Are there short cuts if you're creating a content or information website, or want some articles to use for submission to article directories so as to get traffic? And don't have the time or inclination to write pages and pages of stuff yourself?
Yes. What some people do is, they take content from elsewhere -– legally. Possible sources include:
Outsourcing: you can outsource web content writing to writers at service marketplaces such as goFreeLance and eLance (right-click to open in new window). You might be able to get a 50-page site researched and written for as little as $500. Or a 50-page ebook that you can sell.
But you must be careful when listing specifications: make sure they are detailed and comprehensive, with clear deliverables. And pick a writer with good ratings and reviews. Check out samples of his work.
With the kind of rates being offered on these marketplaces, you need to be very selective if you want to get good quality work. Pay a bit more if necessary. Otherwise you could end up with painful disputes or unacceptable results.
Private Label Right (PLR) articles: these are articles from PLR membership sites, which you are allowed to use as your own. It is a good way to add web content to your site quickly without tedious, time-consuming research work. These PLR sites provide choices of hundreds of articles or niche-based packages which can work out at less than $1 per article.
When joining PLR sites, pick those with solidly researched, well- written content, and which cap their memberships. You don't want to use articles that too many other sites are using.
Even with limited memberships, your page could still get labeled as duplicate content by search engines, which gets you a low ranking. Solution? Modify them. The more changes, the better. If you put in additional information so that it is really useful and unique, it helps your site in the long run. At the same time, you should optimize the web content to help search engines find it. (See the Search Engine Optimization page for how to do this.)
Even with re-writing, it's still much easier and faster than creating a new article from scratch.
Free articles: there're sites to which people contribute articles for others to use as free content in their websites. But use of such articles are normally subject to a number of conditions, including using the articles as they are, and acknowledging their source. No changes are allowed at all and you have to include full author credit, and make all the links active and clickable.
The incentive for the author of the article to provide it free is that he gets backlinks from it, which increases his link count. (For an explanation of backlinks and their importance to getting traffic, see Link Strategies: Backlink.)
Also, your visitors who click on the author credit link of the article, will go to his site, bringing him more traffic. All these contribute to his search engine ranking. (You can also be the one contributing articles and getting traffic and ranking.)
The drawback to using such free website content is that, since you have to use it without making any changes at all, chances are it will be seen as duplicate content, as many other sites would be using it too.
Search engines such as Google tend to rank duplicate content lower. Because of that, it's better to use PLR articles which allow you to re-write.
