A lot of people set up blogs with the best of intentions but after a while, it just becomes far too hard.

It becomes too hard to write consistent quality posts and also too hard to maintain a regular writing schedule (especially if you have a day job). But if they are relying on the blog’s advertising to bring in some money, they may be reluctant to close down the site. That may be where a quality writing service comes in handy.

A writing service is someone who offers you articles for a fee. They will listen to your requests and them come up with an article that closely resembles what you asked for. There are many of these services all over the net, many credible but many not, but you have to check off certain criteria before parting with your hard earned cash.

As the editor of a well established blog, and someone who hires and fires writers on a regular basis, here are four things that I would look for when considering whether or not to employ a writer.

1. Make sure you hold exclusive copyright – A lot of these writing services rely on getting articles out quickly to maximise their profit. This means that if two parties ask for the same subject, the writing service may just be tempted to sell the exact same article to both parties. This is bad because a) both sites will end up publishing duplicate content which affects your reputation as readers realise you didn’t write the post yourself and b) you end up losing any search engine benefits for your post because of duplicate content issues. So try and get a promise out of the writing service that you and only you will have that article and at no point will the article be sold to someone else. Of course there is nothing you can do if they break their word. If they do, don’t ever use them again and make sure others know about your experiences.

2. Make sure they can actually write – You’d be amazed at how many writing services can’t actually write to save themselves. If you are paying for a well written, engaging article then that is what you should expect to get. Be extra careful about writing services originating out of places like Asia and the Far East, as their English may not be as good as a writing service from say the United States or Great Britain. Check the website of the service you are interested in to see if they have any writing samples you can look at. If not, email them and ask for some. If they refuse, then run away as fast as you can. When they do send them, run unique phrases through Google to see if they pop up in any more than one place to check on that exclusivity.

3. Check their reputation – As with all other companies, reputation is everything. Satisfied customers are what they strive for and dissatisfied disgruntled customers are their worst nightmare. So before paying for anything, try to find those disgruntled customers by looking on Google. Find out why they were unhappy. If the reason is anything credible, walk away and don’t look back.

4. Make sure they aren’t keyword stuffing – Keyword stuffing is severely frowned upon by search engines and is counterproductive if you are trying to build up an online niche on a particular subject. Keyword stuffed articles are also very boring to read which will turn your readers off. So make sure that the same words don’t get repeated more than is necessary.

If you are in need of a quality writing service for your blog or website content, please contact Ryan and submit a request with your requirements. The FreeWritingCenter offers the highest quality writing services as well as SEO optimization expertise at reasonable rates.

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Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer of 20 years experience, and also the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com, since August 2007. You can see his personal website at markoneill.org Mark has 6 post(s) at Free Writing Center