Hands Off Publishing Review. Is it Worth Buying?

To say that I have some “worries” about outsourcing content is an understatement. I know what it takes to succeed in blogging, and certainly in outsourcing my blogging work to others. And naturally that message will be prevalent in this review of Hands Off Publishing (because it’s very important for this topic).

Let me just say that I did not buy any of the content packages in Hands Off Publishing and here are the reasons why:

1) I read some mixed reviews on their services and it basically reflected my original worries of using this or any other similar service.

2) In my experience having outsourced content to at least 1 writer, I know about the hardships (and delicate care) required to have a success in outsourcing.

3) I did do a deep dive into this program from multiple angles, including my own experiences in the field, so I will share all of that and the sources in this review to help you decide if you should get Hands Off Publishing’s services or not.

A summary and short review of Hands Off Publishing:

Creator:

Unknown (That’s a big problem for me).

Pricing:

• $45 for a 1k words.
• Up to $1,500 for 50k words.

How does Hands Off Publishing work?

You select a package on their site, fill out a form to let them know what type of content you want (niche, tone, preferences, ect…) and then within a certain time frame are delivered the content from one of their writers.

The article/s you get include images and other features and they also use numerous services, including SEO programs to intelligently optimize the article you request (in short, making it better for rankings).

If you don’t like the article or parts of it, you can request up to 3 revisions to it to make improvements.

Once the article is to your liking, you would then publish it on your site and add other essentials you want (other SEO optimizations that weren’t included in the original article you got).

My rating for Hands Off Publishing: 3.0 out of 5 stars

Do I recommend Hands Off Publishing? It’s a tough call for now.

From everything I have seen, the service is 100% legitimate despite little info on the creator and some of my worries being seen from people who have used this service.

At the end of the day though, the core problems that come from outsourcing content are things I see in this program and being very picky about who I trust to outsource to, this particular service just doesn’t fit what I would fully be able to trust in provide me with content.

I will explain this in the review further down.

Alternatives (3):

A) Text Broker is one option (similar to this service).

B) Hiring and possibly training a freelance writer and elusively working with them (the best option for outsourcing in my opinion).

C) Or just relying on your own content production (no third party), which is probably your best and most inexpensive bet. But to do this you need to learn about blogging, SEO and what to do to succeed, which is why I suggest this program:

The full review of Hands Off Publishing:

To understand what this service is and why it’s even in existence, we need to start at the following:

Blogging can potentially make you a lot of money but in order to make this happen, you need to do several things:

• Know what you’re blogging about (a niche you love is a good starting point).
• Know how to optimize the blogs you write for SEO (so they rank).
• Be able to consistently produce good content over at least 6 months (100 blog posts).

If you can do this right, the blog can start acquiring traffic and making money. Personally, I do affiliate marketing with my blogs and also am working to get involved with Mediavine. Because I’ve done this for so many years, I know about this subject very well (see my affiliate income reports).

Enter Hands Off Publishing (why this place exists):

For many successful bloggers (or those who don’t have time to blog but still want to make a successful one), outsourcing is a popular option that many bloggers take. Instead of doing all of that blogging yourself, you hire a person, team or service to do the blogging for you (called outsourcing).

Many companies and freelance writers exist in this realm to fill this demand and Hands Off Publishing is one of those services. And as I explained above, how they operate is easy to understand and easy to start with.

5 reason I’m very careful about using services like Hands Off Publishing:

1) There are many ways this can “go wrong”:

There are many worries a blogger should have when hiring a freelance writer or outsourcing from any service that does this work. Here are some:

• Duplicate content.
• Poorly written content (language barriers, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, ect…).
• Revisions and not having the desired content you want.
• Not being aligned with the writer you are dealing with (they don’t understand what you want).
• Having to correct the work for the writer because it’s not up to par with your standards.
• Ect…

From what I have seen with Hands Off Publishing, some of these worries exist, while some of the major ones like duplicate content do not (which is good).

2) In the freelance world, I generally do not hire people or services that are cheap:

The pricing in Hands Off Publishing is a pretty good deal, but in my experience, good deals don’t mean you’ll get wonderful services either. In fact, I’d say in this particular subject, hiring a more experienced/expensive writer would be a better thing for you to do.

3) In my experience, it’s better to train and work with 1 freelance writer vs outsourcing with a service:

Having worked with 1 person in the past, I can tell you a lot about this stuff. For starters, I understood what needed to be written and how for my blogs to get them to rank.

I then had to relay that to the writer, who was very patient with me and despite following my rules, it took a good 10 months for him to produce work for me which I didn’t have to constantly check on. But this is normal because if you want good work and good rapport in this business, you need to work with 1 person and give it time to develop.

Outsourcing to third party services who don’t really know you that well and follow some basic rules can lead to undesired results (which is totally expected and not a surprise).

4) I found mixed reviews on Hands Off Publishing which lent credibility to my worries:

There are 2 particular blog posts on this service which stood out:

1. Niche Pursuits review Hands Off Publishing which was very positive, but lacked details on the services provided.
2. And this one from MakeMoneyBro.com which was very detailed on the problems I suspected would be in this type of service (grammatical and spelling errors which could affect results).

One thing is for certain: This service is good at customer support, but its mixed on the type of quality you want in the end result.

Update: Also I have received word from the owner of Hands off Publishing that the owner of MakeMoneyBro.com did receive some updates so I’ll include them once they show up.

5) Hiring a freelance service or writer takes time and training. Avoid the short cuts in this:

All you need is 1 good freelance writer who understands you and your standards and knows how blogging works to have a successful outsourcing asset to your blog. This however takes time and revision after revision (and you both being patient with each other) to work.

I have extremely high standards for my blogs, and that writer I told you about eventually became someone I trusted working with, but it only came after we communicated a lot, and I carefully trained and explained what was needed.

Because he stuck around, adjusted to my needs and evolved, he was able to produce great work for me which eventually I didn’t have to check up on. This is the ideal situation you want to be in with outsourcing.

Conclusions on Hands Off Publishing:

It’s a legitimate service and they do work with you if you’re not happy, but ultimately, it has many of the same holes I see with any other legitimate outsourcing service.

Taking the short route with third party services just has too many risk in my experiences that can jeopardize your blog’s success.

Now at the same time, you may get a great writer who you like and who produces great work, but this is less likely to happen when you understand SEO, content writing and what it really takes (few people know all the things required to do this right) and so finding 1 person who can do this (and training them) would be a better option.

Being your own content producer (your best, cheapest and safest option):

Before you invest in any freelance (legitimate ones) or services, you have to understand how blogging works on your own and ideally have your own success in it.

This template is what you have to bring to any potential freelancer or service you are considering outsourcing to because the more you know this business, the better you can teach and relay that to potential prospects.

Without this knowledge and experience, you will just get subjective work you may not even know is good or bad and generally in this realm, that can be bad.

I never invested in a freelance writer until I knew what worked, had my own success in the blogging world and knew what to teach and show my prospect so they could literally do the same.

This is the proper sequence to follow when considering outsourcing for your blog and it’s the only path I recommend. A program like Wealthy Affiliate happens to teach this sequence the proper way and many successful bloggers I personally know who hire freelance writers follow the exact same steps I just explained to you.