A content writer can write an average of 125 articles monthly with an average article length of 500 words, according to a survey conducted on more than 250 freelance writers.

Nowadays, the internet is saturated with content from different e-commerce websites, including yours. You’re competing with several established businesses in the market, so you need to have a strong marketing strategy to stand out from the rest. One of the effective strategies is to produce top-quality, relevant, well-optimized, and high-converting web content. As a business owner, it's rigorous to run and manage all things at once, especially if you’re a sole proprietor. You’ll definitely need help with different matters such as marketing, human resource, management, etc. when you conduct your business.

So, your options may include hiring in-house writers or getting a third party to do the job for you. Either way, some advantages and disadvantages need to be considered. But if you want to go for the latter, below are the pros and cons of outsourcing writing for your business.

Pros

Outsourcing writing services for your online content can help your business thrive by:

1. Saving Your Time

Writing content takes a huge amount of time as it isn't as easy as it seems. It takes time to do the research and the actual writing, more so the editing process. Hiring an agency to do the research, content writing, and editing tasks will save you a big amount of time and give you a guarantee that the work is being handled well by a professional. Outsourcing writers, instead of doing the task yourself, will give you more time to focus on managing your business and its success. Plus, you won’t have to go through the work of training newly hired in-house writers.

2. Give You a Flexible Team of Writers

Flexibility in writing comes in handy as the writer can work on different genres, topics, or contents. Versatile writers have a wide range of skills, ideas, and perspectives. They can follow the set of standards you give and adjust to varying requirements accordingly. They can write interesting and reliable pieces professionally and creatively, building up your content marketing business strategy.

It will be easier for you to outsource freelance writers since there are tons of them, there are agencies and services like a ghost writing company, which offer professional writing services at affordable rates. When you hire freelance writers, you'll also have access to a wide range of talented writers.

You don't have to worry about training them as they're already proficient in writing, which is a big plus for your business. Furthermore, these professionals are committed to their passion and improving their writing skills in order to produce more compelling and engaging stories.

3. Saving You Money

Another reason why you should outsource writing services for your business is that it’s far cheaper than hiring an in-house writer.

Whether you hire them as a project-based or full-time freelancer, you never have to worry about offering employee benefits to them, such as costly insurance policy nor renting a bigger office space to accommodate them at work.

The best part here is that you won't be paying your writers with a fixed salary, you’ll only be paying on a per project basis, depending on the scope of work and the task’s level of difficulty.

Cons

Despite having significant advantages, outsourcing your writing also has disadvantages too. These include the following:

1. Lack of Inside Knowledge of the Brand

No one knows the brand wholeheartedly more than you do. In business, creating top-quality content is knowing the voice of your brand. Several freelance writers are skilled in plenty of general industry niches. However, it takes a special niche to amplify a brand that will generate leads through content creation.

Writers definitely take time to study your brand's voice and use this knowledge to effectively reach out to your customers. Although agencies can definitely do this, it may take some time before they truly understand the vision and goals of the brand.

2. Communication Can Be Difficult

The internet is making everyone closer together through social media and video conferencing tools. However, face-to-face interaction is still easier than communicating with people over the internet.

If you hired a freelancer from a different time zone, there are two issues that you should know when communicating with them through the internet: schedule and internet access. Either you or the writer needs to adjust to the other’s time zone so that your schedule would fit each other’s. Since everyone doesn't have a good internet connection, you can expect that interruptions might happen during your regular meetings.

3. Intellectual Property and Privacy May Get Compromised

There’s a need to pay extra attention to intellectual property and privacy matters every time you need services outside your management. It becomes a problem if you outsource remote writers from a different country that has different laws from yours.

It becomes tricky when you have to deal with writers who commit plagiarism or have concerns over breaching top-secret information. It's better to purchase software that does plagiarism checks to cut the risk of committing intellectual property theft or have a thorough screening of your potential remote writers so you won't compromise your business privacy.

4. Possible Delays in Delivery Time

There’s a general rule in outsourcing and that’s called the 4x rule. It means that it'll be four times longer for a freelancer to finish a writing project. There are factors that might make the delivery time longer, such as communication lags, inaccuracies, and internet connection problems, among others.

However, this isn’t true in almost all cases because this can only occur when processes aren’t running smoothly or when a new software is being used. You should consider following the 4x rule if these cases occur. When processes are executed properly, everyone becomes more organized and well-adjusted to any changes and article deliveries will have an improvement.

The Decision Is Yours to Make

It really depends on how heavy your workload is as the business owner. Your knowledge about content writing must fit your brand's voice and identity. If you’re sure that you can juggle both being a proprietor and a writer for your brand, then hiring a remote writer would be unnecessary. However, if writing isn’t your cup of tea, outsourcing can make your brand stand out and be as competitive as those businesses that generate leads and customers effectively. The pros and cons mentioned above will guide you in deciding whether to outsource or not.