Living Off Of Marketing Forums/Job Boards

In all honesty, $5-10 per 100 words is acceptable for content writers (not copywriters). Of course, quality is not always guaranteed, but that's the price many are willing to pay to save money.

Few years ago, I hired a college kid who loved writing, charged $10 for 500 words, and the articles came out better than those so-called professional writers.

So even at those "low" levels, we have several heros that don't know their worth. I have had more success with cheap writers than magazine writers because the new ones have less ego and more discipline.

I remember an Ad campaign for a lager here in the UK.

The tagline was "Reassuringly Expensive"

Sales shot up.


Steve

It's a question of positioning yourself.

Most people, if not all, who hire off the boards you speak of want quantity not quality.

Yes, they say they want quality, but they define quality as correct word order and punctuation and spelling.

They do it because content is king, my friend, Google wants fresh content.

If you throw at a site a lot of content, tens of articles a month, you probably end up with some traffic. If you do more, you end up with a lot of traffic.

You need to find where people who are looking for more than just correct punctuation, spelling and grammar.

A few days ago, there was someone looking for articles in the field of law. He seemed to understand that it was a rare skill, writing about law, so, presumably, he understood, and maybe was able to pay more.

You might want to search for blogs in specific fields, fields outside the push-this-button-and-make-a-million-dollars-online or swallow-this-pill-and-lose-25-lbs and affiliate marketing, say, attorneys.

Talk to the company that owns the site, the one that would look bad if something inaccurate popped up on their site, that needs researched content presented in an engaging way.

See how often they post. Offer them equal quality (or better) articles on topics of their choice.

To make your prices even higher, SEO your articles (i.e., send a second version that has the h1, h2 tags, so they could just give it to their web person to upload (all the other tags, paragraph, bold, etc. have to be in place too; they will give to their web person and the web person, usually, will upload and charge, even if it ends up not looking right on the screen).

QUOTE=Khovai;10011685]I'm curious to see what people think about this.

Honestly, taking a look at job boards and marketing forums is a disgusting site. Trying to find work on sites like the previously mentioned bring me to threads like this:

"looking for qualities article writes must have quality need daily work lowest bid wins"
"i have daily work that needs done must write quality must be online daily looking to pay $1 per 100 words"
"I have large orders that need done please send low bid for large order"
"need 100 articles not hiring expensive $5 per article writer must charge .50c per 100 words or less"

Does content really mean that little to these clients? Do they really think they're going to build an empire off of $5 content?

Is it possible today to earn an income off of job boards and marketing forums as a writer? Competing for $5-10 per 100 words isn't exactly my idea of making it or profitable. Especially when those clients are going to deliver a laundry list of demands for their content to be completed.

After spending weeks and weeks researching these areas and going through these opportunities, it honestly seems to me that sucking it up and hitting up content mills is far more profitable than trying to market yourself on these types of forums.

No offense meant to any of the great clients that lurk here and those that value content from here but it's such a Debbie downer to continuously browse all these sites and try to keep a positive outlook on trying to make writing work out.

You send a measly $30 an article proposal to a client but their inbox is filled with broken English writers and some great English middleman who will in turn be outsourcing their work for even cheaper.[/QUOTE]

I'm sorry but I'm going to have to disagree with that. Acceptable under what standards?

I'll start by saying that I have secured $10K clients from the Warrior Forum.
They are few and far between but it's not impossible to get clients from a
forum. But I've NEVER had client from a job board.

In reality, job boards should be like a "bonus" job source even though there are
those who have reported that they work out a recruiting technique to get good
jobs on the likes of oDesk and other freelance sites.

For any copywriter, the IDEAL is to have clients come knocking on your
door, not the other way around. When you have to ask for the job, you
are already negotiating from the point of weakness. So you end up with
less than you really wanted if you take the job.

NORMALLY, clients who post to job boards are looking for a "deal"
and quickly pit your quote against others and take the lowest common
factor price. It's the nature of the beast. so if you don't know what
other copywriters are bidding then you are left in the cold, since it's
not an open auction.

So the bottom line is that you should never build a business on these sources
of income unless you have a WalMart philosophy of cheapness and bulk.

-Ray Edwards

Why work harder when you can work smarter?

I've personally landed content clients on freelancing platforms for 10 cents per word, but it's not a common occurrence. The real money is in networking, prospecting and capturing leads on your website. Job boards and forums are not the way to go if you're looking for a long-term writing career.

The fact that people who call themselves writers are willing to work for pennies, says nothing about what it really takes to create good content. People who pay that little, or who work for it, simply don't know the difference between good writing and fluff.

Show me ONE authority site online, just ONE, which is built on $5 and $10 content.

The closest one is eHow, which, from what I hear, pays $20 to $30. Most of the content on there is horrible, generic and offers no new or unique insights. The belief that you can get anything but junk for less than $50 an article is pure buffoonery.

The only reason those job boards exist is that there are thousands of people out there who either can't tell the difference, or have fooled themselves into believing that there is none.

From what I've gathered, the people who post these kind of jobs aren't looking for actual quality. They're looking for a bare, minimum quality that will pass search engine algorithms. These types of jobs aren't for humans, and the people who fulfill take advantage of that by providing exactly what's being asked for.

Without a reason for someone to spend additional time or resources on a higher paid solution, price is the determining factor. So the simple answer to your dilemma -- aside from being more selective with the jobs you pursue – is to incorporate value builders in your sales presentation. By doing this you shift the brine criteria and simultaneously, elegantly help prospects focus on what really matters, which is typically not a rock-bottom price.

Hi there,

From my experience, $1 for 100 words is a decent pay. I believe most of us started with this rate just to get jobs and then, as years went by, we started valuing our work more.

I say that this is decent, because I've also seen clients wanting to pay $1 per 500 words and that it's outrageous for me. You can get quality work at $1 per 100 words, but I can't even imagine what kind of texts you receive at $1 per 500 words.

Also, from what I've seen, the clients who pay less are usually the most stressful and have the most crazy demands. Who knows, maybe in their world, they think they're paying a fortune for those articles.

Leaving this aside, I believe that the payment depends on what the client wants. If he just needs to fill his site with some content and keywords to rank high in Google, then he won't be willing to pay that much. Instead, if he's looking for valuable and high-quality content that can actually help the readers, then he will pay more. It's just a difference of mentality and vision.

Best,
Typing Pandas