Is the quality of my articles worth $10 per 500 words? (find out why they are not)

Hi,

The articles looks good enough to me. Are you native english speaker? These very good mate.

I read all 4. I started with Choosing a Dentist and was quite pleased until about 1/4 through then the bottom fell out.

I think you are trying to use a thesaurus too hard or you're spinning parts of these or something.

For example "Another forewarning is if you notice the dental professional, battling unusually. " makes absolute no sense to me.

Another painful example "Find out his skill or incapacity to handle your issue, once you find that he's attempting to provide you with frosty comfort with words, when, in fact, he is not able to handle your specific dilemma."

And one more "Printing promotion and setting them all over town is extremely powerful in terms."

No offense intended but there are a lot more just like these.

I applaud you for asking for feedback. That shows you really are trying to provide value to your customers and that you're hopefully willing to learn and grow.

If you continue to improve then you can get to the higher payment levels. In my humble but honest opinion, based on these 4 samples alone, you're not there yet.

Wish you the best.
Mark

Your article writing needs some polishing. I think you have a knack for writing but your articles contain too much "fluff" and not enough substance. It seems like your adding words just for the sake of increasing the word count when they're not necessary in getting the point across.

Hello,
Sorry to say but read one of your article and reads like poorly spinned articles to me. i am a bad writer and use to use the best spinner and your articles read the same as mine use to. From the real estate article you posted it has no value to it and is not even good for backlinks. You add words and stuff just to add word count from what I can see

"The best way for selling real estate property is marketing online"

Sorry to say 10$ for these kind of articles is not good. I would not even except them on iwriter for 2$

Keep on working on your writing skills. More facts and a little less 'fluff' but the big thing is - you're trying and working on developing your skills - keep that mindset and you will succeed. Search online, there are some very good free newsletters which will assist you in your quest to become a top article writer. Good luck.

I think it might help for you to read high quality writing and see how those writers handle language.

It doesn't matter what genre you read. Fine writing is fine writing. If you don't know it when you see it you haven't read enough.

When you read -- whatever you read -- be sure to look up any words for which you don't have a clear concept in the dictionary.

By the way, you may be falling prey to something that afflicts many beginning writers, and that is the effort to sound sophisticated. Nothing is more dreadful.

Yes, some writers can manage fancy language and the use of obscure word choices, but most cannot. Those that do have a keen understanding of language and a broad vocabulary, so they understand when a word is precisely the correct word.

But if you do not have that level of expertise your writing will suffer. You will tend to choose words that are not quite right, and your writing will appear clumsy.

The moral: When in doubt, simpler is better.

Your "Radon" article has a spelling error in the title...Randon?"

It is good you are trying to improve your skills, but I agree with many of Mark's comments and you should study the sentences more closely.

Even the revision of the dentist article seems to have many problems. For instance, you have the phrase , "who preached his certification". Honestly, this does not sound like a native US writer at all. I wasn't sure if you were trying to say "graduated from dental school", "is a licensed dentist" or a different phrase, but preached is just not how a native english person speaks.

Another phrase that is odd is "You can shed teeth in a needlessly agonizing way;"
No one would use the phrase shed teeth. It might be you can injure your teeth or lose teeth etc. I don't get the sense that english is your first language and it's great that you are trying to improve your writing but you should not represent yourself as a US writer and I think 2 cents a word is too high.

Debbie

Personally, it would really be great if it is easy to read. This is to serve all types of audience, and to think that not all your readers are native english speaker, you should really be doing that practice too.

The articles was great but it gets so hard to understand at some point because of the use of words. Also, if you are delivering sensitive information like the one about dentistry, try to come up with sentences that is factual base. If you know what I mean..

Anyhow, practice makes perfect, keep going mate you'll get there perfectly soon.
I believe in your capability of writing articles. I know it isn't easy to write articles.

So, KUDOS To you!

You certainly get an "A" for effort as you seem to really care and put in a lot of effort, so I am sure that you will improve.

That said, I agree with a lot of the warriors in this thread when they pointed out how many of your sentences just don't make that much sense.

Of course, don't listen too closely to what I say as I am not a native English speaker and neither am I a great writer myself.

For your next efforts, try reading them out loud when you've written them. This helps a lot to spot whether you are writing in a natural manner or not.

Okay, I read about half of your radon article and I'm not seeing what some of the others are saying. It's actually decent and should bring in $10 pretty easily.

But to get there it will need a little polishing. Take the first paragraph for example:

Being a gas, radon can enter in any residence via cracks, openings, or other spaces. Particularly, radon gets into residences through methods referred to as the "stack effect", which virtually absorbs the gas directly into your property.


In the United States punctuation marks most often go inside quotes. There are a few exceptions for this depending on the punctuation mark itself. Europe is different. Yours is written European style with "stack effect", where it should be, "stack effect," if you're writing for the American market.

There are lots of people who say grammar, spelling, punctuation and syntax are for sissies. Maybe so, but paying attention to that stuff is often what makes the difference between a $5 article writer and a guy who can get $50 for the same piece only polished. And I know that's where you want to be heading.

The main thing about great writing is knowing your market and writing for them. I can get down and be Dirty Doggy Dan and talk sh*t with the best of them. And I can also write for the queen. And I know when to do what applies. I don't want to come across like I'm bragging, I just want to make a point.

There's another little thing in the first sentence. "...radon can enter in any..."

It should read radon can enter into any... into versus in. Again, some people will call me the grammar police but when I write for pay I get $.10/word on the low end and much more from certain clients. And people who pay top dollar EXPECT you to know about structure and proper usage.

The good news is you are decent and getting better. Stay with it. You have the determination and drive and you can be successful.

Good luck.

I'm sure you have good intent with your articles, but at their current state, it's not worth $10 per article. Maybe $2-$3.

As an article writer myself, those articles would NEVER get used on my money sites, and probably not even on my 2nd tier sites. I honestly think they'd be better used as PLR fodder than work submitted for pay, especially at $10/500 words.

I can tell from reading them that you don't speak English as a primary language. My advice is to invest in a few fiction books from Amazon or a local bookstore and just read them. And then read more, and more, and more. Pay attention to the writing style, the speech patterns, and the use of particles in the sentences. Mis-using words like "a," "and," and "the," in addition to improperly pluralizing words ("Google is" vs "Google are") can also make a difference in your audience understanding it. In the example I gave, both are correct. "Google is" is the way it it stated in the US, and "Google are" is the UK version. You have to know your audience as well.

-- j

I've been outsourcing recently and I have a simple test for the quality of an article.

Level 0 - I can't understand it
Level 1 - I can understand it but I can't bare to read it
Level 2 - I can bare to read it but I'd rather be doing something else
Level 3 - I am actually enjoying reading it.
Level 4 - This article has changed my life, and made me take action

I would rate your articles as Level 1. Each sentence make sense but as a whole there is no flow, no real point. There are trite statements like "Many people do not recognize how powerful real estate marketing is. "

I'm no writer but I'd rather see something relevant to me, e.g. "Here is a scary thought: You could lose $10,000 or more from the value of your home if your agent doesn't market your home properly. The main mistake the majority of real estate agencies make is .... ."

There is a market for filler content for SEO purposes though, and the going rate is about $0.50 to $1 per 100 words.

Not bad articles.... i'll give $6 on every article you created.

I have to say, the wording of your dental article (the only one I read) would not get me to pay $10. The tips about writing like you talk are a great first step for you.

I started reading the dental article:
The wording of the first part sounds like the day is agonizing, not the pain. The wording also sounds like that the day (not the pain) came from the dentist. IDK what grammar rules state, but that's what is sounds like to me as a reader.

Preached his certification is strangely worded. People don't preach certifications - they preach sermons, - generally the word preached means they are giving advice, opinions, inspiration etc with the slight nod toward it being wordy, depending on usage. People earn certifications, its a title, honor or legal document. The dentist might preach on how important a certified dentist is, but he wont preach his certification. Word choice is super important.

Since this was supposed to be in the past, the verbs should be past tense. (realize)

I would also wonder if people are supposed to experience pain free wisdom tooth removal. From what I understand, it is widely "known" to hurt quite a bit in most instances, so pain shouldn't lead you to believe that he is unqualified. (You have given us nothing to understand why it shouldn't hurt....) I would question your common sense while reading this, and wonder if your advice is worth taking, but that's neither here nor there, for now, lets assume its supposed to be pain free.

I am someone who hires people to write and clean up articles, I know I am not an expert, but I know when something sounds right. My rough draft of this same first paragraph (that I would get edited) would sound like this:

While my paragraph needs clean up, and has questionable grammar choices, (which someone would kindly edit for me at a reasonable fee) the message behind what I am saying is clear. In your writing, it takes too long for me to understand what you are actually trying to say from the words you are using, and the order you place them in. I think you need to read a lot of articles online (NOT spun ones) and understand sentence structure a little better.

In the real world, "fluff" in articles is often what keeps people interested - the background story, the thoughts that might be similar to the reader - the bits that make the reader relate to the story. I think your problem is "using words to use them" rather than fluff. Also - just the readability of the article is off. Do a bunch of reading, and try writing like you speak, then work from there.

Good Luck!

I guess I have done my own writing for too long. Most of what I am reading is a garbled mess but that doesn't bother me as bad as the flow. The flow is really not your fault as I really can't stand the information type of article to begin with.

I try to write my articles to target a problem the reader does not realize they have. Through association the reader seems to always realize they now have this new problem. Very few of my articles have a cure included. I let the cure reside behind a buy button.

My advice. Throw away the spinner. Write as if in conversation. Don't go overboard on the information given. Even when you get the writing part down, there is already enough "7 ways to tie your shoes" articles floating around.

Hi, Freelancing10
I've read a few of your articles and below is my feedback:

1) Your articles are good. Free from grammatical errors.

2) The main problem of your articles is that they are all just a bunch of words. I don't see any value in them. For example, the article "choosing a dentist" does not really help your readers very much in terms of choosing a "good" dentist. After reading the whole article, the only point I got from the article is "Run from those who look nervous, and not sure." This advice is not really helpful though.

My suggestion: You have to make an outline before you write an article. If you are going to write an article related to giving tips, you must have at least 3-5 very good and strong points. You want to make sure your readers nod their head and agree with you every time finished reading each of your point. In short words, you need to provide more value. Your articles need to really help your readers to achieve their goal, solve their problems or help them to avoid their nightmares.

Let me give you an example, so you can understand what I meant by providing value.

Let say you want to write an article about "how to talk to the girl you like". A normal article will just mention about "be confident" & "be yourself", yet this kind of advice is not really helpful. Think about it again, why would people want to read this article when talking is such a simple thing they do every single day? Yes, they do not have confidence is one main point but just telling them to "be confident" is not really going to help them. So, if you are still going to use the same point, instead of saying "you have to be confident because you are special.....", you are going to write " I will SHOW you how to get enough confidence for yourself, so that you can talk naturally with the girl you admire in the way like how you can talk to your friends.", and your point will be something like 'prepare a list of topic which you know the girl is interested in.' "Preparing a list of topic does not guarantee a good talk but at least you know what you are going to talk about and you know what you are talking about!.....blah blah blah"

Normal article only tell the readers to "be confident"; while your article teach your readers "to become confident". Which article do you think will help them to take action? of course it is going to be your article! They are going to prepare a list of topics and take action!

I hope you can see what I mean. Providing value is the core reason of writing. There is no point if you can write an article with perfect English, yet it doesn't really provide any value.

Honestly, if you want to charge $10 per article you wrote, you seriously need to learn how to add more value to your articles. Being able to write an article with perfect English is a good thing, but it is not the "secret ingredient" which will make people pay you $10 for it. The "secret ingredient" is about providing massive value. Everyone can write an article but not everyone write article with deep insight. If you can write with deep insight, you are basically creating scarcity, and only then you can make people to pay you $10.

I've no intention to make you feel bad about your writing, I'm just sincerely giving my feedback which I believe will add value to you. I really want you to know that the only way to make $10 per article is to provide massive value to the end readers.

Have a nice day,
Darren Chow

I agree with most of the others. I only read the "Choosing a Dentist" and it seemed to be unnatural in it's sentence structure, and using words that seem to be 'pretentious' in the context of the article. I would have guessed this article to have been spun.

$10? I don't think so.

You might read some of the hints that eZine publishes on their site.

I would say that you have potential but you're not 100% there yet. Take some time and write, write, write! None of the best writers out there fell out of thin air.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to read my articles. Don't think I ran off, and am giving up. In fact, I am much more motivated to know that I have such a huge community on my side, that is willing to be honest with me, and tell me how it is.

My goal is to eventually charge $50 an article, but obviously I am not there yet. I will com back and show you guys my next articles, and hope to receive feedback from you guys again.

Believe me, you guys have been great, no hard feelings. In fact I am really thankful that you guys even took the time to tell me I am not there yet.

Really guys and girls, thank you. I appreciate it.