Today, we’re examining one of the major players in the modern content marketing space – Verblio. Verblio is consistently a top choice for website owners who are looking to purchase content for their business. We’ll be examining how it works, if they truly do offer their promise of high quality content, some major features to consider, and whether we think it’s worth your time.

What is Verblio?

We’ll start with the basics. Verblio is a content marketing service that specializes in creating blog & website content. They have a wide base of writers that are capable of handling website content on varied and diverse subject matter.

The Verblio team provides a content strategy and solutions for agencies, publishers, enterprises, and more. This includes web content such as newsletters, eBooks, blog content, podcast/video summaries, etc. It’s a diverse content writing service designed to meet the needs of a wide range of clients. Due to their extensive writer base (over 3000 US-based writers), they are able to handle content on a large variety of topics.

Verblio also works to create content that matches your brand voice, and that is highly relevant/discoverable for SEO. We’ll dive into more detail about this below. Of course, this is how Verblio plugs their own service. Next, we’ll check out how the process actually works as a client. From there, we’ll jump into the pros & cons, to see whether it’s a content service that is worthy of your attention.

How Does it Work?

Our aim of this review is to provide an objective look at Verblio’s services. To do that, it’s essential to have an understanding of how the service actually works. So, as a client of Verblio, how does it all go down?

Creating Your Content Plan

Verblio has a proven service for ensuring that clients get work that matches their brand voice, and get the proper content to help them meet their goals.

First, clients must select a content plan, found here. The plans are reasonably priced, but do note that the base plans do not include back-end SEO optimization. This makes their base rate somewhat misleading. It’s difficult to recommend a content service which doesn’t include SEO optimization, so it’s important to note that this service costs extra.

Once the client has selected a plan, they work with Verblio to carve out a target audience, and to outline the best ways to reach said audience. You tell them who you want to reach, and how you want to reach them. This includes your brand voice (conversational, technical, etc.), and your brand goals. This stage is essential so Verblio can focus on creating content which matches your current branding and messaging.

After you’ve outlined your brand voice and content goals, you work with Verblio to order exactly the type of content you want. You decide how many pieces you want per month, the word limit for each piece, and what is to be covered in each piece of content. Verblio also offers an account management service if you don’t want to handle this yourself. From there, you can set specific titles, calls to action, keywords, and more. You can get quite specific about the content you request. Once you’ve ordered your content, Verblio’s writers take over. Verblio has a rather unique method of handling its writers, which we’ll explain next.

Writing Your Content

Once you’ve submitted a content brief to Verblio, their team of writers has a chance to handle your order. Unlike other content services, Verblio doesn’t specifically assign your content to a writer. Instead, writers get a chance to “compete” for your content. Content briefs are accessible by any of Verblio’s fully-vetted writing team. If they are familiar with the subject matter, they can choose to write the content.

Once your content has been written (usually takes about 2-3 days), it is uploaded to Verblio and you get a chance to review it. You can choose to either accept or decline the work. If multiple writers have handled the subject matter, you can choose the piece that best suits your needs.

This means that you don’t have to accept a piece of content unless you are happy with it. However, it also puts the onus on you to review and accept the content. You can also request tweaks and edits until the content is up to standard. Also, if you are happy with the content from specific writers, you can “bookmark” them and ensure that they write your content in the future. Make sense? It’s a rather unique approach, and we’ll examine our thoughts on it below.

Pros & Cons of Verblio

Now that we’ve conducted a comprehensive outline of the services offered by Verblio, let’s break down the pros & cons so you can decide whether their services are right for your business. Starting with the pros:

Pros

Many Content Styles/Topics

Verblio employs a large & diverse team of writers. With over 3,000 writers on the platform, they have the combined expertise to handle just about any subject matter you can throw at them. This means not only a diverse range of topics, but also a diverse range of writing styles, and content styles (blog, newsletter, etc.). During their vetting process, Verblio has writers designate subject matter that they are familiar with. This means that you’ll be able to work with writers who have a depth of knowledge that is suited to what you are looking for.

Quality Writers Produce Results

Verblio has a decently extensive vetting process for their writing team. Verblio writers need to be experienced, and have a depth of knowledge that is suited to the task. Writers must submit content before they are accepted to the platform. Additionally, because the writers are essentially “competing” for your business, you’ll often have a wealth of options to choose from for any given content brief. You choose the content you like best, and can flag writers that you want to work with for future pieces. The best writers rise to the top at Verblio.

Affordable

Verblio’s services are priced on par with competing content services. In fact, they are on the “more affordable” side of things, everything considered. But do note that Verblio has a progressive pricing plan. If you want to benefit from articles that are fully optimized for SEO, then you’ll have to opt for one of the premium plans.

Cons

Quality Varies

Because Verblio employs so many writers, there will be no avoiding the fact that quality is variable from piece to piece. With so many writers on one platform, it’s impossible to guarantee a consistent level of quality for every piece of content. Verblio has a vetting process for each writer, but this issue remains unavoidable with a writer base this large.

You’ll also find that more popular topics receive more attention. For more technical, in-depth subject matter, there will generally be a much smaller pool of writers to choose from. In fact, we wouldn’t recommend Verblio if you are looking for technical content. You should opt for a more specialized service in this case. In fact, Verblio shifts some of this onus to the customer – requiring them to review content themselves before accepting it.

SEO Costs Extra

Another downside of the Verblio platform is that SEO services are included in the “premium” content plans. SEO is practically essential to succeed in the content marketing space, and it’s hard to recommend a service without it. If you’re considering Verblio, you’ll definitely want to keep this in mind.

Reviewing the Content

Because Verblio’s writing team needs to “compete” for your content, this also puts the onus on you to decide which content you want to publish. For each brief, you might have multiple pieces which are submitted, depending on how many writers decide to take it on. On the one hand, you have multiple pieces you can decide from. On the other hand, it is time consuming to review each submission. However, this problem becomes more manageable the more you use Verblio’s platform. If there are particular pieces you are most satisfied with, you can message writers and have them take on your content in the future. There’s an opportunity to build lasting relationships with writers you trust.

What Do We Think?

Overall, Verblio is a solid content marketing service. It has its share of upsides and downsides. It’s a relatively affordable service that will net you quality content, as long as you are willing to dig for it. Because Verblio writers will all have a chance to submit content for a given brief, you might have to sift through multiple pieces to find what you’re looking for. While this does give you the opportunity to pick content that best suits your needs, it can also become time consuming to dig through each piece. That being said, Verblio does vet each writer, so any piece of content will have a certain standard of quality. If you carefully review the content that is submitted, then you’ll be able to flag quality writers that you can work with going forward. If you put in the effort from the outset, we think you’ll be very satisfied with Verblio’s platform. There are positives and negatives of this approach (which we’ve examined above), and you’ll have to decide whether their platform is right for your business. If you are looking for a more standardized content writing service, then consider Content Refined.