Content writing:
How long do you spend creating a quality blog post?

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Let's see how fast I can write an article in response to this thread... illustrated, edited, formatted, pimped out with html... and published in under 1 hour of reading your OP... show you how content writing is done by someone who actually does this as a full time job.

ETA:

Here it is...

This thread, and it's comments, written by responders who clearly know nothing about content writing outside of the misinformation spewed around black hat sites like the Warrior's Forum... inspired an article, on why people today are getting no results from their writing careers.

You can read the article here.

On a website founded in 1997, that currently has 9,772 articles, no article on it under 4,000 words, and no article on it taking more then an hour to write. With 1 to 10 new articles added to it every single day.

I mean... why tell you what can be done, when I can show you the evidence itself, right?

You got a long way to go, in improving both your writing speed and your concept of what an article even is, if you think anything under 2,000 words is anything other then filler and anything under 100 words a minute is even close to acceptable in the professional writing & publishing industry.

>My average is about 3 hours total consisting of research, writing and editing before a blog is complete. Is this really too long for about 500 -700 words of unique, valuable content?

I would not consider that a lot of words for such a very long time.

Those are very poor, extremely amature, incredibly unprofessional, beginner level speeds.

Even a 10 year old writing an essay for school is required to do at MINIMUM 1,000 words and is only given 45 minutes of class time to do the whole thing beginning to end from the time the teacher said: "Write this right now..." to "Put your pencils down."

I mean, we're talking very basic stuff that you learned how to do in 3rd garde.

By high school you were writing 5 page essays in that same 45 minute space of time. Five pages... minimum. Extra credit if you could make it to 10.

In college, you turn in a 500 word essay that took your 3 hours to write, you'd get a big fat F.

Do you care so little about yourself, your job, your boss, and your readers, that you don't have the balls to do the work. Are you really telling us, you can't even be bothered to do the simplest, most basic of basics work. You'd rather bitch and moan and complain, and getting paid for doing nothing but sitting on your ass for 3 hours doing not one damned thing?

And I'm talking from experience.

Content writing is my full time job. This is what I do for a living.

It's no wonder so many business aren't willing to pay more then $5 an article these day. They see enough lazy bums like you, laying around doing nothing, spitting out 500 word filler. People like you give the entire content writing industry a bad name.

I write 2 to 3 articles a day - each one averages 4,000 words. I type at 91 words a minute (about 5k an hour). The most I ever wrote in one day was 37,000 words, though most days my output is around 17,000 words. (Side note - I do have professional secretarial training, and can type 175 words per minute if I push it.)

I also find it interesting that you are complaining about writing articles of 500 to 750 words each.  It's hard to not fall over laughing at the idea that 500 word filler could be considered anything even remotely close to being an article. What scam artist fake MLM guru gave you that outdated 1990s number?

Heck... when was the last time you actually sat down and read an article? Do you even know what an article is? This industry does has guidelines you know? Try reaching beyond the scam artists that are flooding the internet with ad-hoc filler, and look for the actual real articles.

>>I'm salaried, but my pay equates to $18/hr. Research is pretty extensive. I usually read 3 to 4 peer-reviewed articles per post in order to present new info in a digestible way.

You call that research?

Seriously?

You damn scam artist!

All you are doing is looking up the top search results in Google and respinning the content.

That's not research, that's damned plagerism.

You know there's a $50,000 fine and 25 years in prison for that right?

You steal content off other web sites, combine 3 articles together, respin them, and pass them off as your own work? And boldly admit it. Which means you are either smug or stupid. The oddacity! You steal content from other websites and call that research. Does your boss know that?

>to present new info in a digestible way

That's nothing more then a fancy way of saying you stole their work. Does your boss realize the amount of trouble HE will be in, for not running checks on your articles to find out where you stole them from?

Research, real research, means getting off your damned ass and getting your hands dirty. You want to write about concrete ... you go out there and lay the damned concrete yourself to learn about it one on one, hands on. You don't laze around on the computer reading someone else's findings then rehash them into new words.

What kind of a scam artist are you, stopping that low.

Plagerism!

You are a fricking plagiarist!

>Research is pretty extensive. I usually read 3 to 4 peer-reviewed articles

Whatever school you went to, every body needs to keep their children out of it.

Extensive research is getting your Ph.D by spending 6 months living with a headhunter tribe in the Amazon rainforest and keep daily notes of their culture, then writing a 200 page dissertation on the findings.

Extensive research involves testing results, interviewing experts, finding original sorce microfilm documents in the back rooms of museums, spending 8 hours a day for weeks on end in a library going over reference materials, going out on the field and doing the thing you are writing about yourself.

On what planet is spending 3 hour surfing the internet to read 2 or 3 articles, considered research on any level at all, let alone extensive?

I have to ask... what kind of a person accepts a job, writing about concrete, for a concrete industry, when they know nothing about concrete to begin with? If you are resorting to hunting down other people's articles to rewrite them into new words... that speaks volumes about how little you know about both the writing career AND the topic you are writing about.

Shame on you!

And on top of that you are complaining about writing articles of 500 to 750 words each?

I'm trying to wrap my mind around your seriously warped sense of logic. Where do you come up with these ideas you have about what constitutes, a good writing speed, extensive research, or the length of an article? What planet are you from?

Since 2012, Google:

1. penalizes articles under 2,000 words
2. boosts articles over 3,000 words
3. down rank pages under 1,000 words
4. blacklist/unindex pages under 400 words

They posted their most recent article about it in the Google Help Blog about 7 or 8 months ago and have written about 70 other articles about it since 2012. You might want to read them.

Do you really think you can share valuable, useful information in 500 to 750 words?

You know there's a reason Google down ranks pages under 1,000 words and boosts pages over 3,000 words right?

It's called: providing readers with sustenance vs scamming them into clicking your ads.

And then people like you wonder why their web sites are not making any money?

Put yourself in the readers' shoes. Would YOU even give a second glance at a one paragraph nothing hidden between so many ads you can't even find the so-called article?

No!

You wouldn't read 500 word crap like that and you know it. So why do you expect your readers to do the same.

On second thought...you clearly are not someone who reads, considering you don't know that 500 words does an article make.

What do you read, other then reading first place search results with the intention of stealing them?

>to present new info in a digestible way

...when was the last time you even read something?

Come on!

Are you seriously telling me, you are into the career of writing, without knowing one damned thing about the industry?

What do you even know about this career?

1. You don't know that 500 words in 3 hours is shitty crapfeast writing speeds.
2. You don't know that 500 words is nothing but filler, not even close to article length.
3. You don't know the meaning of the word research.
4. You think nothing of respinning other people's hard work.
5. You don't even know the definition of simple basic words like "extensive".
6. You think your boss should pay you $18 an hour for sitting on your ass doing nothing.

Clearly you are not taking your job seriously. It's no wonder your boss is complaining.

If you cared about your readers, you'd provide them with actual content. Maybe you should try that next time.

So 500 to 700 words is NEVER going to rank very high in the first place and it's dangerously close to the blacklist level of 400 words. 

You might want to rethink your word counts if you want to rank very high in search engines.

Also, blogs are being pushed down by Google since it's release of RankBrain in 2015.

Blogs rarely show up in search results at all these days, and require the searcher to specifically type "blog post" after their search term in order to get a blog post to show up. Google focuses on niche content topic web sites these days.

>My average is about 3 hours total consisting of research, writing and editing before a blog is complete. Is this really too long for about 500 -700 words of unique, valuable content?

500 words in 3 hours is VERY poor, especially if you are working for a big business. You can't even get hired as a secretary unless you can type 125 words a minute. That's just standard basic typing speed for a professional writer.

I can't get a job as a secretary because I type very slow, at 91 words a minute, which is 1,365 words every 15 minute, 5,460 words an hour, 16,380 words every 3 hours... and that's considered TOO SLOW to qualify as a secretary.

Side note--- I had a stroke and type with one hand. Which is why my typing speed is so slow.

Yes.... these typing speeds are considered VERY SLOW:

• 91 words a minute,
• which is 1,365 words every 15 minute,
• 5,460 words an hour,
• 16,380 words every 3 hours

I'm sorry, I don't know where you were trained, what college you went to that said 500 words in 3 hours is acceptable, but no. In the professional world it's not.

Most secretaries average 175 words per minute.

Stenographers are required to type even faster.

Speed typers have no trouble doing 200 words a minute.

• 200 words a minute is
• 3,000 words per 15 minutes
• or 12,000 words per hour
• or 36,000 words per 3 hours.

And not random crap. Stenographers are required to type that fast with ZERO mistakes and 100% accuracy. And they can do it because they take their job seriously.

Let's look at it another way.

The average 5th grader types at 35 words a minute, because they are an inexperienced beginner just learning to type.

1. 35 words a minute is
2. 525 words every 15 minutes
3. 2,100 words every hour
4. 6,300 words every 3 hours

Uhm...

Yeah.

Does that put it into better perspective for you?

A 5th grader, just learning to type, puts out more words in 15 minutes then you do in 3 hours. Still think your boss shouldn't be getting on you for being lazy and not doing your job?

Your boss is upset because he's paying you $18 an hour and he ciould get better work from a 10 year old.

Put yourself in your boss's shoes... would YOU pay someone $18 an hour, when you could get a 10 year old to do the same thing in less time for a $2 bill?

You wouldn't and you know you wouldn't. So why are you expecting your boss to except that fucking load of half-assed crap from you?

Of course your boss is complaining. He feels like you are cheating him, and rightly so, because you ARE cheating him.

>I've been asked to spend only one hour on each blog going forward and I feel like I am having a crisis.

If you are in crisis over 500 words an hour, then you really need to rethink your career.

Think about those little children in grade school and their measly little speed of just 525 words per 15 minutes, then ask yourself again, WHY you are in crisis over your boss giving you a full hour?

You stretching out a 500 word article into 3 hour's time, means he's paying you $54 for every 500 words, when he THOUGHT he would be paying you $18 for every 500 words.

Can you see why he's upset?

If you were him, would YOU want to pay $54 for a 500 word article?

It's YOU who are being unfair and unreasonable and your boss who should be feeling in crisis right now. You are wasting both his time and his money, and what's worse, is you aren't even giving him original content. You are just rehashing something someone else wrote on another site.

You know, considering that you are a plagiarist, you're lucky he's only complaining about your writing speed and not calling the cops to toss your ass in jail.

You do realize that if those other people find out you are stealing their work, that your boss is the one they are gonna go after and he could lose his business and ALL his employees, not just you, will end up both without jobs and in jail?

The law assumes that those in charge are just as responsible as the person doing the plagiarism. And I really don't think your boss is gonna be too happy about losing his business, because of scraped content that he paid 3 times as much as he expected to pay for.

You think he's pissed now at paying you $54 per 500 words instead of $18 per 500 words? Wait til your stolen respun content costs him his business.

>I got told today I need to bring down my time for writing blogs at my agency. In September and October I spent 10 hours writing 3 posts each month for the concrete industry. I believe these posts are great and blog traffic has really picked up. But maybe I am spending too much time on blogs?

500 to 700 words for 3 to 5 hours may be the norm for content writers getting work off Fiverr, but those kind of numbers won't cut it in the real world of publishing, where if you are good at what you do, you get paid $2 to $5 per word, $1,000+ per article.

But, what you get paid is dependant on the business in question. You won't make anything less then $2k per article when writing for PlayBoy, but, you'll get $5 and a subscription when writing for a university press magazine. This is based on how much income each magazine brings in.

Well, look at your boss. While the concrete industry is big business, it's blue collar work with low income pays. Your boss is likely struggling to make ends meet, stay out of the red, and find enough money to pay his workers. He's trying to figure out where he is over spending, what is causing him to loss money, and then he notices he hired a guy to write articles, told him to put out 1 article an hour for $18 an hour, and now he's looking at accounting and realizes instead of paying $18 per article as agreed, he's actually paying $54 per article, 3 times more then the agreed amount.

You got a pretty reasonable boss if he's giving you the benefit of a doubt and just telling you to pick up speed instead out right accusing you of sponging off him and abusing the system.

And think about it... he hired you thinking he was getting a professional career writer, one who could meet deadlines and write on schedule, and now he find out you are one of those lazy poetic, starving artist types, who writes as much as he wants, when he damned well fells like getting around to it.

Sure if he's hired you to write poetry or short stories or novels, you'd be given more time and  less strictness.... but that's not what he hired you for! He hired you to write a 750 word article for $18, and then you give him rehashed 500 word scrapped content and demanding $54 for your shoddy stolen work?

And you are wondering why he is upset?

Time is not the issue here.

Money is.

He's paying you $18 an hour, and expecting to pay $18 an article.

You laze around for 3 hours and expect to be given $54 instead of $18 for the same end result.

The point is, he wants to pay you $18 per article.

He does not want to pay you $54 per article.

He feels you are a cheap skate who's cheating him.

THAT is why he is upset.

500 words in 3 hours may be good enough for amateurs, but you'll get laughed out of any professional job if you put those numbers on your resume.

I'm sorry if that seems harsh, but, if you want to make writing content your full time career you are really going to have to realize that this industry has expected standards, and yeah, your boss is right to say you are slow. Let's face it, a 3rd grader types faster then you do. If your boss is complaining (as he should be) you're probably not far off getting fired. Actually, you're lucky he asked you to speed up rather then fired you outright, which means he probably likes you. It really is a dime a dozen job and you are easily replaced by someone who can time much, much faster.

I've been doing this since 1978. I know the industry inside out.

Worked for a newspaper (Portland Press Herald/Boston Globe) for 21 years, was an editor for a magazine for several more years, was a sales rep for 16 years,

and since 1978 I have published

1. 130+ novels (300,000 words each),
2. 30+ nonfiction books,
3. 2,000+ short stories (10,000 to 75,000 words each),
4. 6,000+ nonfiction articles (4,000 to 7,500 words each),
5. 9,000+ blog posts (3,000 to 5,000 words each),
6. a few dozen stage plays, and
7. a few comic book scripts for Disney's Uncle Scrooge & Donald Duck.

I publish on average 3 million words a year, which is barely a quarter of the amount of words I write. I didn't do that by typing 500 words every 3 hours. And I'm considered by others "too slow".

91 words a minute is my average when typing a first draft (about 5k per hour), 35 words a minute during the editing and revising stage (about 2k per hour); once in a while I've reached 175 words a minute when in a writing zone (about 10k per hour), but that's rare and highly unusual.

AND THAT'S CONSIDERED BY THE TOP PROFESSIONAL IN THIS CAREER TO BE SLOW.

November 2006, my 3rd year doing NaNoWriMo, I did the absolutely unthinkable, and wrote 50,000 words in 3 days, winning NaNoWWriMo on day 3 instead of day 30.

What was the secret?

Time Management

• Writing to a schedule instead of focusing on word count
• Writing multiple times per day in small spurts
• Breaks - lots of them
• Hand excersises
• Walking/Getting up moving around
• A change in diet

Those things combined, were the secret to my suddenly being about to write HUGE word counts per day, after struggling for years trying to reach even a few hundred words a day.

Here's what I did that worked for me:

I found that I do my most writing first thing in the morning, as in, as soon as I wake up, before getting out of bed. I just sit up and start typing. Well, that usually requires getting up and going to a desk, setting up, ect. And by that time I've lost my motivation. So, now the computer is right on the nightstand, and soon as I wake up, I start typing... don't even have to sit up, just put the keyboard on my lap, prop my knees up. Type straight up stream of consciousness. It may or may not make scene as I'm still half a sleep, but, it gets any ideas out of my head and on paper before I forget them.

This also acts as early morning exercise that gets the blood flowing through my fingers and acts as a warm up before I start doing my actual writing.

5AM: After getting up, eating, etc. Walk my dog. This gets the blood flowing everywhere.

7AM: Start typing. Doesn't matter what. If I can't think of anything for my current story, then work on a different story, or write a blog post, or write a non-fiction article, or go to Seventh Sanctum or Chaotic Shiny and use one of their writing prompts, anyone a random, and no matter what it gives me, just start writing about it. The point is to sit down and start typing and don't stop typing for 45 minutes straight of uninterrupted typing.

After 45 minutes, get up get a drink of water - drink an entire 16oz all at once. Eat something (apple, chips, broccoli, bagels, popcorn, cheese, M&Ms, pretzels, carrots, toast, whatever....didn't seem to matter what exactly it was as long as I've got something in my system.) Use bathroom. Walk around outside with my dog for 15 to 20 minutes. Get blood circulating through body again.

9AM: repeat as for 7AM, type 45 minutes, followed by 15 to 20 minute break as outlines above.

11AM: repeat as for 7AM

After 45 minutes. Take a long break. Drive to store, do any chores, cook dinner, etc.

4PM: repeat as for 7AM

7PM: repeat as for 7AM

9PM: Edit, revise, research, etc.

11PM: second long break, supper, movie time, etc. Go to bed.

The point is, to write in sessions, with each session divided up between drinking lots of water, eating, and getting up to move around.

I changed times around a lot before find one that worked for me.

For me, typing in 45 minute sessions with a 15 to 20 minute break every 45 minutes, and then 2 long 1 to 2 hour breaks during the day, worked best for me.

By doing this, I found that my hands don't tire out so easily, I don't get so sleepy, and I learned from some research studies done by various universities, that the reason I no longer get writer's block after starting this schedule, is because I'm now drinking 1 and 1/2 gallons of water a day, and that by being so very hydrated, my brain is better able to fire synapses, resulting in more fluid thought processes. (Apparently if you get dehydrated it causes your brain to respond sluggishly and causes writer's block, according to several various studies.)

In any case...

You are NOT in crisis. A psychopath blowing up my house with a bomb... that's a crisis.

You want to know what a crisis is?

Here, here's a list of the things the Ku Klux Klan has done to my family...

• February 2003 bombed my doctor's office and killed him
• May 2006 they put my dad in a coma
• bombed my house in October 2006
• May 2010 cut my car in half
• beheaded my cousin July 2013
• drove a backhoe over my next house August 2013
• beat my up leaving me paralyzed 5 month and crippled rest of my life in November 2013
• filled my motorhome with 1,000s of gallons of feces April 2015
• kidnapped my cats April 2015
• returned my cats' heads May 2015; 10 cats currently unaccounted for
• August 2015 a woman was beheaded in front of her 4 children, in Saco Shaw's supermarket, in the ice cream department, while trying to buy her children ice cream
• 2016 my tires were slashed on 7 different occasions between October and December
• April 2017 put my dad in the hospital again, he almost died
• May 2017 attacked and rallied at my mom's house - twice
• August 13, 2017 - my birthday - murdered 73 pets
• September 26, 2017 - 6 days ago smashed up my car...
• in all more than 200 such attacks on my family since Stephen King thought to film the Thinner movie on our farm in 1994.

You, honey, are in serious need of a reality check, if you think, being told to write a 500 word article in 1 hour is a crisis.

You think writing a 500 word article in 1 hour is a crisis? What silk lined silver spoon you been living on all these years? Get out of Daddy warbucks pockets and get a taste of the real world for a change.

Terrorist attacks... that's a crisis.

Writing fewer words in an hour than is expected of a 10 year old in a 15 minute class assignment... is you over reacting.

Do you go crying to mommy when you break a nail too?

Being told by your boss the shape up or ship out, is not a crisis... it's a kick in the ass to tell you to stop goofing off and start taking your damned fucking job seriously.

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And now let's do a word count and see how many words this article you just finished reading is:

4,758 words long.

1. Written.
2. Edited.
3. Formatted.
4. Illustrated.
5. Videos embedded.
6. Back links added.
7. Pimped out with html.
8. Published.
9. Marketed (Sent out to my 3 million followers across dozens of social networks.)
10. In under an hour.

If I can do THIS in under an hour.... you should have no trouble writing 500 words in an hour.

I can write this much this fast, with only one hand, because I have motivation, dedication, determination, and discipline.

I have one hand dead to a stroke, my good hand shakes from parkinson's and I still did this.

Why?

Did you ever read my personal motto that I live by? It's all over my website, look for it. Can't find it?

Here:

If life gives you lemons, then you grab life by the balls and say you're taking them too.

Why make lemonade when you can make testicle stew? 

I don't take shit from no one, I stand up to bullies like you.

~EelKat

I live by those words.

I apply them to EVERYTHING, including my writing career.

You give me an assignment, I don't whimper and boo-hoo that it's too hard, too much work, or not enough time... I grab that assignment by the balls and I run it to the ground, and come back with a finished product, on schedule.

Nothing....NOTHING gets in my way.

If you're gonna lay down and cry like a baby, because your boss told you that 3 hours was unacceptable time for 500 words written, then you ain't got what it takes to survive as a writer, and you won't last long in the real world either.

You took on the challenge of doing this job for your boss, now get off your ass and do the job you were paid to do.

I can do this in under an hour, because I take my job seriously and when I have work to do, I sit down and do it and I get it done.

Do you?

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