Of course, when content is commodity, branding is a natural corollary. What is branded content? Branded content is content that gives you guarantee on quality and originality. It is accompanied by a legal undertaking that the content that is being sold to the customer is original, free from plagiarism and created on the basis of predefined, stringent international quality standards. Well, strange as that may seem, it is wholly possible.

Much of the content on the Internet is a rehash of exisiting content with no reference to quality standards, originality or informative potential. Most writers seem happy to make a quick buck by just putting together a lot of information anyhow. Plagiarism checking tools have instilled a little fear into the minds of the content borrowers and there is some move towards ensuring that content is redrafted in their own words. Unfortunately, the “own words” concept demands that the writer has a lot of skill with the language and that is sadly lacking. Vernacular influences, local and regional influences often make the text unintelligable. Consequently, you have content buyers begging for “good writers with skills in American English” or for “Writers who can write the King’s English” and so on! Therefore, sourcing content from outside the homeland can become a loss making proposition, unless you are dealing with branded content.

If you are not a good writer yourself or do not have time to churn out large amounts of content, purchasing content can be very expensive in more ways than one. If you hire a writer to do the job for you onsite, there are a number of logistics issues that you must handle. There may be periods when you are forced to keep your resource idle (unless you are into content development and not product development!). Third world country writers offer to develop content for you cheaply, but the cost of editing such poorly drafted, vernacular hit content could prove to be your downfall!

So, how does one buy quality content in this market? Stay with proven and tested resources or source content from companies that produce branded content with guarantees of originality, quality and uniqueness. Such content may be a little expensive, but will certainly save you hours of labor correcting, editing and redrafting “content hashes” that disappoint you and make you rue the day you sourced the content for cheapness.