Hi,
It has nothing to do with greed. There's a few things you have to understand;
Most of the providers on here hire writers off freelancing sites and resell it to you at a profit. Its easy -but it produces sub par results. It's a brainless and easy way to start up a service and I've known guys who have done this just to make a few hundred bucks to skate by tough times.
We get our writers in several ways:
We advertise in universities, in local papers and online (we have people come directly to our site and apply) and we hire actual, guaranteed native english writers rather then the offshore junk content that passes itself off as native english on many freelancing sites. This costs a lot more then just throwing up a free ad online and hiring whoever stumbles over it -but its worth the extra quality.
For some of our writers (press releases, corporate content, etc) we hire through referrals. How come I have the writers who wrote for Disney, sony, Russel Bruson and so many other big brands? Better question: Why doesnt anybody else?? They're not hanging out advertising on Warrior that's for sure -I contact the brands directly and work my way to the contacts to set up deals. This is too much hassle for most providers to bother with. The content isn't cheap -I agree, but that's not what I'm trying to do and I realize that I'm missing a sizable chunk of the market by not selling a 3 dollar backlink article -and that's OK because everyone else is already doing that. I'm trying to bring a level of quality that 99% of providers are missing because they're running this as a hobby, hiring anyone that comes by and reselling them on here. And so I pay my writers more then the other guys here are paying theirs because I'm actually providing them with legit work.
I actually want to pay my writers decently for the work that they do and not just flip them for a quick buck while they slave away in some sort of virtual sweatshop pumping out article after article.
Of course I have the training materials (pdf books all writers are sent -separate ones for review writers, seo writers etc, video material being created right now, and much more behind the scenes) I don't know any other provider who does this -period. Is this necessary? Perhaps not -but it sure as hell makes a difference. This content service isn't how I make my living -you can check my warrior posts from a year ago when I was making 6 figures and doing absolutely nothing in the IM niche. I don't do much micro niche marketing or some of the other stuff that some of my buyers do -but I have websites, products and review sites like every one of my buyers do and I know what works as what doesn't. And I know the value of a good review. I've increased sales from certain single landing pages by over 150 bucks a day just by swapping out poorly performing copies. I split test the hell out of everything. If you check my content site you'll notice that it's changing almost everyday. I'm rotating copy, structure, images, everything on there and testing reletenlessly and this does cost me a pretty penny -but it pays for itself. I do things with a purpose, it's not just randomly thrown out there to make a quick buck.
When you're buying content to make a sale what you're really doing is investing in your future. If you're a manufacturer and you decide to upgrade your machinery to something more efficient, fast and effective it's going to cost you -but it pays in its results. Same thing online.
There's an attitude of hobbyism when it comes to internet marketing -low startup costs, low barrier of entry and a lot of guru's selling a get rich dream attract a lot of people who look at IM as a way to make a quick buck or two rather then build a long term business and real income. I'm not saying any of this about you -however there is a a lot of that out there. I couldn't believe that I couldn't find a decent group of content providers for my own businesses to outsource to when I was looking for them. So I built my own team -which now has obviously been way expanded since going public with it. But out of hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of content providers why do you think most of them are selling content between 3-6 bucks? Because its easy to sell, easy to get. I'm spending on offline ads, online marketing, training materials and numerous test pieces before hiring, getting my foot in the door and actually travelling out to MEET with some of my referral only copywriters. I guarantee you that my margins are probably lower on a sale then almost any other writer on here once you count in everything I do in the backend that isn't obvious to the buyer. This service goes beyond Wickedfire -WF has been awesome to me, but, to say that I'm being greedy is being inaccurate without knowing all the facts of how I'm running this service. Do I miss the mark sometimes? Yes, I will be the first to admit it. But I do my very best to rectify the situation in all cases and have never bailed out on a buyer. I treat this like a business not a forum post.