I think most business owners who operate only in the physical world would be stunned to know how much writing is required for an online business venture. Using the Internet for commercial purposes requires an immense amount of content. Whether we rely heavily on video or the written word, every utterance or sentence must be carefully crafted.

We can never lose sight of one unavoidable reality; our website is often the first exposure that many of our prospects have to our company. We must make a lasting, favorable impression on our visitors with the words we choose to convey our story. It is essential that our writers meet the expectations of our prospective customers or clients.

Some businesses are large and diverse operations that choose to handle almost every task within one of the company’s departments. Many of us, on the other hand, do not have the time or, perhaps the in-house talent to meet all of the writing needs that we have. A great many Internet marketers choose to out-source the authoring to professionals–or to whom they hope will be professionals. There are many free lance authors and web article writing services available.

Out-sourcing writing can be a wise investment for most businesses. Before you accept a writing service or individual author, however, take time to be certain that they have a reasonable understanding of the unique requirements of online businesses. Here are a few things to check:

1) They should be fluent in the language of choice (that of your target market). I prefer writers who have grown up with the language rather than those who have learned it later in life, as they will be more familiar with idioms, common expressions and the idiosyncrasies of usage.

2) No writer can be expected to be an expert in every subject. However, you need to determine whether the writer who is going to write for you has the ability to quickly learn what is necessary about the subject to be able to write about that topic in an engaging manner.

3) In almost all Internet writing, a conversational or informal tone is the norm. While there may be exceptions to that “rule,” writing for the web is very different from the writing necessary to achieve academic success. On the other hand, prior academic success improves your chances the the prospective author has at least mastered the basics.

4) The writers must understand your different business purposes for various kinds of articles. They should be able to verbalize the difference in objectives for writing for your website versus writing for article marketing uses.

5) Finally, the writers should not be confounded if you mention that they should optimize for a specific long tail key phrase. They ought to have some understanding of what SEO actually is.

All of these issues are more important to consider than whether an article costs you $10, $30 or even $100. Ten weak articles do not have the impact on your success that one very good piece of prose will have.