Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
– Warren Buffett

This is what our FAQ page has to say about price: Our rates are the most cost-effective in the business.

That said, there are a lot of amateurs, wannabes, and non-English-speakers wandering around cyberspace peddling dollar-store-priced web content hastily concocted of inappropriate words, snarled syntax, flaky factoids, and irrelevant ramblings.

So to everyone who says, “I thought you said you’re the lowest-cost content provider in the business,” we say this: You thought wrong. We said our rates are the most cost-effective.  Not the lowest cost, not the cheapest … the most cost-effective.

Two words.  Cost and effective.  Yes, you can buy bushels of ill-chosen words for next to nothing, but they won’t be nearly as effective as a somewhat higher-priced handful of well-chosen ones.  Illiterate copy won’t sell your products.  Irrelevant copy won’t help your search-engine ranking.  Inane copy won’t convert web surfers into online customers.

And that’s the good news.  The bad news about poorly crafted copy is that it can actually re-route customers already on the way to your order page to someone else’s website.  It can cause GoogleBot to shake its silicon head sadly and put a black mark on your report card.  It can make even a brilliantly designed site offering world-class products be perceived as a joke.

As an example, here’s the way one lower-cost web writer explains how crucial his craft is:  “The use of written language is a vitally important aspect of web copywriting.”

Pardon the small profanity, but it would be damn hard to do any kind of writing without a written language.   The sentence is pure nonsense.   It means nothing.  Is “nothing” and “nonsense” what you want on your website?

Basically, the old adage “You get what you pay for” applies to what lawyers like to call “intellectual property” as much as it does to tangible goods like computers and cars.  You can get computers and cars — and web content (from us, among others) — at bargain prices.  But there is a point at which a bargain stops being a bargain.  If a product is gutter-ball priced, its quality, workmanship, and performance are going to be in the gutter as well.

So how do you know what you’re getting?  Let’s answer that question with a question.  How do you tell a good chair from a bad one?  First, you look at it as it sets.  Does it look well-made?  Are the upholstery seams even and sturdily stitched?  Does the material have a quality feel?  Next, you might take a peek underneath it.  How are the pieces fastened together? I f there’s a lining on the bottom, is it nicely tacked up or loosely stapled?  Finally, the acid test, you sit your butt down on it.

Applying that lesson to judging copy is easy.  How does it look?  Do the sentences run on forever?  Do the paragraphs extend for inches?  What’s it made of?  Clean, crisp, power words or prepositions, adjectival phrases and other linguistic fillers?  Finally, is it comfortable, does it feel right?

Here’s how to answer that last, most crucial, question.  Read the copy aloud.  See how it sounds in your ears.  Does it flow smoothly from your throat and over your tongue?  Does it sound convincing?  Does it raise questions in your mind, or answer them?  Are you comfortable with the author?  Is he or she someone you’d enjoy having a face-to-face conversation with?  Everything else being equal, would you buy a used car from the author or walk off the lot determined to kick tires elsewhere?

As noted elsewhere on GetWebContent.com, all of our writers are full-time professionals who speak and write plain, clear and declarative American English as a first language.  None of them are students or interns, and all of them have extensive experience writing for major magazines, Fortune 500 companies and/or top advertising agencies.  They know their business and they have the ability — and take the time — to learn yours before typing a single word into their computers.

Important as that is, however, it isn’t the major factor in hiring a writer for the mission-critical task of putting a literary face on your website.  The major factor is quality.  Read most, if not all, of a prospective writers’ sites.  Is the copy below average?  Is it merely OK?  Is it good?  Or is it better than good, maybe even great?

How about the copy they’ve written for paying customers?  Read their samples carefully, maybe even aloud.  (If they don’t have a robust selection of samples on their site, seek a writer elsewhere.)  Are the samples good or better than good?  Are they on-topic?  Are they written with clarity, energy, warmth, passion?  Do they catch and hold your interest?  If you were in the market for the product or service offered, would what you’re reading make you want to buy it right now?

Sixty-six years ago, Winston Churchill coined a phrase that has become so universal many people believe it dates back to biblical times. “Give us the tools,” the British prime minister told the American public in a radio speech, “and we will finish the job.”

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, your ability to finish the job — to close the sale — is only as good as your tools.  For those of us conducting business on the Internet, our words — what we say about ourselves and our products — is the dominant tool in the shed.  The one indispensible tool we need to finish our job successfully.

Buying a cheap imported clone of the real tool to save a few dollars is more than a classic example of losing a dollar to save a dime.  It is, plainly and simply, an exercise in stupidity and website suicide..

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