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Yep. When you're first starting out, you usually only have one or two clients, so you'll put yourself down for a lot of time (and unfortunately make yourself vulnerable to poo poo jobs). Lifers tend to have a ton of clients, so we can't commit to really time-consuming work unless it pays really well. My clients still have issues understanding this sometimes. (No, I can't block out an entire working day for you at $X per minute when it means I'll have to turn down a $2X job.) Of course, if I bounce a job it's always either when it's offered or immediately afterward if it turns out to be garbage; sitting on something for eight hours and then trying to kick it back is pretty unprofessional. 
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Apr 12, 2014 17:23
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Which of the article sites is the best for hiring writers for 600 word articles?
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Apr 12, 2014 17:37
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Unless you have insane requirements, try to get writers to cram 2,000 words worth of content into 600 words, or are extremely picky about quality, probably Textbroker 4-star. Writer Access, I believe, would get you more in the way of client support and better writing, but you also end up paying more. If you have a relatively high volume or a consistent need, I'd say throw a couple up on each platform and see what you get out of it. You can then make a team (Textbroker) or love list (Writer Access) to limit the pool to just writers you're interested in hiring. Writer Access also allows you to post casting calls that the author will submit something pitching themselves and/or their specific ideas for the post. I hate casting calls, personally, but for a client they're probably effective at their purpose.
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Apr 12, 2014 17:53
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EDIT: n/m, bad mood made for dumb bitching
Old Boot fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 13, 2014 06:57
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What, you mean like having something along these lines: BOB: Words. CAROL: Words. TED: Words. ALICE: Words. inside a single cell? One of my customers (the one that pays me like they've got a head wound) wants the finished transcript in Excel, and I do stuff like that all the time.
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Apr 13, 2014 07:17
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Yeah, I definitely wouldn't be taking such an attitude with someone who didn't already have reliability problems. Her grammar quality isn't usually up to snuff either. It always seems like the unreliable types offer the most available minutes per day while my highest quality transcribers are usually only available for 30-45 every day or every couple days. I imagine it might be because they're in high demand from so many other clients, but c'mon, what's more fun than transcribing trashy reality television shows?! Honestly I kind of had the same response you did when I read that, and I hope my last post didn't come off rude, but I feel like I've been on the other side of that coin lately. Just got a negative review on a project for not following the guidelines, in this case a completely new set of guidelines published after I finished the file. Apparently I'm supposed to be able to travel through time to fix problems.
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Apr 13, 2014 08:19
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Got my first "exceeded expectations" on Writer's access along with a tip. Got added to a love list as well. So far I've earned about 120 there with 4 articles versus about the 150 I've earned everywhere else combined before this. That includes the like 20 articles I've written for textbroker.
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Apr 15, 2014 17:09
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Has anyone actually struck out and offered their freelance writing services independently (outside of the content mills)? That's what I'm in the process of doing. Just wondering if there's some key advice I should be aware of.
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Apr 16, 2014 07:49
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I see a lot of emphasis in here on getting the maximum (usually four) star rating when signing up for these writing gigs. If someone scores a mediocre rating, like three stars, are their income prospects just shot? I am curious why these lower star ratings even exist when it seems there's no money in them. Can a three-star writer earn, say, $1k per month working these sites? Is a grand per month even reasonable for four-star writers without having to write for eighty hours per week?
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Apr 16, 2014 12:34
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Centripetal Horse posted:I see a lot of emphasis in here on getting the maximum (usually four) star rating when signing up for these writing gigs. If someone scores a mediocre rating, like three stars, are their income prospects just shot? I am curious why these lower star ratings even exist when it seems there's no money in them. Can a three-star writer earn, say, $1k per month working these sites? Is a grand per month even reasonable for four-star writers without having to write for eighty hours per week? 1k a month at writer's access is definately doable. At 4 stars you can probably make about 20-25/hr. That means about 40 hours of writing in a month will translate into 1k. That's about 2 hours per work day.
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Apr 16, 2014 13:11
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Centripetal Horse posted:I see a lot of emphasis in here on getting the maximum (usually four) star rating when signing up for these writing gigs. If someone scores a mediocre rating, like three stars, are their income prospects just shot? I am curious why these lower star ratings even exist when it seems there's no money in them. Can a three-star writer earn, say, $1k per month working these sites? Is a grand per month even reasonable for four-star writers without having to write for eighty hours per week? Three stars is doable, but it's more work. Zerys is fairly good for rating mobility; if you get tagged with three stars and you're not a complete muppet when it comes to writing, you'll be at 4+ within a week. Unfortunately, their pricing system is ridiculously terrible when there's people willing to jump on assignments for .7 cents a word. Writer Access you have to luck into the one client in like 3,000 that's willing to give you better than "meets expectations" and you have about 10% of the work of a four-star writer to do it in. In both cases you can make money at that level (and at Textbroker), but you spend a lot more time looking for worthwhile assignments. Someplace like Demand it's much, much easier to make money with a fraction of the work, you just have to be able to pass the bar to get in. (They're shut down in the middle of a reorganization, though, so that might change.)
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Apr 16, 2014 14:50
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So Ginger is free for only limited times a week. Is there an open source or free equivalent to it or Grammarly?
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Apr 16, 2014 16:19
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Everyday Lurker posted:Has anyone actually struck out and offered their freelance writing services independently (outside of the content mills)? That's what I'm in the process of doing. Just wondering if there's some key advice I should be aware of. If you want to get into freelance writing independently, you need to work with sites like Constant Content and oDesk. oDesk is filled with sub-minimum wage jobs, but if you can find one or two clients that can boost your rating and then stay on top of your workload you can wind up finding consistent, okay paying gigs that translate into decently paying off-site work. Take some of the tests available, build up a portfolio, and aggressively apply to jobs. Once you've reached the maximum clearance level on oDesk you can apply to five jobs each weekday. You should do that. Ideally, you'll be at a position where you are turning down jobs in order to work on more profitable jobs. This is possible and you can do it. A lot of clients on oDesk use it as a way to get people for short-term work that turns into long-term work - my biggest reliable income right now comes from exactly that. Just don't take any jobs that'll have you working at pathetic wages and don't work with a clients that your gut says not to. Remember that you are also interviewing your client, just like in face-to-face hiring situations. You are always free to decline a job offer once they've accepted you if it turns out they're not a good fit for your work style or sanity.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:52
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Centripetal Horse posted:I see a lot of emphasis in here on getting the maximum (usually four) star rating when signing up for these writing gigs. If someone scores a mediocre rating, like three stars, are their income prospects just shot? I am curious why these lower star ratings even exist when it seems there's no money in them. Can a three-star writer earn, say, $1k per month working these sites? Is a grand per month even reasonable for four-star writers without having to write for eighty hours per week? You can do it but it will be more difficult and be very time-consuming. Depending on the website, you may be better off finding a different place to hone your skills so that you can come back and raise your rating later.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:56
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mTurk is hilarious and making $2-$3/day is proving a great way to supplement my income without doing much of anything
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Apr 16, 2014 21:56
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EugeneJ posted:mTurk is hilarious and making $2-$3/day is proving a great way to supplement my income without doing much of anything I miss the streetview days. I made like $600 off that poo poo that fall.
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Apr 17, 2014 03:44
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thylacine posted:So Ginger is free for only limited times a week. Is there an open source or free equivalent to it or Grammarly? I've been using this site http://www.paperrater.com/
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Apr 17, 2014 05:36
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There are seven pages of 3 star stuff on Writer Access right now if you're looking for opportunities to up your ranking.
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Apr 17, 2014 23:42
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I've pretty much stopped caring about WA (my other clients are keeping me busy enough at the moment) but that client looks like a pain in the rear end to work for. Anyone have experience writing articles for them? EDIT: It's the "YOU MUST BE EXPERIENCED WITH SEO AND BE ABLE TO ANSWER YES TO THE FOLLOWING 16 QUESTIONS BEFORE SUBMITTING WORK" guy. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 01:09
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kazmeyer posted:I've pretty much stopped caring about WA (my other clients are keeping me busy enough at the moment) but that client looks like a pain in the rear end to work for. Anyone have experience writing articles for them? What would you suggest for other sites or clients to work for? Not necessarily just with WA of course.
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Apr 18, 2014 01:46
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Hello gents. I am looking for a dependable graphics guy for freelance work who won't kill me (startup). Simple stuff maybe some food pictures. How do I find someone like that? Do I take this to SA-Mart? If so I'll delete this ASAP, don't want to break rules - but I'm curious if there is a site for that. I don't want to go to fiverr.
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Apr 18, 2014 02:38
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If you want to hire a goon, you can post an SA-Mart thread, yeah. As far as other sites, you might be able to find someone through eLance/ODesk or Freelancer or something.
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Apr 18, 2014 02:49
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Nitrousoxide posted:1k a month at writer's access is definately doable. At 4 stars you can probably make about 20-25/hr. That means about 40 hours of writing in a month will translate into 1k. That's about 2 hours per work day. That's better than I expected. I'm just unsure whether I will hit four stars on my first try, since what I see in this thread makes me think the ratings might be a touch arbitrary. kazmeyer posted:Three stars is doable, but it's more work. Zerys is fairly good for rating mobility; if you get tagged with three stars and you're not a complete muppet when it comes to writing, you'll be at 4+ within a week. Unfortunately, their pricing system is ridiculously terrible when there's people willing to jump on assignments for .7 cents a word. Writer Access you have to luck into the one client in like 3,000 that's willing to give you better than "meets expectations" and you have about 10% of the work of a four-star writer to do it in. Thanks for the information. You seem to be putting Zerys in a slightly more positive light, here. I don't need hundreds of assignments per month, I just want to earn as much as I can putting in 20-30 hours per week. Would you suggest Zerys over Writer's Access? Impermanent posted:You can do it but it will be more difficult and be very time-consuming. Depending on the website, you may be better off finding a different place to hone your skills so that you can come back and raise your rating later. If I end up being rated three stars or the equivalent everywhere I apply, where do you feel is the best place to concentrate?
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Apr 18, 2014 03:13
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Nitrousoxide posted:What would you suggest for other sites or clients to work for? Not necessarily just with WA of course. Unfortunately, I'm kind of spoiled. Right now I'm getting most of my work from transcription houses that require 2+ years of experience. A lot of the content mills are hurting right now thanks to Google's changes, so it's hard to say what's good for starting out these days. Centripetal Horse posted:Thanks for the information. You seem to be putting Zerys in a slightly more positive light, here. I don't need hundreds of assignments per month, I just want to earn as much as I can putting in 20-30 hours per week. Would you suggest Zerys over Writer's Access? I'm not a good judge. I've been writing mostly for small clients and places like Demand Studios; I haven't really had the patience to put in a lot of time with Zerys, WA, or Textbroker because pretty much everything I've found on those sites that paid something within shouting distance of decent rates often had a lot of extra work attached to it or otherwise screamed "tetchy client." Honestly, there's no need to concentrate anywhere. Take the tests at WA, Zerys, Textbroker and any other content mill you can find. None of them have a minimum activity requirement; scan them all daily and take whatever jobs seem to have the best pay/effort ratio. If you're trying to make more than a couple hundred dollars a month as a freelancer, you'll need multiple gigs to ensure that you make that total because it can go from feast to famine in an eyeblink.
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Apr 18, 2014 03:56
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kazmeyer posted:Honestly, there's no need to concentrate anywhere. Take the tests at WA, Zerys, Textbroker and any other content mill you can find. None of them have a minimum activity requirement; scan them all daily and take whatever jobs seem to have the best pay/effort ratio. If you're trying to make more than a couple hundred dollars a month as a freelancer, you'll need multiple gigs to ensure that you make that total because it can go from feast to famine in an eyeblink. I've heard rumors that your account can be moved to an inactive status on WA if you don't log in for a long enough period, but I'm not sure what that is or if it's true. It's not tied to work done, just logins, so it's not hard to avoid if it exists. On that note, I also tweaked the OP a bit, added in Listverse and Blogmutt and refined some of the descriptions to reflect current atmospheres in the thread and in some of the sites.
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Apr 18, 2014 04:48
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http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/04/prweb11765899.htm CEO of Textbroker's American branch is taking over as global CEO. How might this change things? Who knows!
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Apr 19, 2014 21:05
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Nighthand posted:I've heard rumors that your account can be moved to an inactive status on WA if you don't log in for a long enough period, but I'm not sure what that is or if it's true. It's not tied to work done, just logins, so it's not hard to avoid if it exists. Yeah, I tried out WA and Zerys when they were first posted about in the thread and kind of dropped off both of them (WA when it became apparent three-star work is a grind, Zerys when I made the mistake of doing an article for that HVAC client and went "you know what, gently caress this for 1.2 cents a word"), so I got "log in or we delete your account" emails at one point from each. But you're right, it's login-only; content mills don't really care if you don't churn out work regularly (although some incentivize you to do so). That's why there's really no downside to applying everywhere and just tabbing through them when you have some free time and want to earn a little cash. You always want to have more opportunities than time as a freelancer; it covers you when clients disappear and it lets you avoid lousy pay just to fill your time.
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Apr 19, 2014 23:14
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I joined Blogmutt a few days ago and I am not impressed. At least 95% of the jobs are just "[keywords]" with no expansion or explanation of any kind, and there doesn't seem to be any facility for communicating with the clients. I've written four articles, and the only one that's been acted on was rejected for "Everyone already knows how [keywords] works." Well, then what the hell did you want me to write about [keywords]? Many of the clients seem to be rejecting articles at a much higher rate than they are accepting articles. Why wouldn't they? There doesn't seem to be any reason not to. I've seen people say they like Blogmutt. Is it just me? I also have a transcription question. How big a factor is intelligence? Could a reasonable typist of decidedly average intelligence handle transcribing? I am thinking verbatim, or at least things that don't require editing or creative description. Centripetal Horse fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 16:59
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Well...you don't have to be super smart, but definitely being adaptable helps.
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Apr 21, 2014 17:04
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Phonetics are a big part of transcription, but it's not always going to be so straightforward. There are transcription sweat shops in the Philippines that regularly butcher common English idioms--god forbid anyone speak over each other. It takes a somewhat critical thinker to narrow down the context surrounding a difficult passage to figure said passage out, especially when you don't have coworkers to ask for a listen. Otherwise there's nothing that creative about it. e: VVVVV DO YOUR RESEARCH. Listen to Kaz and research those proper nouns. Jedi Knight Luigi fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 17:44
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Pretty much the only skills you need are spelling, punctuation and grammar to get hired on as a transcriber. It can sometimes be challenging to turn a stammering, stuttering, sentence fragment-dropping speaker into anything resembling a professional-looking transcript, but as long as you've got at least Word-with-the-grammar-checker-turned-on level abilities you should be okay to start, as long as you pay attention and learn from your mistakes. The skill that really seems to make a transcriptionist shine, though -- if you're trying to make a living off this stuff -- is research. The fact that I can turn out transcripts without egregious mistakes gets me work. The fact that I can use context clues to look up the name of a particular Japanese trade minister and spell his name correctly in a transcript makes clients ask for me by name.
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Apr 21, 2014 18:17
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Hello guys. I did some work for Leapforce 2 or 3 years ago but I ended up getting an offline job and just idled on there for like 6 months until eventually they removed me. I am in need of some work at present. Has anyone had any experience trying to be rehired at Leapforce and is it possible? Do I need to use a different email? Is there any trick to being rehired there? Is it beneficial when applying at Leapforce to say that I have search engine evaluator experience previously/put it on the resume or is it better to not mention this at all? I'm afraid I might just be disqualified because the name and address are the same. I also will be applying to Lionbridge and Butler Hill. As I asked with Leapforce, is it beneficial to say that I have search engine evaluator experience previously/put it on the resume when I apply for these two companies or is it better to not mention this at all? Sorry for the many questions, I really appreciate the help of anyone that might be able to answer. PoorUser fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 18:25
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PoorUser posted:Hello guys. I did some work for Leapforce 2 or 3 years ago but I ended up getting an offline job and just idled on there for like 6 months until eventually they removed me. I am in need of some work at present. I believe you can just retake the exam. Things have changed in Leapforce a lot lately. I got sacked from Leapforce for inactivity too and they said that if I want back in I should just redo the exam. I'm sticking with the offline job that replaced it for now though.
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Apr 22, 2014 18:28
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PoorUser posted:Hello guys. I did some work for Leapforce 2 or 3 years ago but I ended up getting an offline job and just idled on there for like 6 months until eventually they removed me. I am in need of some work at present. You have to get them to schedule you for an exam and retake both tests. You have to login to your account and submit a ticket. Couldn't bring myself to do any work after I got back in, though. The tasks are so boring now.
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Apr 22, 2014 22:08
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lwoodio posted:You have to get them to schedule you for an exam and retake both tests. You have to login to your account and submit a ticket. Couldn't bring myself to do any work after I got back in, though. The tasks are so boring now. No Gravitas posted:I believe you can just retake the exam. Things have changed in Leapforce a lot lately. Can you still get 40 hours a week at 13.50 or whatever it was there?
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Apr 23, 2014 00:13
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PoorUser posted:Can you still get 40 hours a week at 13.50 or whatever it was there? Beats me. In Canada? No loving way! They give us poo poo quantities of work all the time. Sometimes you are lucky to get in a couple of hours a week... I hear it is a bit better in the USA. But yeah, the 13.50 is right.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:39
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I've gone inactive on Leapforce several times and always been able to test back on. It's kind of a pain in the rear end now, though, basically everything is some form of Side by Side (or was during my last stint) and they were hellaciously nitpicky about it, so it went from "easy money while I watch baseball" to "they're treating it like an actual job." Number of tasks seems to vary as widely as it always does.
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Apr 23, 2014 06:19
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I miss the good old days when it was all about vital, useful, relevant, useless. This is what I tested for dammit. I don't want to learn some new method every time I log in. I gave up on that stuff and just do transcription now.
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Apr 23, 2014 08:12
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Well, I recently lost my job. I have not had to work online for a long time so I do not know what you can earn money at online anymore. Sort of out of the loop on what is good, consistent, well-paying work nowadays and what isn't. Nevertheless, I really need the money. What is the best online work opportunity nowadays for me to make at least $1600 a month if I put in 40 hours a week (which would be roughly $10/hr at a minimum)? I am in the United States. The sooner I can start putting the heavy hours in, the better. PoorUser fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 16:36
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Probably the fastest pickup right now would be transcription and writing; apply to either Daily Transcripts or Focus Forward (or both, or look at Craigslist to see if there are others hiring) and sign up at Textbroker, Zerys, and Writer Access. It wouldn't hurt to apply to Leapforce or Lionbridge for search engine work as well, but they tend to take weeks to hire people on.
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Apr 23, 2014 18:04
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