Yea, people have been raging about this stuff a lot lately, myself included. Freelance sites, for the most part, are absolutely worthless in terms of gaining immediate revenue for writers. Use them to promote yourself and your own website portfolio where you charge "real" rates.

EDIT: *yawn* woops

That what happens when the supply is larger than the demand. People need to under price their commodities to get sold.

Have you tried doing a Warriors for Hire listing and positioning yourself at a higher price level? It's the first place I go for content.

On the whole, I'd agree with you - $2 per article is an absurd figure (unless it's spun).

But if someone is skilled at writing, they could churn out several articles in an hour which would then yield a better result.

Jamie

I've seen that scenario soooo many times, my response is always the same:

1. Read ridiculous job posting.
2. Remember their bad choices and/or lack of budget is not my problem.
3. Remember that clients who value you pay more and behave MUCH better than the cheapies.
4. Laugh at them and move on.

All you can do -- you can't change these guys, and your chances of converting a 2 buck a page guy to even a 20 bucks a page guy are slim to none-- is just shake your head and move on!

I would take sbucciarel's advice. oDesk has gotten more and more competitive lately which means cheaper and cheaper and payments.

The single, biggest problem that writers have is not knowing how to market themselves. If you don't know how and you search online for opportunities sooner or later you'll run into the outsourcing sites and content mills.

And for those people who think a high-quality writer can churn out several articles in an hour - you're dreaming. Time to give your head a good, hard shake. Quality and churning things out don't go together. Quality content takes time to create, it doesn't happen in seconds.

This is what happens when everyone is a writer. I'm not expecting a change in the near future, especially with all of those "make money online" products telling people that they can be writers just by writing.

You can't be a chef just because you can cook, right? Anyways...

P.S. I'm not aiming at Martin, or anyone in this thread. I'm just complaining about the market.

$2 for a blog post. Yeah sure, I want a new house for $100. That idea is only slightly more ridiculous.

A worker should get paid what his/her work is worth. How much is a blogger's work worth? WELL over $2.

If a person can type 50 wpm while composing material, a 500 word document takes 10 minutes just to type. Add research, links, pictures, and a good title, and you have used a lot more time. And you haven't even done the most important thing--editing!

Try to create 3 such documents in an hour, and you will create substandard documents and burn out in a short time.

If you research, compile your material carefully, and do a thorough job of editing, you should expect to take a minimum of an hour to create an article. Therefore, a well-written blog post should be priced based on one hour of professional time.

I would not want to create a second rate blog post. Why would anyone want to buy one?

"Say what?"

I'd say get lost. Cheap clients, they're a pain in the bloody ass. Forget them. Don't work for peanuts. Period.

Maybe Martin, just saying, but just maybe you're not looking in the right places to find much higher paying writing gigs.

I just typed this into Google just as an experiment...

Google

Maybe, just maybe there might be something there for you or...

...you could get your hands on this excellent guide written and produced by Arfa Saira (copywriter)...

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...e-reviews.html

One or two of her other WSO's...

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...eal-money.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ce-writer.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ness-fast.html

I know whatever she produces is excellent, how do I know? Because she used to be my old business partner. Her stuff is top notch and well worth the tiny investment asked for especially if you want to attract much higher paid article writing jobs.

Warmest regards,


Mark Andrews

Well all i can say when i write a good article it takes me about 2-3 hours, currently my website does not earn anything. However, i would never result in working for any of these paid writing sites. Like i'm not being funny, yes they are not asking for academic qualifications, Journalist experience or a written portfolio like any real world writing job, would expect you to have, plus it can boost your SEO, however, most of these sites need you more than you need them. I am looking for writers on my website, to free my time up more, and boost my content and can not afford to pay anything before the website starts earning money. However, lets face it most websites that you write for, for $2 they are getting poor quality, yet still managing to profit 2 fold or more from each article.

You should create your own website documenting your skills, samples, case studies, and market it all over the internet. You can operate in your own zone, generate leads if you like, and set your own prices for your work.

To illustrate my point check this one out: https://www.odesk.com/jobs/Per-000-W...tot=4011&pos=0

"Must Speak perfect English"
"1 Deadline missed and you are fired"
"Must be able to write 10 Articles Per Day"(@1000w each - OMG is this guy crazy)

All this for the price of:

"$1 for a 1000 word article"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!

Anybody looking for 1000 word articles for $1 hit me up. I also have a mercedez benz I'm trying to get rid of cheap ($500) its a beautiful car, very shiny, looks just like a benz, but it has a plastic engine.

Anyways I'm sure that doesn't matter to you so email me so I can get rid of this massive POS.

Thanks - Red

Unfortunately there will always be people out there who want the perfect article, copyscaped, spell checked, written within 20 minutes, while standing on your head and singing a song....and they are only willing to pay $2....BUT IF you are good, they have heaps of work so you should be grateful.

Either you bid on the jobs or you focus on ways to get better paying work. I have private clients and I also get some work through vworker which seems to be the best bidding site because there are some decent clients there.

It's simply supply and demand..The article writing market is extremely saturated. All the really good English writers work for big companies and media.

You're competing against the better English writers in the Phillipines, etc....It's not worth it imo...Even the best only get around $5 an article.

Lol, shame that people are cheap when it comes to quality writing but will waste $100's on ppc.

It gets absolutely ridiculous at those retarded freelance sites, they are like poison, and attract all the noobs that lowball your offers.

I completely agree who would want to write content fast and get paid for only $2 for each content especially if you want someone from the US. The thing is if you want to hire people from other countries like the Philippines or India then the writers there may want to consider $2 per content or article.

Have you ever seen the oDesk jobs where someone wants a profitable niche site built for them? The ad copy typically goes like this:

Crazy, right?

I wish someone would guarantee me a minimum price for what I do as well but unfortunately that's not the way markets work. Everyone is free to charge and pay whatever they like.

You don't grow a business by showing the low ballers the error of their ways and attempting to charge them more (at least not when there are a million people willing to undercut you anyway).

Instead, take your business to people that are willing to pay a premium for your better services. Those people are the ones that can get an awesome ROI on your work and thus can pay for the better result.

Let's take the example of a copywriter. Plenty of people are running WSOs that couldn't get a return on a $97 letter, even if Colin Theriot or Kevin Rogers or Neil Murton wrote it, simply because they wouldn't put enough traffic through it. They'll say things like "But Colin, I can't pay you any more because I won't make any money."

Colin, Kevin and Neil don't waste their time trying to change the lower baller's mind. They go find someone like me who will pay them five figures for a letter because even a fraction of a percent improvement on the conversion rate is worth a fortune to me because I'll put that much traffic through the offer.

Apply the same approach to your business. Get out of the virtual slums and go find people that can get an awesome return on your work and they'll be able to pay you handsomely.

For $2 people could only expect my writings, from an Italian and without any proof reading, ahahahah.

I never hired people for less than $5 for a 400 words article, generally I got them from "Warriors for Hire" section, where I always got quality writings.
For that $2 amount I suggest to generate articles from old-style autospinners, it's the same.

Thanks and see you soon,
Alessandro

At odesk its all about taking the heat first, and then building a business over time. Its not like everyone at odesk is paid nuts. If you have lots of positive reviews, and have been providing high quality service for a long time - you eventually improve your earnings. Also, once you build long term customers - you can charge them higher, they'll respect your hard work. Its just about putting in the initial 3 months where you simply work for building a long term business - without worrying about how much you're paid.

I agree that oDesk has a good interface and system... I remember one time when they sent out a survey, I suggested that there should be a standard rate for writers since I feel that writer's work is significantly devalued there. Well anyway don't waste your time with those clients...you will eventually find some that are willing to pay for the quality you can deliver.

I think the lesson here, for writers, is that it's pretty much pointless to even let the website address of sites like odesk, iwriter, etc touch your browser bar. Unless, of course, you're doing the purchasing.

Writers from US/UK/Canada/etc will *never* be able to compete on price with the content mills from places like India & Philippines that frequent freelance sites.

The time wasted pumping out 1000 word articles for $2 could be spent on so many other profitable activities. Trying to use the freelancing sites to turn $2 article purchasers into high paying clients is an absolute fantasy.

The only place I've found that I would ever considering freelancing at (if I was a decent writer) is Buy Unique Articles, Order Web Site Content, Hire Freelance Article Writers and SEO Content Writers - Constant Content - Custom Website Content

Have any of the writers here tried writing for Constant Content? I tried it and sold one article of about 900 words for $65 the other day. I keep meaning to submit more but have not had a chance to getting around to doing it yet. They do take a 35% cut which I suppose is not totally unreasonable but at least it still leaves you with a sensible amount of money for your work. Just my experience.

Quality content for $2 is absurd. Unless you are buying PLR content. They are not looking for quality content for this rate. Their definition of "quality" must be quite different than that of a real writer. 100% unique quality written content is not churned out, nor is it given away practically free. oDesk is full of these jobs. I can't imagine anyone working for this rate in the US. You can hardly buy a loaf of bread for that rate.

Go from being a writer to a person who invests in content and builds websites & paid information. You will get better returns from your investment of time, energy and money.

It's all IM's fault - I have never seen such low prices until Internet Marketing came on the scene.

A good writer (and that is all you should really be dealing with even if it's just for SEO purposes) will take hours to write a decent article, and you should be paid for your hours worth .

I agree with an earlier example - Start a website with some samples and case studies, market it, and go from there. You are worth more than $2.00 an article

If I'm not mistaken there is a search feature in oDesk where you
can place your criteria for jobs, including the price range.

So why bicker about the low-balling clients? You can automatically
ignore them.

-Ray Edwards

I still remember the first article I ever sold to a magazine publisher. It was about 1000 words and I got a check for $50, which is a lot of money for a 17 year old.

Oh, and that was 1970. My "regular" after-school job paid $1.25 an hour, so my pay for the one article was the equivalent of a week's salary for me.

I can't believe how low the prices for content are today. Part of the blame lies with the readers, though. They will continue to visit sites with terribly written content that expresses the same regurgitated information without infusing a single new idea or even a fresh angle on an old idea. If readers were more discerning, then more publishers might take note and pay more for better content.

Another lovely gem, this one from elance!


"This job listing is for a product "squeeze page". The compensation is $25-50. Website should include the marketing strategies : catchy sales copy and keyword rich text placed with SEO (search engine optimization). Some advanced marketers should use video and audio if possible. GOAL The goal of the page is to obtain the visitor's email address- keep that in mind while working on this project" cheap, stinky buyer, elance

This is really way too underpaid $2 for a price of an article!lol what could this client be thinking maybe he wants something that's not in good quality...Writing is a talent and writers should be getting what they deserve. God it isn't easy to write a 500 word article for a car service client. However, there can be a lot of good clients out there, its just that there is a diverse competition online....

I saw an ad just yesterday:

* Must be a native English speaker
* 500 words minimum
* researched with footnotes and references

Pay: $1 per article

But, hey, laughter is good for the body so I generated some positive hormones yesterday. :-)

The warrior forum is the best place IMHO. A plethora of choices if you hunt well. Try each one out. I'm sureyou will find a few good picks.

There's certainly some crazy low rates being offered on odesk and other places but people seem to be taking the jobs so it just drives prices down.

Wow - some interesting and laughable requests there then. lol! I've used other copy services such as Brad Callens iWriter and paid the "premium service" which is about $9.50 per thousand words and the "elite service" which costs $18.50 per thousand words. I didn't see much difference in quality between the two services to be honest. On both cases the articles were fairly well written but lacked REAL research on the subject and felt a bit like re-written wikipedia posts in parts. In either case I wouldn't have felt comfortable passing them off as my own posts on my money / business sites (is that called ghostwriting). Perhaps some of that is down to my brief?

I digress... What I wanted to ask you pro writers is - What is a fair price for your work? Do you have tiered pricing for different types of work? Other than working with you directly, are there any freelance type sites you are happy working for and that you would recommend buyers use?

I personally am not surprised anymore. People just want as much as they can get for as little as possible. They don't care about the people that would write for them, they just want the job done and cut their costs to a minimum. It's worthless even trying to do something about it, because it's in the nature of humans to be stingy.

Honestly I'm a writer but I'm starting to get really tired of these threads.

It's been explained a billion times.

These clients don't really care if the content is readable, they just want fodder to embed links in for SEO and adsense purposes.

These people are just playing around with a little money making experiment. 90% of the time they aren't real businesses, and their little projects won't go anywhere. Let them have their bit of fun playing mr. entrepreneur for a day and get on with your life.

To some people on elance, and odesk $2 income for an article is significant. It might not be for you or for me but that much can mean a huge difference to peoples lives in certain countries. Is that not the jist of these sites? Get cheaper labour by using a lower cost economy so maximise your profits?

In my previous job we sold software and they would never budge on price. Taught me that if you have a quality product/service to provide, have confidence in it and don't keep dropping your pants anytime a deal comes along.

Moral of the story: when you're competing against people who are OK with making $2 or $5 an hour, it doesn't matter how high of quality you'll have, it won't be worth it. It's better to advertise locally, find some local gigs, or set up a basic wordpress site to bring in clients from than to hit up odesk and freelancer. Reality is people looking for work on freelancer and odesk don't expect quality anyway.

I agree with this post. You're not going to be able to get a quality writer for a mere $2. As the old saying goes, "You get what you pay for"

I've started using iWriter to fund my niche sites that I write myself. I don't want to use my 'real money' yet, not while I am still learning. So am funding it by writing. I need the practice as well, which is a big part of it. I put up a couple of test jobs in iWriter to see what the standard was like. TERRIBLE. The articles are usually spun or the English is horrendous. I then realised that the articles I was writing were way too good for the price.

So what I now do is write something legible, do a TINY bit of research, and just 'free write' for ten minutes. I still get 5* ratings on every single article. Not hard. The thing you have to realise is that MOST people are using these articles for tiered link-building. They will not be using them on their money site (unless it's a crap micro niche adsense site with worthless information). I don't want to provide good quality for $2 so I do what is 'good enough'. They will just be happy that you sound like a person rather than a machine spinning content with ridiculous words that no one actually uses in practice.

Look for clients that have plenty of jobs under their belts (so they know what the standard is) and have a good approval rating. If it's too low, you know they will be asking for the world. Not worth the hassle. I am almost at the elite writer level so that will make more money. Good way of getting in touch with people that want repeat work is by going to the sites they are advertising. Often they will say 'this is for www.mysite.com'. Go there and get in touch with them, do a private deal after having done a few through iWriter. I think it's worth doing for the right reasons. Practice writing with keyword rich content, get a feel for the industry, get some pocket money for beers at the weekend. Eventually I am hopefully going to be working on the niche sites only and will stop writing for iWriter. For serious writers (or just people that can write in somewhat decent English), it's ultimately not worth it. It's good while you're trying to 'make it' as it provides an extra bit of income. I also think it's a good place for people learning English or living in the third world, earning extra cash. For them $2 is a lot. Plenty of such writers actually become decent over time. So I don't want to bash iWriter too much for that reason.

I know what you mean, it is so frustrating. What is even more frustrating is when you see someone wanting 100 articles for $1. Now that really got to me..

check contently.com

The sad thing is that a lot of people would be happy to work for this rate (non native english speakers of course). On almost all of the posts like this that i have seen there are tons of people basically begging for the job.

I don't compete. I would not go on those sites looking for work and getting piled into the same group of desperate fish as everyone else. I would contact online publishers directly who already make a lot of money and can afford to pay good writers what they are worth.

Having said that, I HIRE on Elance/Odesk all the time. But my mindset is completely different...very cutthroat. And why not? That is the game those applying have chosen to play. find a different strategy than to compete head-on.

Having said that, I'm wondering what I could pay a good writer per original 600-word article these days...$15? $20?

You get what you pay for. $2 / 500 word articles usually mean keywords are present, no grammatical or typos, done on time and usually makes no sense whatsoever. Written for SEO and not for consumption.
Newbies to oDesk grab these jobs to earn feedback and logged hours. No shortage of those at the moment.

You know why it is though, because there is so much competition.

If there was only 1 type of mobile phone, how much would they charge?

A bomb!

But because there are loads of phones and loads of companies you can get unlimited this, unlimited that and a free phone for £20/month.

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Some people (should I say many?), like to think of writers as slaves and so the bad rates.

C'mon Jason, you know better than that. The sales copy on that page alone screams don't buy.

Woh, that is some quality content! For $100 and all articles, I still wouldnt expect it to be that bad. All in all, I think you got some cheap laughs and brightened a few peoples' day.
Isnt that worth $14?

You didn't know? That's how a lot of "talent" markets are nowadays. When I was doing art for a living, for example, you'd be surprised how much people demanded and little they were offering to pay you to meet their huge demands. It seems that people just don't respect what we do. That goes for artists, writers...practically anyone in the service industry. People love what we do, but they don't see what we do as work. They see it as some kind of hobby. Therefore, they undervalue us like crazy.

That's really pathetic. I used to feel I wasn't good enough(lack of confidence I guess) to start an article writing business.

Considering that I am a Nigerian, I just felt am not good enough to write the kind of articles that people would want to read. After I saw those samples up there, I felt I have what it takes to write a piece and a good one at that. But one thing I may need though, is to read some books written by top players in the article writing niche. This will go a long way to help me know how to structure article to make it an interesting read. Can someone tell me why Alexa Smith hasn't written any ebook for this purpose?

I did find one at the war room but it was for writing reviews(quite a good one) and I would recommend it to anyone. What I need is for plain article--educative, entertaining and informative. The war room is really lacking this kind of ebooks and I don't know why.

Any resources in this regard will be appreciated.

John, I love your rawness when article writing is being discussed--the naked truth.

You and some other warriors have been a great inspiration to many.

Specifically, I would love to read any ebook from Alexa Smith, especially if has to do with syndication.

John, is there a way by which I could contact you if I wanted you to take a look at samples of my articles?

Thank you.

Great thread! Good to see so many others in the same boat as me. Some of the offers described are just jaw-dropping. Don't know if I should laugh or cry. Personally I would stay clear from anything (wouldn't even call it an offer) that pays less than $15/hour. Again, encouraging to see I'm not the only one frustrated by crappy offers.

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[DELETED]

As the poster a few posts above says, start marketing yourself. It's the only skill you really need to be successful as an online writer. OK, a little bit of writing skill is useful too, but knowing how to market yourself is the real key to it all.

John.

I am not an article writer myself, but I do pretty well as a copywriter / marketing consultant. In my conversation and / or presentation, I sometimes offer to recommend some sources of cheaper service to potential clients who don't care about quality.

It goes something like this;
If at this stage you cannot justify the investment for quality work, I can recommend sources for cheap service. WARNING:You do get what you pay for.

It does several things,
1- It's take away selling.
2- It sets me apart from the cheap, low quality services.
3- It sets the stage for higher rates, at this point, people are expecting to pay more for quality.
4- It weeds out the time wasters who want something for nothing, or the ones that want big value for little investment.


Note: Not a single person asked me for the cheap sources, the ones looking for that kind of service just go away.

It's a shame that great writers have to put up with this nonsense.

I say great writers because that's what I look for, someone who will write wonderful content with obvious enthusiasm, passion and knowledge for the subject. Although price has to be looked at, my thought process is... can I afford this person, rather than how much can I get out of this person on the cheap.

After all, good writers will more than likely have a demanding schedule, they will hardly go out of their way for me in the future if I don't value their work and more importantly, them as a person which is what it really equates to if you down value someones work.

For most cases, people who are posting $2/article jobs get exactly what they paid for. They get a 500 word article that lacks pizzaz and creativity (sometimes even originality).

Warriors for hire and what Robert M Gouge suggested are good places to build your reputation on. In oDesk, you would get more than $2 but you'd have to convince clients that your writing is worth it. Going into different places (like warriors for hire) may be difficult to get solid traction at first but isn't it worth it in the long run?

I have saved this thread in my bookmarks so I can have a laugh when I need it. Being a writer I see so many clients who only want to pay $1 or $2 and expect the earth so I know where you are coming from.

"To illustrate my point check this one out: https://www.odesk.com/jobs/Per-000-W...tot=4011&pos=0

"Must Speak perfect English"
"1 Deadline missed and you are fired"
"Must be able to write 10 Articles Per Day"(@1000w each - OMG is this guy crazy)

All this for the price of:

"$1 for a 1000 word article"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!"

Wow, this is purely B*lls**t for sure. If you're lucky enough, maybe you'll pickup a dollar, when you're walking out the street lol

"Why do you keep using these words? I do not think they mean what you think they mean."

Having spent time living and working with outsourced workers in countries where wages are lower than the US, for instance, I keep remembering how far something like $5 an hour can go. It is decent money in some parts of the world.

I do think if you do your research you can find 'good enough' skills. But that requires so much work in itself that unless you have the economies of scale to pull it off (in other words, a constant stream of work) - the time required to find and keep managing the resources isn't worth it.