I use content writers as researches really, then I will go through it and get some other information and build it up into 750-1000 words (not too hard) and publish it. I have a couple of good tools that let me know what needs to be done for it to be optimised for search engines but I also make sure it's readable by humans.
There is no point having a monster article optimised fully for search engines to rank well in the SERP just to make no sense when a real person visits and wants info not gibberish, also not every buyer (most buyers in fact) do not give two shits about if a sales letter is at a scholar level, they want entertainment, information and you want them to take action at the end of it and buy your shit.
If You Have a Head Line With A Capital Letter For The First Letter In Each Word Of The Headline, it'll grab attention. I use it for my stuff and it works... The people who don't like it don't matter as long as you're bringing in the money with others.
I also have different articles/sales letters for different keywords where if someone find my page with a buying keyword "cost of XXXX" I'll point them to a landing page optimised for that buying stage, someone in the research stage again I'll throw information at them to help them in their research...
TL;DR - If you want to do things on the cheap don't bitch when it doesn't come off, on the same token the majority of the writers that charge the big money all use the same sort of formula with their sales letters and articles which is pretty easy to find looking around the net... build up a swipe file of headlines/sales letters/articles that you like, study and start writing up your own stuff. You get really fast as you do more and you'll be saving time/money + getting quality shit.
