For bloggers like you and I, quality content is extremely important. Without quality content, we’d have no readers and without readers, we’d have no blog. However, constantly having to come up with new post ideas and having to write the content, on top of everything else you have to do as a blogger, can be really overwhelming.
Outsourcing some of your blog content creation on a site like iWriter can be a really good idea, but the costs of doing so can add up pretty quickly. So in this post, I’m going to share with you 4 simple ways to create content for your blog on a shoe string budget.
Accepting Guest Posts on Your Blog
The first way to deliver quality content to your blog readers is by accepting guest posts on your blog. Basically, guest posts work like this…
- someone writes an article related to the topic of your blog
- you publish the post on your blog
- the guest poster gets a link or two back to their website
So you get free content and the guest poster gets a couple of free links pointing back to their blog, squeeze page, etc. Now if you decide to accept guest posts on your blog, make sure that you only accept good, quality content and be sure to create a guest post submission guidelines page.
Here are a couple of sites you can use to get started with accepting guest blog posts:
Adding Curated Content to Your Blog
Another quick and easy way to add really great content to your blog is by curating it. If you’re not sure what content curation is, then check out my post titled “What is Content Curation?” That post not only explains what content curation is, it was also created using curated content from around the web 
Another great example of curated content is something called a link roundup. Ti Roberts does a fantastic job with her weekly link roundups as seen in this post here.
There are many tools for creating curated content out there, with CurationSoft currently being my favorite. A couple of other really popular content curation tools are Scoop.it and Paper.li.
Using Private Label Rights Content
Private label rights (PLR) content is content that you purchase where you can legally edit and publish it even to the point of including your own name as the author. Now when it comes to PLR content, there are a few pro’s and con’s.
PLR content pro’s
- PLR content allows you to be an instant expert on pretty much any topic out there
- Using PLR content makes it dead easy to come up with content for your blog
- PLR content is easy to find
- PLR content is a lot cheaper than having original content created for you
PLR content con’s
- A lot of the PLR content you’ll find out there is pure garbage (stay away from the “100,000 PLR articles for $1″ type stuff)
- Since PLR products are sold to many people, you’ll have to rewrite the content to make it unique
So if you’re going to go the PLR content route, I suggest you use only top-quality content from reliable sources such as:
Re-purposing Content
What is content repurposing? It’s simply taking content which is currently in one form and converting it into another form. This is a great way to keep your content creation costs down.
For example, lets say you created an article to post on your blog. You can then take that existing article and convert it into a video to create a new piece of content at no additional cost (or for pretty cheap if you’re hiring someone to do this for you).
So even if you do pay to have an article written on a site like iWriter, you can repurpose that content into many other different forms of content for free! Here’s a really great case study on repurposing content titled “My 10-in-1 Content Creation Strategy” that you should really check out.
So there you have it… 4 simple ways to create content for your blog on a shoe string budget
How about you… what do you do to help keep your content creation costs down? Let me know in the comments section below!
Hi Kevin! I love the idea of content repurposing! Videos are something that I have yet to do in my business. I could easily do some quick tips on video from some of my previous blogs. I entered a blog challenge earlier this month where challengers are to post one blog daily for the month of January or as much as they can post. Inside the group we make comments to each others’ blogs. Maybe my next one will be video! Thanks for sharing this.
Hello Geniece! Glad you liked the post and found the idea of content repurposing useful. Good luck in your challenge and thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Social Marketing Resources To Get You More Twitter Followers, Retweets, Likes And +1′s
My content only costs me 20 minutes of my time seeing as it’s been almost entirely video for me lately!
Even written content doesn’t take much time so I’d rather have the quality I’d expect than paying money and possibly having to edit it anyways. Besides, my website is my name dot com, so it wouldn’t make sense to have other people write for me… at least to me lol
Anyways, these are great resources for those who would prefer to have others write for them.
Thanks for sharing!
-Gabe
Gabe Johansson recently posted…Monetizing List Building With Your Own Products
Hello Gabe… wow only 20 minutes! Content creation doesn’t come nearly that easy to me. Sometimes I can spend hours just creating one post lol. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and commenting
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Your Go To List of Outsourcing Resources!
What do you think of PLR Content? I really think you have to edit & rewrite a lot of it to make it look more like yours, but I don’t know you may disagree lol
Toshiba Burton recently posted…6 Secrets Behind The Mind Of A Millionaire
I think PLR content is a great resource for creating content quickly and cheaply, but I only recommend using PLR content from reliable sources like the ones mentioned in the post. And yes, I agree with you… PLR should definitely be rewritten in your own voice to make it unique from anyone else who purchases the same product.
However, even though you need to rewrite it, PLR is still great because the topic of the content has already been researched for you. So that drastically cuts down on the time it would take to normally write an article from scratch and having to research the topic (if you’re not familiar with it).
The only time I would say you might not need to rewrite PLR content is if you decide to add it to your newsletter, but even then, I would still recommend rewriting at least some of it to make it your own. Thanks for commenting Toshiba
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Very useful recap Kevin: thanks! (And thanks for mentioning Scoop.it – I’m one of the founders).
To add to the discussion, here’s a summary of a presentation by Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich he made during one of our Lean Content meetups in San Francisco: http://blog.scoop.it/en/2012/11/27/5-key-lessons-leant-from-2-years-of-content-marketing/ These guys have been doing a great job developing content with limited resources for their blogs and I like their #1 recommendation (which might seem a paradox): “Pick Quantity over Quality” What Leo meant by that was of course not that qulity didn’t matter but that we’re sometimes blocked at the writing stage by our own fears of wanting to produce top quality pieces when actually iterating fast and forcing yourself to produce content made you better and faster at doing it.
Hello Guillaume… glad you liked my post! And you’re very welcome for the mention
That “Pick Quantity over Quality” approach Leo mentions is really interesting. I definitely run into writers block from time-to-time when it comes to creating content for my blog. I may have to try his approach and see if it helps me to become better (and faster) at writing quality content.
Thank you so much for sharing his post and for taking the time to stop by and comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Five Tips To Help You Write Better Affiliate Product Reviews
Enjoyed this, Kevin. When I hit a writing “wall” (which is where I’m at right now), I re-purpose content (as you said). Simple infographics are really not that hard to do (as a re-purposing platform). Also, doing a slide show on slideshare.net is fun. I have used videos, too. You’d be surprised how far you can go (with the re-purposing route) if you’ve got a lot of content already.
mikec ( recently posted…The Day After I Was Almost Hit by a Truck
Glad you enjoyed my post mikec! And you’re right… it really is how surprising you can go with re-purposing content. However, I think you don’t necessarily have to have a lot of content to do so. It would be nice of course, but not necessary. You could take one article of only about 500 words and do a lot with it.
Thanks for taking the time to comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Dead Simple Way to Get More Retweets & Twitter Followers [JustRetweet Review]
It’s funny, my coworkers and I were talking about how our favorite blogs have totally replaced AP so far as delivering the latest content on topics that we’re interested in. What we also realized is that almost all of these sites (like Raw Story for example) consist of curated content.
I actually bought plr articles from fiverr. I got maybe 1000 articles on weight loss. Some of them were useful and a lot of them was just basically rewritten or spun articles. And I also had to rewrite most of them. I definitely need to be a bit more careful on where to get them from.
Thats a great read and it never crossed my mind before to repurpose content. My only question is will having facebook comments work in the same way? I ask because that seems to be the way a lot of sites are going these days. It must be easier to just allow people to sign in with their facebook account and comment with it.
Love to hear a response to my question.
john
I don’t really understand your question John. Are you asking if allowing users to comment using Facebook comments will be another way to create content?
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…A Link Building Strategy That Will Benefit You
Thanks for replying to my question Kevin. Yes, that is what I was asking. Will the facebook comments help, or add to the content of my site, or am I better off removing facebook comments and adding a comment field similar to this one?
I think you’re fine with either one. They both do the same thing, just in a slightly different way. Personally, I use the regular comment system because it works with the CommentLuv plugin, which allows me to reward visitors who comment on my posts with a couple of links back to their blog. Hope this helps John
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…5 Things To Avoid With Email Marketing
Hi Kevin,
Your post reminds me to do link roundup kind of post again. I was doing it 2 years ago but stop doing so because I think the posts would have no SEO value due to the number of outbound links.
Today, I stopped focusing on SEO and link away to resources I love
Ivan Widjaya recently posted…Inbound Marketing: Just a Buzzword?
Hello Ivan,
Yes, link roundups are a great way to create content quickly and for free. Thank you for stopping by and commenting
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…5 Things To Avoid With Email Marketing
Hi Kevin, now a days creating compelling content is the most important aspect for any website/blog.
Many bloggers have different strategies for creating content on their blogs, having said that mixing various ways to create content will help in long run and has an opportunity to engage with readers.
You’ve got excellent ways to create content within a low budget, the content re-purposing thing is the one that got my point on. I think, I should implement this technique for my next articles.
Thank you Kevin and love to have more insights like this.
Regards
Easton
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Hi Easton,
Appreciate the nice comment and glad you liked my post. Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Email Marketing Tips From Around The Internet
Hi Kevin
Thanks for your 4 tips. I like the idea of repurposing content. It’s not something I’ve tried yet.
I use PLR from Tiffany Dow, Nicole Dean and Peggy Baron. As you said, never buy 100,000 for $1! Always buy quality. I tweak it and add my voice. Sometimes I’ll take a PLR title and write my slant on that title.
Shan
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