hiring external content writers
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give adds for monster.com that helped me a lot.

I have found talented writers off guru.com elance.com and scriptlance.com is worth posting on for tech stuff.

Don't offer a rate - let them bid for the work. You might just be surprised at quality of work and low rates.

I have had mixed experience with the "coder" sites. Apparently, Guru coders/writers have to pay and on one project I got no bids at all.

I believe that if you start looking around the $0.02 - 0.03 / word range, you can get some decent articles. Any cheaper and it's people writing who are not native english speakers and often the article are garbage .. and plaigerized / copied-pasted as well.

I would recommend Rentacoder and Scriptlance (haven't tried elance) if you follow your "due diligence" rules.

Tech stuff may be a bit more expensive.

Copywriters .. that's an entirely different ballgame. ($$$)

yeah, of course there are lots of idiots on guru.com but there is also some real talent. They have portfolios, most have ratings and nearly all I have worked with produce samples based on the brief for free.
The risk is low if you apply some common sense. ie I never work with someone that has no feedback rating.

The problem with feedback ratings on some of the coder sites: Even if there is a dispute or quality issue, the coders will make discount deals to protect their high rating.

In one case when the writer delivered terrible content, they tried to negotiate and when I wouldn't deal, they wanted to cancel the project to avoid a poor feedback rating.

Another problem is a provider that farms out their work. That's a real crap shoot.

Sorry for the late response and thanks for the tips. I will have a look at the sites you mentioned. $0.03 per word is actually a lot cheaper than I figured, so I believe I should be able to give it a try.