Threw $200 down the drain on a batch of blog posts... should have known better

So I hired a freelance writer off Upwork for $200 to crank out 10 blog posts for my site about organic gardening. Figured it would save me time. But every single post was just fluff... no real strategy, no keyword research, no internal linking. They talked about 'loving your plants' but never mentioned soil pH or zone hardiness. I had to rewrite all of them myself. Now I'm wondering: is it better to pay more for a specialist or just do it all in-house? Any of you been burned by cheap content?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia3172mo ago

Ditch Upwork and go straight to a niche writer's platform like ProBlogger or even a gardening forum where people actually know their stuff. $20 a post gets you someone who googles "how to write about gardening" five minutes before they start typing. You need to pay $50-$100 a post for someone who already knows cold hardiness zones and soil pH without being told. Or just do it yourself honestly, because you already proved you know more than whoever you hired.

blake3222mo ago

Yeah that's rough, really feel for you on this one.

ross.kevin1mo ago

A buddy of mine runs a tiny landscaping company and tried the same thing. He paid some guy $150 for 5 posts about lawn care and got back articles that literally said "water your grass sometimes" as the main tip. No mention of grass types, soil testing, or even basic stuff like when to fertilize. He spent an entire weekend fixing them and swore off cheap writers forever. Now he either writes his own stuff or trades services with a local blogger who actually cares about plants. Sometimes paying a little more is the only way to avoid wasting your time.