Let's try to agree on a few basic concepts.
#1) Nothing in life is free. Organic traffic aint free and content costs something.
#2) You have finite resources. There are only 24 hours in a day and your back account is not infinite.
#3) Successfully using triage on your business needs gives you a better chance of surviving and heck maybe even being profitable.
What does this have to do with content marketing? Too many of you do not see the true value in good content. Good content can generate traffic, attracts backlinks, builds loyal user base, and converts into profits. It builds traffic by expanding your web of pages to rank on Google. If you don't mention a keyword on your site it is unlikely you will rank in Google for it. Valuable content can also turn into social traffic as its virally shared and that in turns reinforces your Google rankings. This also increases the chances of other sites & news organizations linking back to you because of your good content. The more valueable content you have the better chance you have of attracting & converting traffic into money via adsense/affiliate/direct sales.
That all sounds nice but you are busy, so let's just outsource this. With a little know-how let's say you can buy a turnkey article for $50. If that article generates just 1 extra person a day to your site, you can be very profitable. That is 365 extra people. Assuming a 5% Adsense CTR that is 36 clicks and let's say avg rev/click is $1 that is $18 revenue. Or maybe you convert 1% into affiliate sales, that is an extra 3 affiliate commissions sales a year. Maybe you are selling a $20 ebook, if you convert 1% that is an extra $60.
To make it even more attractive, let's not forget that this content keeps generating traffic. It doesn't magically disappear after 1 year. My experience is that content lasts roughly about 3 years before it needs retouching depending on site/industry. So if you only monetize using only Google's webmaster welfare (aka adsense) you will still turn a profit.
Of course all of these numbers will vary wildly depending on site/industry. For example I worked on a legal website and they briefly flinched when I told them they needed to invest over $10,000 in just content because writing accurate legal content is not cheap. Once I reminded them of their avg profit per case, they quickly did the math and wanted to double the scope of the project.
My point is that you should think twice about content marketing and make sure you are factoring in the long term picture with all the side benefits. Theoretically if you can spend $1 on content (or anything) and it earns you $2 then why not push content higher up on your crowded to do list and don't be afraid to outsource it to quality vendors if the profit margin is healthy enough. Of course if you do the math and it doesn't make sense then don't do it.
PS Investing in content marketing does not mean it is a magical bullet that will solve all problems. It is usually wise to see it as one piece in a strong holistic approach
