I used WordAgents recently for one of my side projects and I thought I'd pen down my first impression of the service and whether or not it's worth investing in the future.
For those unfamiliar.
WordAgents is a content writing service agency. They primarily write:
- Blog posts & articles
- Website content (e.g., company home page, landing page, etc)
- eCommerce content (Product description, USP, etc)
- SEO content (Write guest post for you)
In my use case, I hired WordAgents to write a blog post.
Why I chose WordAgents in the first place
Truth be told. I didn't evaluate much of other content writing agencies out there. I've heard of IWriter, TextBroker, and Constant Content, to name a few. But I haven't really look into them.
I came across WordAgents by chance on recommendation from my Twitter followings. WordAgents' value proposition was, and I'm paraphrasing here, affordable content that doesn't suck.
I checked their pricing page. It isn't cheap, but it's not terribly expensive either. Depending on the package you select, they go for anywhere between $0.06 - $0.12 per word.
And that's for one-off order. The price per word goes slightly lower if you opt for the monthly package.
After checking out the sample links they gave me, I gave it a go and ordered 5000 words from them.
How WordAgents work
Working with WordAgents is relatively straightforward. All the orders are made via the dashboard. There you'll see how many words credit you have left and the progress for all your articles.
Step 1 — Buy Words credit
You can buy a minimum of 1000 words up to 2 million words, and they will be credited into your account. Payment methods accepted are: AMEX, VISA, MASTER, and Paypal.
Step 2 — Order your article
Ordering your article involves submitting a form with answers to a few questions:
- Number of articles you need
- Number of words required
- Title
- Target keyword for SEO
- Secondary keywords (optionl)
- Any other specific instruction (article briefings, outlines, style guide, etc.)
Step 3 — Article completion
The 2000 words article I ordered took 7 days to complete. Just so you know, WordAgents guarantee 7 business days delivery time for all article orders below 10,000 words.
Note: You do not interact with the writers whatsoever, all emails and form submission go through the account manager. And if you have any question or follow up, they will get back to you within the day.
Evaluating the article
The moment of truth. Is the article any good? Did I waste my money?
For context, I provided an outline for a 2000 words list article. There, I specify the target audience, questions to answer, and format of the article with loads of examples. Check out the outline here.
As a general rule, it's best to provide the outline as detailed as you can. External writers often are not the subject matter experts, you are. A structured outline that indicates exactly what you're looking for is going to save you a lot of time down the road.
Here's the final article they submitted in Google doc.
3 takeaways from the article
Here are things you might expect if you decided to engage WordAgents writing service.
Note: I want to iterate that this is the first article I received from WordAgents. You mileage may vary depending on the outline and the niche your article is in.
Acceptable quality baseline
Wordagents promise all their content score above 90% on Grammarly (for spotting common grammar and spelling mistakes), and that the content passes Copyscape (to make sure the content is unique).
I ran the article on Grammarly, and as expected, the article scores a near perfect on Grammarly.
Most of the suggestion on Grammarly are synonyms which often can be ignored.
At least there's a standard baseline you can expect from WordAgents article.
Don't set your expectation too high
Just because the article is error free doesn't mean you should use it as is.
I run all my articles through HemingwayApp, another writing assisting tool, to spot check phrases and sentences that are hard to read.
Here's how the article was graded on Hemingway
When I first read the article, some of the sentences feel disjointed, so it wasn't surprisingly to see this on Hemingway.
Other things you should note.
WordAgents writers aren't subject matter experts, so don't expect them to offer unique insights unless you provide them.
Good for first draft
As the substitle says, you (or rather I) should treat these articles as a first draft. By the time I finished editing the article, I had to edit about 30% of the original article.
Nonetheless, I saved a fair amount of time producing this article than I would've otherwise write it myself, which is the point of outsourcing the content writing to a third party.
Note: You can request up to 2 revisions upon article delivery (within 14 days.)
Final thoughts
Would I use WordAgents to scale my writing process? Short answer is yes. Although, you should expect to edit a fair amount before you publish.
These are what I'd call Minimum Viable Articles. Articles that are passable to test new ideas for SEO but needs significant polish and update if you want to rank well or if you decide to publish it on a reputable guest blog.
If you find this review helpful. You can check out my referral link and get 30% off your first order from WordAgents.
Thanks for reading!