The latest data on the cost of AI content creation vs human writers shows a clear difference between options available to marketing teams. AI tools advertise content for pennies per article, while professional writers charge up to $1 per word – yet choosing based on price alone overlooks the real factors that drive results.
Your content strategy needs both speed and authenticity to succeed in search rankings. In this article, I’ll show you how combining AI capabilities with human expertise can reduce your expenses while producing original, engaging content that ranks well. You’ll learn proven methods to build a cost-effective content program that connects with readers and meets Google’s quality standards.
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AI vs Manual Content Creation Cost Comparison
When comparing AI-generated content with human-generated content, you’ll find a significant difference in content creation costs. Human writers often charge per word or per article, and for high-quality content, the cost can be upwards of 75 cents to a dollar per word. That means a 1,500-word article can cost over $1,000. Many small companies don’t have the budget for that kind of content creation, so they sometimes seek out inexpensive writers.
The Problem with Inexpensive Writers
Low-cost writers almost always (scratch that, it’s always not almost always) lack expertise and may create content that doesn’t effectively attract leads, build brand awareness, or educate clients. Here are a few reasons why:
- They don’t have the necessary knowledge or experience in the subject matter
- Their content lacks depth to engage serious readers
- Their writing style may not align with your brand’s voice and tone
The Pitfalls of AI-Generated Content
Fully AI-generated content is very inexpensive. For $20/month, you can type a few prompts into ChatGPT or other tools and have it write content for you within minutes. The problem is that Google can detect AI-generated content very easily, and it will not advance your website’s rankings. AI-generated content is based on AI training data, and you can probably tell when something sounds like an AI bot wrote it, often in the opening sentence of an article.
- See our guide on AI Content Detectors →
While creating that kind of content might be very inexpensive to produce, it doesn’t really do anything for you in terms of business growth. As a result, it’s often a complete waste of time and money.
What Google Looks for in Content
What Google looks for is content that aligns with its E-E-A-T content guidelines, also known as their helpful content guidelines. They’re looking for content that shows you have the experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to be writing about the things you publish.
When it compares your content’s depth to the content it has already ranked for certain keywords, your content has to shine above the rest. That’s why when you compare AI vs manual content creation costs, AI-generated content is very inexpensive, but it is often not worth pursuing because it will not help you get ranked. It wastes your time and money.
The Hybrid Model: A Content Marketing ROI Comparison
Fortunately, there is a content marketing ROI comparison model that companies are now starting to embrace, and that is a hybrid model that incorporates AI as well as human elements to create unique content quickly and at a much lower cost. MakeMEDIA’s features allow you to do that very efficiently and quickly.
Content Marketing ROI: Human Expertise vs AI Efficiency
When you look at the content marketing ROI based on human expertise versus AI efficiency, there are some things you want to take into account. The first one, which is usually the easiest to measure, is the time it takes to get your content ranked for specific keywords.
Also see: Authentic Content vs. Undetectable AI
Time and Cost Considerations
If you add up all of the time and cost to create content that is 100% human-generated, unless you have a writing team on staff, it can be several weeks before you publish a piece of high-quality content that is optimized for search and includes appropriate SEO keywords.
Conversion Metrics
Another metric to look at is whether your content converts. Companies sometimes make missteps when publishing content, such as:
- Forgetting to add an engagement feature for their call to action
- Relying on a contact us button or a few words instead of a strong CTA
Accuracy is essential when you write content, so the big thing to watch out for is a metric that looks at quality.
Creating Original Content
You can create original content by adding your own stories and sharing examples of customer experiences.
Don’t have stories? No problem!
You can easily reach out to a customer and ask them a question like this: “Think about the last time you were using our product. What were you looking to do that day, not just with our product, but what were the other things you had to get done that day or week?”
This customer question helps put the use of your product into a context that other readers can identify with. That prompt often results in very engaging and compelling stories and allows your prospects and other clients to see their lives playing out in your customers’ stories.
The Power of Unique Stories
When Google sees content with unique stories, it knows it’s original because nobody else has those stories. AI training data definitely doesn’t contain them. If you use an AI content generator, your output will not have these engaging stories and will often sound very generic.
The hybrid model that MakeMEDIA uses allows you to capture your stories simply by talking into your mic. It then uses these to create an SEO-friendly article that aligns with your brand voice and is technically accurate because it does not contain any AI hallucinations.
The draft it generates for you is based on the interview you did while interacting with MakeMEDIA. As a result, it is significantly more accurate, more technically precise, and is a rock-solid draft for easy editing. This approach balances content quality vs quantity in B2B marketing.
Balancing AI Efficiency and Human Expertise
When comparing the costs of AI vs manual content creation and evaluating content marketing ROI, it’s important to consider not just the time and money invested but also the quality and uniqueness of the resulting content.
Human expertise can bring valuable insights, stories, and examples that resonate with readers and stand out to search engines. AI efficiency can streamline the process, but a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of both can yield the best results in terms of engagement, accuracy, and overall return on investment.
The SEO Performance Gap: AI vs Manual Content Creation
When you compare the true cost of AI content creation vs human writers, there’s more that you need to take into account. The cost actually doesn’t matter if the content isn’t effective, and that’s a trap that many companies fall into. They think that just because they’re creating content, they’re making progress. Unfortunately, it’s like sitting on a stationary bike. You’re pedaling but not moving.
Keyword Research for Content Performance
One way to address content performance is by starting with keyword research. If you’re not using a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs, a simple starting point is going to Google and typing in a term that you want to get found. Google’s auto-suggest tool will come back to you with quite a few different related terms.
Keep in mind:
- The longer the term, the lower the search volume, but at the same time, the lower the difficulty.
- Longer terms are known as long-tail SEO keywords, and you should strongly consider using those in your content to improve your content marketing ROI.
MakeMEDIA automatically peppers your content with the keywords you’re targeting for the article, which makes creating an SEO-friendly article much faster without depending on an SEO company to polish the content for you.
The Pitfalls of AI-Generated Content
Another thing that holds back search ranking progress when you use AI-generated content is that the articles contain no unique insights. It’s the same as everyone else’s content.
While they may be using different words to make it technically original in terms of copyright, it is not useful in terms of depth or examples that can help someone. Google can spot 100% AI-generated content very easily, and it will not move you up in the rankings.
The Benefits of a Hybrid Approach
A key benefit of using the hybrid approach that MakeMEDIA offers is that you can create content that is 100% original with your thoughts very quickly.
Here’s an example from my own experience: I created a guide in about an hour and 30 minutes by verbally answering questions that MakeMEDIA prompted me with, and then spent 30 minutes editing the draft it generated.
Normally, this would have taken me more than two solid days.
The big benefit here is that the content is already ranked on page one of Google for the keyword I was pursuing. It contains numerous stories from my past companies, clients, and other content that is not available in any AI training database, which is what makes the content very unique and aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T mantra.
Evaluating AI vs Manual Content Creation Costs
When evaluating AI vs manual content creation costs, it’s important to consider the content marketing ROI comparison. While AI-generated content may be cheaper upfront, it often lacks the depth, originality, and effectiveness needed to truly engage audiences and rank well on search engines. This means you incur more time and expense to get it to a usable state.
By investing in a hybrid approach that combines AI assistance with human expertise, you can create high-quality, SEO-friendly content more efficiently while still maintaining the unique insights and examples that set your content apart.
Hybrid Content Creation ROI: Combining Human and AI Capabilities
The hybrid approach to content creation helps maximize your return on investment while maintaining content authenticity and quality. It unlocks your expertise by asking you questions, tapping into the knowledge and experience you’ve built up over the years.
You might get tongue-tied knowing what to talk about and what kind of material your clients want to learn about, but MakeMEDIA creates a content plan for you, putting content ideas into the various buyer journey stage buckets.
Tailoring Content to the Buyer’s Journey
You might produce content for the awareness stage when a prospect understands they have an issue and is trying to educate themselves about their problem. This content is very different from the evaluation stage, a latter stage when someone is looking for a solution, which might mean doing a product evaluation or getting an RFP to get proposals for solving their problem.
Creating content with different intent is important because you capture your prospects at any stage they might be in along their buyer journey. It adds a related yet sufficiently varied article mix to your SaaS content calendar. MakeMEDIA will create this content plan for you with numerous content ideas that you can quickly talk about to create SEO-rich content.
Leveraging Your Expertise
This also taps into your subject matter expertise, something AI generators can’t do. Instead of having AI do all the thinking for you, MakeMEDIA will give you ideas about things to talk about and ask you questions your prospects are likely thinking. When you express these questions using your own voice, you can talk about scenarios other people are facing.
This hybrid model makes it much easier to generate high-quality content fast. One of our clients created a 4000-word guide in just 40 minutes by simply answering questions related to his expertise. Not only did MakeMEDIA generate a very accurate first draft, but it also generated numerous social media posts he can share on LinkedIn to start attracting more leads that align with his value proposition.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
When you compare the cost-benefit of using AI-generated content, which can be as low as a $20 a month subscription to ChatGPT or similar product, versus 100% human-generated content, which ends up costing upwards of $1,000 per article, using a hybrid model allows you to take advantage of a lower cost while leveraging your expertise and not breaking the bank.
It’s an ideal solution for:
- Marketing departments in large organizations
- Executives in small companies
They can produce content quickly and consistently.
Consistency is the Key
The consistency part of the equation is extremely important because if Google sees that you do not publish content on a regular basis, it will not reindex your content immediately after posting a new article. The more frequently you publish content, the more frequently Google will go back to your site to update your content in its main index.
By creating content around your subject matter expertise, including the problems your product solves for, you create content clusters. When you use the hybrid content creation model that MakeMEDIA offers, you can create that content pretty fast so Google sees you are building site authority. The more authoritative your site and original your content, the faster your newer content will rank.
Take the Next Step Toward Better Content
Ready to improve your content creation results? We help companies produce high-quality articles through a proven method that combines AI tools with human storytelling. Try MakeMEDIA free to see how we can reduce your content costs while building authority in your market.
