money they could bill the clients, regardless of its quality or relevance. As I have said on our own blog, I don't advocate or condone this approach, but I do see the market for it. That isn't to say that we are letting standards slip. I have personally vetted every one of our approved writers and have made sure that they met with the required standards.

At the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have a leading online marketing agency who have been using the site for the last couple of weeks and are so far very pleased with the outcome. Hopefully we will get client sign off to reveal this in a case study at some point this week.

In the meantime, thank you for your viewpoint and allowing us an opportunity to put across our side of the story.
Posted by James on Feb 17th, 2010
Martin,

Thankfully I-COM recognises the need for high quality on-page content, both from a usability and an SEO perspective. I would suggest that it is only the shortsighted or inexperienced companies in the SEO industry which think otherwise.

Following Google Caffeine updates and introduction of citations, quality content is becoming (and is going to be) more and more important - it's not about quantity or 'just getting something on there' anymore.

Quality is the way the SEO industry should be going, not quantity. Quick-fix content seems to me to be an old idea, perpetuating the old ideas about SEO.

I look forward to reading your case study.
Posted by Martin Harrison on Apr 8th, 2010
James,
As promised, if a little later than expected, a case study for your perusal:

http://www.copify.com/pages/mjr-web-case-study

Martin
Posted by Michael Ashworth on Oct 12th, 2010
We just wrote up a case study of Copify compared to other content vendors and a professional freelance copywriter. The results are very interesting:

http://www.nublue.co.uk/blog/copywriting-resources-put-to-the-test/
Posted by Mike on Oct 12th, 2010
We published Michael's comment because the review contains some interesting information.We would however advise caution in taking the review he discusses as read. On further investigation we've been able to identify that NuBlue are based in the same office as Copify up in Lancaster.We can't really be sure of the review's independence, to us it seems like the Lancaster cowboys might be riding again
Posted by Michael on Oct 12th, 2010
Thanks for posting my comment :)

We are making no attempt to conceal that fact. Copify is based in our office block and we do know them personally. But this is a genuine review and a genuine comparison which was inspired by that fact and not influenced by it.

The review we conducted was fair and we contacted all the companies concerned in a fair and consistent manner to ensure we received a comparable set of results.

It would probably be fair to also say that although we have used Copify ourselves in the past, we do prefer to write content in-house, and have also used professional writers. So this is not a "you should use Copify for all copy" campaign, as we don't. What the post tried to do was put Copify through its paces as although it has received a lot of criticism, we hadn't seen any fair tests.

We would be happy to see someone else test it to compare results :)

Thanks for posting my comment :)
Posted by James on Oct 13th, 2010
Hi Michael, just read your study, interesting stuff. Posted a comment on your blog.
Posted by Martin Harrison on Oct 19th, 2010
Your assertion that Lancaster is full of 'cowboy' operations is as unfounded as your criticism of Copify and NuBlue's blog post.

Yes Copify and NuBlue are based in the same office, so what?
If you dig a little deeper you will see that Rob (Copify Technical Director) used to work for NuBlue, but has gone on to set up a web developmemt company which competes with them.

So why would they be so keen to do him a fabour?

If you take the time to read the review you will see that it is completely balanced, fair and objective.

It makes your initial 'Copify is cheap, so the copy must be poor quality' argument look ill conceived and deeply flawed.
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