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Over the past few years, we’ve gone from writing our own articles to working with freelancers, then finally outsourcing to writing services. Working with writing services is what’s allowed us to finally scale and take our sites to the next level.
While using a writing service for your content does have some drawbacks, the pros easily outweigh the cons (at least in my opinion). It’s simply the easiest way to get a lot of articles for your site quickly and in bulk, without having to manage the process, like you would with freelancers.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve tried several writing services, each with their own set of pros and cons. One that I hadn’t heard of was ContentWish, so when they reached out about a possible review, I thought it’d be a good chance to see what they have to offer.
ContentWish was nice enough to provide a 3,000 word credit to test out their services, which allowed me to check out their back end and order a few articles to compare to some articles that we’ve received from another writing service. This review is based on those three articles, as well as the process from ordering to delivery.
A Bit of Background About ContentWish
According to their website, ContentWish got started in 2017, so they’ve been around for a few years. They have over 300 clients and have produced over 20 million words (I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers haven’t been updated in a while).
They have over 50 writers that have access to various tools (ahrefs, Grammarly, Surfer, etc.) to help optimize your content.
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I’ll leave it at that as far as their background goes, because in my book, most of it’s not that important. What matters to me are the ordering workflow and the results, which I’ll jump into next.
Placing an Order
Once you create an account, you’ll be given access to the back end where you can place and manage your orders:
If you’ve ever used Content Pit, the portal will immediately look familiar. For me, that’s a good thing, because this particular platform is easy to navigate.
On the left side, you have all of the various screens where you can buy words, place an order, and get your content.
Once you’ve purchased some word credits, your next step is to place an order, which you can do by clicking “Order Articles,” which looks like this:
What I really like about this interface is that you can simply copy and paste your list of keywords and word counts into the “Order Details” section. This means you can have a spreadsheet with this info ready to go, then simply copy and paste it over when you’re ready to place an order.
Optionally, you can upload a separate file with ordering instructions. I ended up using their template, which was basically a Google Sheet that has placements for general instructions, as well as things for each article like:
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- Title or Topic
- Main Keyword
- Word Count
- Secondary Keywords
- And a few other options related to the optional add-ons
If you scroll down on the ordering page, you’ll see that you have some optional add-ons to consider.
Depending on your budget and workflow, these add-ons could easily be worth the cost. In our case, we handle all of these things ourselves, but it’s always good to have options.
As far as the royalty-free images are concerned, I received the following response when asking about the source of these images:
Please note that images will be royalty-free ones picked from free image marketplaces, like Pixabay, Unsplash, and so on.
If you need featured images, we can create them using our Canva account.
What’s included:
1 featured image
3-4 high-quality images with relevant alt texts.
Again, we handle this ourselves and use either or own images or stock images from paid sources, but if you have the budget and want to save the time and effort, it’s good to have this option.
What I Ordered
As mentioned above, I was provided with a credit for 3,000 words, which I used to order the following articles:
Main Keyword | Word Count | Secondary Keywords |
how to make a pond filter without electricity | 900 | |
what eats pond sludge | 800 | |
how to oxygenate a pond quickly | 1,300 | what causes low oxygen levels in ponds does a waterfall oxygenate a pond does pond algae produce oxygen |
Along with these articles, I asked for the following, which we always ask for when outsourcing content:
- use 1-2 sentences/paragraph
- don’t include affiliate links
- link to external resources within articles when appropriate
That’s literally it. I didn’t provide any further instructions, nor do we ever provide anything more than this when outsourcing writing. We let the writing service handle the rest.
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Turnaround Time
Once your order has been placed, all that’s left to do is to wait. With ContentWish, that wait was reasonable:
I don’t know if my order turnaround time is indicative of a typical order, but according to their website, the turnaround time for up to 10,000 words is 8 business days. This is pretty reasonable when compared to the other services that we’ve used.
Getting Your Articles
Once your articles are ready, they’ll be delivered to you via email, one article at a time. Although I’d prefer the articles to be provided in a single file (as in multiple articles in a single document), this isn’t unusual by any means.
The articles are provided as Google Docs. While there’s nothing wrong with this, you are only give viewer access to the files. That means you’ll need to either download the files to edit them, or copy and paste them directly into WordPress to make any changes.
This isn’t a dealbreaker by any means, but for our workflow, we like to edit all of the files in bulk, then upload them to WordPress in one go, so this does add a step in our case.
Aside from that, the articles did copy and paste into WordPress formatted perfectly (as in bringing over the headings, no additional spaces between paragraphs, etc.).
Overall, I’m good with the article delivery side of the process.
Are the Articles Any Good?
For this review, I thought it’d be ideal to compare the articles from ContentWish to articles that we’d already outsourced to Content Pit, who we currently use for all of our outsourced writing. We gave both companies the exact same keywords, subtopics, and instructions, so this should be a good apples to apples test.
Here are the articles that we received from ContentWish:
And here are the ones we already had from Content Pit:
I left the ContentWish posts completely unedited, so the titles and metadata section were provide by them. In the case of the Content Pit articles, we rewrote the titles (which we always do), changed the final header to “Final Thoughts,” and no metadata was provided. Otherwise, those articles are shown as provided as well.
I suggest taking a look at the articles yourself, so you can compare each of them head to head. This should give you a good feel for how the ContentWish articles compare to the Content Pit articles.
Keep in mind that this is a small sample size. For the Content Pit articles, the three articles that I chose are very consistent with what we’ve come to expect from them. For the ContentWish articles, it’s hard to say if that level of quality is reasonable to expect with each and every order that you place.
Overall, I’m impressed with the articles from ContentWish. The writing mostly feels natural, and the articles are formatted really well. I like how they break up the text with headings and lists, so it’s not just a huge wall of words.
Probably the thing I like the most is that the articles mostly stay on point. With such small topics, this is a common problem when outsourcing the writing. Keeping the articles focused on the main topic is definitely important.
The one thing I would have liked to see more of is external linking to sources. I think both Google and visitors like to know where a writer gets their information, so this is one area that could use some improvement.
The Pros and Cons
No writing service is going to be perfect, so it’s good to look at both sides of the coin. These are the some of the overall pros and cons that jump out at me when I look at ContentWish as a whole:
Pros
- The pricing is in line with comparable services
- The turnaround time is reasonable
- The back end is easy to navigate
- Placing an order is very easy and streamlined
- The articles were formatted very well
- The articles stay on point
- The writing quality was solid
- The order instructions were followed
Cons
- Adding subtopics and ordering instructions requires uploading a separate file
- The articles are delivered as view-only Google Docs
- There were very few outbound links to resources within the articles
As you can see, the benefits easily outweigh the drawbacks, and when comparing to other services that we’ve used, ContentWish is easily close to the top of the list.
The Verdict
Based on the three articles that I received, I have no problem recommending ContentWish. The ordering process was smooth, the turnaround time and pricing were reasonable, the writing quality was about as good as you could hope for with a writing service, and my instructions were followed.
Although we’re currently outsourcing all of our content to one writing service, I’ve always liked the idea of having multiple options when it comes to any aspect of our business.
If you’re ready to start scaling your content production and are searching for a solid writing service to partner with, go give ContentWish a look.