When it comes to finding real free articles for your website or blog, it can be difficult to find content that consists of good writing. And it’s important to offer the readers of your website with recent articles, not old content from two or three years ago. Unfortunately, most free articles are usually poorly written, with atrocious grammer and absolutely no focus to the text other than stuffing it full of keywords that will hopefully draw traffic. If you are a webmaster or a blogger and you’re looking for high quality recent articles that an intelligent person would enjoy reading, then review the following resources and you’ll be adding the highest quality content to your website or blog in no time.

Adding Website Content Using Real Free Articles

Adding content to a website or blog every single day can quickly turn into a full time job. And when your blog is only producing income of a few dollars a month, the payout simply isn’t worth the effort. However, the only way to increase that revenue is by offering your readership with fresh, recent articles on the niche that you publish about. There are ways to increase the volume of content that you can offer your readership without using up your own valuable time. The four central methods of finding real free articles for your blog or website include the following.

* Pulling the best recent articles from article directories
* Asking expert bloggers for guest editorials in exchange for links
* Hiring low cost “bulk writers” to produce articles and rewrite the content
* Getting prime content for less

Pulling the Best Recent Articles From Article Directories

The best article directories are those that draw the most traffic. Most article directories are made up of volumes of real, free articles, but those articles are usually intended to draw traffic for a particular website or business. The good news is that many of those published articles are still very well written and interesting, regardless of the intent of the article publication. By searching through article directores for real free articles, you can actually find some excellent, well written articles. The authors of those articles allow website owners and bloggers like you to use that article, but only if you maintain the link at the bottom as credit for the work.

This helps the author, because they obtain a free link to their site, and it helps you because you get free content. The only negative to these article directories is the fact that most of the articles are absolutely atrocious. If there was ever any place online where all of the bad writers hang out - this is it. However, with that said, there really are excellent writers there as well, you just need to know where to look.

By far, the top article directory is currently Ezinearticles. In fact, it’s getting much harder to publish anything on Ezinearticles. The editors there will only provide a free account to authors who are eventually “approved” by proving themselves through publishing high quality articles. Otherwise, authors need to pay for an account to continue publishing articles after the initial free trial is over. This is actually serving to improve the quality of content on Ezinearticles. The following directories currently (as of January 2009) make up the top ten article directories online (in terms of Alexa traffic rankings)

1. Ezinearticles
2. ArticlesBase
3. Buzzle
4. ACS Publications
5. Searchwarp
6. Go Articles
7. Article Alley
8. Article Dashboard
9. Article Snatch
10. Idea Marketers

The best way to find the highest quality content is to search these directories by “expert author” status, or just search through the list of “top authors” that most of these sites provide. For example, on Ezinearticles, you can click on “Expert Authors” and get a list of authors sorted by the number of articles the author has published.

You’ll find that most of the authors who’ve published thousands of articles also tend to be better writers. Searching through these articles for content increases your chances of finding real, free articles that are also well written. ACS Publications is unique because it lists high-quality free science and free scientific articles.

Asking Expert Bloggers For Guest Editorials in Exchange for Links

The primary focus of most bloggers, just like one of your prime needs, is to draw traffic. Typically, expert bloggers write, and they write a lot. They usually not only write for themselves, but they often write professionally for other websites and blogs. Another marketing aspect of blogging is writing editorial content for other blogs and websites, where the only payment for the article is a link back to their own blog. In fact, if your website is ranked fairly high in Google, or it gets a lot of traffic, many bloggers would rather receive a link back instead of getting paid, that’s how much value incoming links have for webmasters and bloggers.

The way to do this is by writing a page (or a blog update) about your need for guest writing from other bloggers. Detail your guidelines (minimum words and type of content required) and let writers know that in return for the post, you’ll provide them with a free link back to their site. Provide them with an email or a form where they can contact you to send the article.

Hiring “Bulk Writers” to Produce Articles

Another site that I’ve mentioned before is my favorite freelance website, Scriptlance. Now, I can tell you from experience that Scriptlance is overloaded with people from third world countries who do not have English as their primary language. So if you aren’t careful, you can get inundated with offers from people with horrible writing skills who want to write articles for you. The way to avoid this is by posting a project and making it abundantly clear that you require writers with English as their first language, excellent writing skills and grammar, and no article-farming businesses (businesses with a team of poorly paid writers who sit in a room and pump out countless horrendously written articles).

Once you post your project, you’ll immediately have a list of writers begging to write for you, with offers from $80 per article all the way down to $1 an article. Whatever you do, never hire the lowest bidder or you will receive a Walmart-quality bunch of articles. Instead, opt for the bidder who bids in the middle of the road. The posting and bidding process at Scriptlance is very simple and straightforward, with the project description at the top and all bids underneath.

What a lot of bloggers do is hire low-cost writer to produce drafts of articles, and then the blogger polishes and publishes the final draft themselves.

Getting Prime Content for Less

Of course, the best source of content is going to be a writer or two that you find are capable of producing high-quality content for you. If you find him or her through Scriptlance, that’s great. Pay them what they are worth, and you’ll find that they will keep coming back to produce more content for you. Typically, good quality professionally-written articles are going to cost about $20 for 600 to 1000 words. If you want to cut back, you may find an author willing to write for $15 per article. If you start looking for authors to write professional articles under $10, you’re going to find that the quality suffers. Remember - most of the profit from your website or blog comes from building long-term and loyal traffic. When people see high quality content on your blog or website, you can be confident that they’re going to keep coming back for more. Content should always be your primary focus and where most of your financial investment goes, especially when you can’t afford the time to produce that content yourself.

If you are in need of quality content, and are looking to invest in your website or blog by paying a writer to develop that content for you, I do provide writing services in addition to my normal writing work. You can submit a request using this form (all email addresses remain confidential), and I should be able to help you come up with excellent content for your site that draws the most traffic.

Do you produce your own content or do you hire writers to do it for you? Share your own experiences in the comment section below.