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Did he actually scam people? I thought it was more preventative so that the mods keep all actual on-site transactions in one more easily monitored place. Unless I'm forgetting something, which I might be.
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Apr 16, 2013 07:40
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If you take transcription talk to another thread, this one won't have any posts! I mean it basically boils down to writing, leapforce and co, and transcription. And transcription is the one that generates the most questions and the most stability for those of you doing it. Heck, I'm tempted to try it out myself at some point. I just have lovely ears and my listening comprehension is awful.
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Apr 30, 2013 19:28
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I was going to say the same thing, you can probably get into translation with demonstrated english fluency and fluency in your first language.
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May 8, 2013 18:03
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One thing you can do on Textbroker is go through the Teams section and apply to as many of them as you can. A lot of them want you to write ~50 word samples, some are open to anyone to join, some want 4-5 star authors only. The nitpicks: there's no way to tell if the team is active without being part of it, and if it's not, your app might just sit there forever. Even the active teams might not always post assignments. That said, the base pay rate for teams is higher than the 3 star pay rate, and teams are pretty much the leading way to get an upgrade to 4 (because the 2-3 star assignments suck balls). Definitely apply to as many as you can, though. I'm only on about 29, and only three or four of them ever post anything, and I have 8 applications that haven't ever been responded to.
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May 10, 2013 21:20
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You can improve. Focus on learning the AP style with emphasis on comma usage. Read the Textbroker blog (linked at the bottom of their site) and the FAQ (Which you can only find while logged out, for some dumb reason) and see what their specific requirements are. Write as much as you can, even though the three-star assignments suck balls. Pay attention to editor comments. Also, join teams. There's a huge number of them, many of which are inactive and plenty that require 4+ star writers. Teams often have better assignments (and always better pay) than 3-star assignments. It's a lot of work to apply to all of them, but it's worth it. More is better, because sometimes a team will go weeks without posting anything new.
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May 24, 2013 00:23
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I haven't been having a bad time, but I did have an article sent back for revisions 4 times. It's mostly my fault though, I'm used to everyone I work for having a 3% revision rate so I didn't check beforehand to see this guy had a 117% revision rate. I gotta say, writing $100 worth of articles for Candy Crush Saga last month was pretty sweet and easy.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:34
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There's a bit in the OP about Amazon smut writing, but the thread links were out of date. The current one I believe is http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3503700
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Jun 9, 2013 06:25
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Astro7x posted:A friend suggested I try writing articles for Jon Leger at INeedArticles.com. I've been enjoying it so far, they don't seem to be picky about style guides that much and all my stuff has been accepted. 600 words for $3.90 is .65 cents a word 500 words for $3.20 is .64 cents a word 400 words for $2.50 is .625 cents a word 300 words for $1.80 is .6 cents a word 100 words for $0.70 is .7 cents a word At the 4 star level on Textbroker everything you write is 1.4 cents a word, so double the best rate of what those are paying. Even the 3 star level pays 1 cent a word, with the 2 star level paying .7 cents. So you'd be making much more on Textbroker, assuming you write the same volume. Of course, article availability is always a concern for the 2 and 3 star levels on TB. Less so for 4 star. So yeah, you're being paid "content mill" prices for probably higher quality work. I'd look for better paying clients or sites.
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Jun 10, 2013 00:15
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It depends on a lot of factors. I find it relatively easy to make around $30 a day in a couple of hours tops, depending on availability of orders. Some people pump out more content, and some sites make more per article. It really all depends on how much time you put into it, how quickly you put out content and of what quality. Transcription is more lucrative off the bat but it takes a specific kind of mindset to do it.
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Jun 15, 2013 04:34
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Both sites are slow to review your initial samples, yes. CC I've found is slightly slow to accept articles for posting unless it's for one of their rush job standing offers, which they send out via e-mail. Of course, you have to wait for someone to be interested and buy your piece, so the sell time could be anywhere from (I've had both of these happen) two days to a year. Textbroker is slow to give you your initial ranking, but once you're free to write, you don't have to wait on their editors. There's a 96 hour autoaccept for clients so they can't hold your article pending indefinitely. Most clients also accept articles before that happens, though I have a few that let them lapse. Textbroker's editors swoop in once every couple of months and mass rate your articles, so you'll get a stack of emails in your inbox saying each individual article has been rated, what the rating is and if there are any comments. These are important ratings (as they can affect your star level) but for me at least they've been so rare I don't even worry about them. I may get a couple 3 star ratings somewhere in the 150 articles they rate, but as long as the most recent five are 4-star level, I'm still a 4-star writer.
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Jun 19, 2013 19:51
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I didn't have trouble getting in at 4 stars, but it was in 2011. I've been hearing a lot of people getting in at 3 on TB these days. It sucks because 3 star is both short on ops and on pay. 5 stars is for people who pass the proofreading test at 4 stars and somehow trigger an official 5 star review, it's kind of a special side deal because your official ranking stays at 4 and they very rarely rate an article above 4. They just manually give you access to 5 star stuff. Which, due to the smaller writer pool and higher cost, is almost as slim pickings as 3 star. For getting promoted from 3 to 4, write the best you can (obviously) and try to focus on applying to and writing for teams. Start on the last page of the casting call teams, since the most recent ones are added to the end. The lowest team pay rate is higher than the 3 star rate, though a bit lower than 4. Ideally you'll be able to attract some clients for direct orders as well.
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Jun 20, 2013 06:04
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Sulla-Marius 88 posted:I've read the thread and checked out a few of the links but the OP and thread seems heavily oriented towards Americans. On this note, anyone who has suggestions and sites that fall under this category, I can make a section for them. Being American myself I don't know what all on there already is available to other countries.
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Jul 18, 2013 06:54
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Wiggy Marie posted:I have recently signed up for Textbroker and have not seen a cap. You are paid based on your rating (1-5, you want 4) and the number of words in the article. The highest I've had on one is a little over $8, but I've seen some articles of 1000-1500 words which would be in the $20+ range. This is correct. At 4 star, you get 1.4 cents per word from the open order pool. Personally, I try to shoot for longer projects and I've gotten some very large ones, including one single order that encompassed a couple dozen subpages for a website that topped out around $370. You can also set your direct order rate to something higher, though the higher it is the less likely clients will contact you for work out of the blue (I just had one bitch at me that my 4 cents a word for them was over their budget). Team orders vary as well, with the lowest I've seen at 1.37 cents a word and the highest stretching up to 30 cents a word. Teams do have one issue, namely there is no way to see before you apply how active the team is. I've been accepted into teams that have never posted an article, and I have a half-dozen pending applications from months ago. Textbroker is in a bit of a lull right now actually, at least in the open order pool. The 4th holiday cleared everything out, and the pool went from 6K available articles to under 100, and it's hovered under 200 at any given time since. It's interesting, though, because the assignments are different most every time I look, so there's a high number of orders being placed and written, there's just a balance of writers and clients rather than the surplus of assignments before. Kilo India posted:Anyway I'm not sure if anyone is still interested in Writer Access or Textbroker, but if they are I have information I could share. I'm interested in Writer Access, and really anything other than Textbroker or Constant Content (the two I'm most familiar with) is helpful. I've been breaking Rule #1 and relying too heavily on too few sites recently.
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Jul 31, 2013 03:37
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I agree with the assessment. A goon-run site sounds good, but in the end it's still a goon project and I wouldn't count on it to go anywhere, even if it was developed. ELance and oDesk have the common issue that too many people are willing to work for what the rest of us consider unreasonably low prices. We produce high quality work, but we can't compete with people who are willing to write 1,000 word projects for $2 and provide passable quality. It's part of why I like Textbroker's system so much -- it has benefits for writers including the autoaccept period, the guaranteed pay rate for star levels and the variable assignments available. I just wish they would give us all a raise. Textbroker is also very draconian on their forums, which I suggest never visiting. You can't post outside website links or even e-mail addresses without the admins editing them out within an hour. Compare that to how rarely the actual article reviews are -- I just had about 25 of my 100 unreviewed articles reviewed, and that was the first review since March -- and I wonder if they're focusing their resources appropriately. I've heard that they've spent quite a bit of time recently in hiring new writers, which is part of why the OO pool isn't growing. They also raised the prices clients pay, but the extra goes to them for overhead and writers don't see an extra cent. I want to expand the sites I write for, and one thing I've done recently is joined the Freedom with Writing mailing list (not a referral link, it's just a free e-mail newsletter.) Only about half of messages they send out are any use to me, but they've mentioned some sites I wasn't aware of and they tend to avoid the sites like Elance specifically because of the underbidding problem. I wonder if it might be helpful to anyone here, so there's the link. Kilo India, what is your work schedule like to make that kind of money through TB and WA? I personally have a huge problem burning out if I try to jump in too much too fast, so while I'm making 3x more than I did through TB than when I started, I'm still making a pittance compared to you. Do you set a monetary goal per day, or a time goal, or just work as you find work? I need to learn from those more successful than I am, so any tips you have to offer are much appreciated.
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Aug 1, 2013 00:16
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kazmeyer posted:I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea that you basically wrote the equivalent of two novels plus in one month. I can't imagine doing that for a pay by the word gig. There's really that much work available on Writer Access regularly? This right here, and I'm someone who literally HAS written two novels in a month as an insane double-nanowrimo effort. I can't decide if I'm pickier about the articles I write or I just don't work fast enough. I'm a fairly fast and accurate typist, but I'm not confident in picking up certain types of articles simply because of the research involved. If I do a big project on a topic I've never done before, then I'll pick up smaller articles on the same subject, but I don't generally want to waste half an hour on a $6 articles. I definitely need to check out Writer Access, though, that sounds awesome. Any tips for applying to Writer Access? I know Textbroker has a few quirks with their interpretation of the AP style guide, so I wonder what the big pitfalls are for WA.
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Aug 1, 2013 07:24
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I love your status report because it gives me more hope. I have the ability to pump out that kind of volume, with or without research, I just kind of hit a wall now and then with motivation and assignment availability. Hell, if I made 20% of what you do, my money problems right now would be completely solved. I doubt I'll ever make $10,000 a month doing this (maybe publishing a novel eventually or something) but you make $2000-3000 look hella attainable.
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Aug 2, 2013 18:12
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Textbroker is draconian about it because they don't want to lose their writers to other sites, because then they aren't making money. I've seen some clients ask for writer bios as part of assignments so they can credit the writer, it might be possible to then hunt down the writer in a different context for direct communication. Certainly nothing stops a writer from having multiple gigs, TB just doesn't like you talking about them and edits out any links or names.
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Aug 7, 2013 16:52
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thylacine posted:I've applied at Writer's Acces and Textbroker. I've read that WA has a second application round, is that accurate? I just heard back from WA after the initial application, I was accepted. They want me to fill out a detailed profile, submit a paypal email and W9, and take a writing test to establish starting star level. Specifically: quote:The Writing Test
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Aug 8, 2013 03:53
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Any tips for the test? I'm going to work on all of that tomorrow, since I'm too tired to bother tonight.
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Aug 8, 2013 04:51
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Given how dry Textbroker has been recently I'm hurrying to write up profile blurbs to get that poo poo submitted. Too bad they say 7-10 business days for the star rating. On the plus side, I got 32 on the writing test, with only a couple of actual mistakes (most incorrects were from things I legitimately had never heard of before, like wtf SEO silo method.) Should I fill out as many industry blurbs as possible now, or fill out my best half-dozen or so and the rest later?
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Aug 9, 2013 01:45
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Textbroker assigns clients a number so writers never see their names, but it doesn't work the other way around. I've definitely had clients refer to be as Nighthand in messages. Heck, that IS a distinctive enough pen name to track me down outside of the site, though I don't have a personal writing site set up to take advantage of that.
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Aug 9, 2013 06:59
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I have it listed as penny work because, for the two or so days I poked around on it, I never saw any tasks you could do for more than 5 cents or so. However, that was over a year ago so it could have changed in that time. It seemed mostly "click our ads" or "fill out these surveys and sign up for our affiliate programs for 3 cents" kind of things.
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Aug 12, 2013 04:43
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My profile is still pending review. I figure some time next week I'll have the initial rating. I'll probably shoot them a message if I haven't been reviewed by Wednesday, that should be 10 business day point for me.
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Aug 16, 2013 21:21
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Kilo India posted:The account setup is just completely asinine--you'll see what I mean-- You aren't kidding. They could definitely come up with a better way to choose your industry specialties than nested drop down boxes. Edit: I dunno guys should I set a specialty to Entertainment -> Anime -> Hentai? Sounds like a great idea. 
Nighthand fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Aug 18, 2013 |
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Aug 18, 2013 00:03
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I got into Zerys but apparently shot myself in the foot with a 3-star sample. The job board is completely barren. I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can get a couple things to move up to 4 or 5, but I'm not holding on to a lot of hope right now. It looks like the kind of site where, once you're established, you get work rolling in. The problem being there's not much posted openly so it's hard to get the initial contacts going. At least the prices on the recently-written assignments list are mostly reasonable. Still have to hear back from Writer Access. EDIT to avoid triple posting. Today there were a handful of assignments on the Zerys job board, so I claimed and wrote a simple 200 word blurb. Within an hour it was accepted and my rating has been bumped to 4 stars. So it really is super easy to get bumped up. Nighthand fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Aug 20, 2013 |
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Aug 19, 2013 21:05
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An Old Boot posted:I feel like there should be something in the OP about 'expect to find companies that are not willing to pay you minimum wage for the hours spent,' because independent contractors aren't covered under that law. As much as it seems like a 'well, obviously,' it's worth giving a fair warning. I skimmed through, so maybe it's there, but it's not really in bold lettering for anyone who's desperate to find work and may get poo poo on as a result. Added a note to the top of the OP.
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Aug 22, 2013 17:39
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If you can't out-pace voice recognition software in pure speed for $2 an hour real time, you're not good enough for them.
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Aug 22, 2013 19:13
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Yeah WA still hasn't finished processing me, so that's good to know. So far the difference between 3 and 4 star hasn't been significant. It's all the same board, you just see assignments in the higher price brackets, if they're there. I've seen a couple for 2.1 cents sit there, but nothing above it. I haven't gained access to 5 star stuff yet, or favorite writer boards, since that one assignment I mentioned is the only thing I've done for them. One of my TB teams was inundated with work and I've been banging out a bunch for them.
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Aug 24, 2013 19:08
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99% of my TB editor comments are commas, and a lot of those dropped out when I stopped using the serial comma. Oh right, and "percent" instead if "%" tripped me up a bit at the beginning.
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Sep 4, 2013 02:57
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WA approved me as well today, 4 star and also Industry Elite. I read on the Freedom with Writing site that the best time to snag new assignments is 5am EST. Kilo India, your experience certainly makes it sound like assignments can be found whenever, but do you find assignments easier to find in the mornings?
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Sep 5, 2013 20:32
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Apply to teams from the last page first. New teams are posted at the end, so the first dozen pages are likely all inactive. Ones for managed clients are probably faster to accept or deny you but the actual article approvals can take longer since they turn off auto-accepts. More teams = better, it gives you more options. Things should pick back up next week now that the holiday is over and people need more written. I also wouldn't be surprised to see a team or two pop up for Halloween stuff.
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Sep 6, 2013 01:51
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Good lord, I can see where you're coming from with the volume of similar articles on Writer Access. 50 pages (at 25 per page) of $13 assignments (350 words) dropped in the 4 star open pool today. All the same client, all the same guidelines, just different companies to profile. You get that format down and you can roll in work.
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Sep 10, 2013 19:05
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Yeah, what you see is all you have to go on unless you message a client, and a lot of clients treat the site like a fire and forget: they can submit an assignment and the money sits in escrow, you submit an assignment, it goes to autoaccept, they get a notice the article is done and the money is yours. If they do respond, it might be 10 hours later, and it leaves you with no time to really write. You don't get an extended deadline or anything because you're waiting on client communication.
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Sep 11, 2013 03:37
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HTML is fine. Very few clients care about <br> and <p> tags. Some want you to put subheadings in <h2>, which is fine. I love bullet lists, and the HTML for those is easy (and done automatically by the site when you use their tool). Same with links. Beyond that I don't think I've seen HTML come up, though I recall one person on the forums mentioning trying to make an HTML table HTML still counts toward your word count, so it can even be beneficial for squeaking out those last 50 words or whatever! Also, not that you all need telling, the Textbroker forums are utter garbage. I swear some people there spend more time posting than they do actually writing. Not to mention being a horribly inefficient system that takes minutes to load the thread listings. RE: the 3/4 star thing, I do see a lot of clients on 4 star who don't really care, but there are plenty who are at least passionate about what they're doing. Guidelines tend to lay out fairly well what they want, at least in the sorts of articles I pick. I tend to shoot for larger projects and avoid the $5 crap though, so ymmv.
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Sep 11, 2013 05:55
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Hopefully it was satisfactory! I'd check to see but I'd need the client display number they assign you. Do you even see those, or is it obfuscated to further limit client-writer interactions outside of the site? I get the impression that a lot of writers on TB and other sites have issues with research. I saw an interaction between someone on WA and Kilo India talking about how the company profile articles (350 words in individual fields of 75 words each, mostly) take him an hour+ to research. The client suggests Bloomberg Businessweek, which has most of the information easily available. The one I did took me over an hour, but I was writing a different article at the same time. The actual research-writing-submission time was probably more like ten minutes. That said, it makes sense that most writers appreciate you providing research links for them. I rarely have a problem with it (I know how to use Google) but others would. Most of the time when I'm provided a link, I'll still do a search on the topic and see what additional information I can pull in. I'll crib the format/layout from a successful research article (general progression of information, etc) but I'll rarely rewrite paragraph by paragraph. When I do, it's because the client specifically asked for a rewrite.
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Sep 12, 2013 13:23
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Hey KI, how awesome are the WA editors? I realized upon like my 4th submission of those assignments that when I copy a clean URL from my browser, half the time when I paste it appends the http, which the client doesn't want. So I wonder if I can poke an editor to fix 'em before the client gets them, or if I should just let the client know.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:46
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One of their reviews here: http://www.indeed.com/cmp/2blue-Media-Group/reviews complains about not being paid. I'm not seeing much other information about them. If anyone decides to give them a shot, report back. On that note, I should go add Zerys and Writer Access to the OP. While I'm at it is there anything I should add or remove from the first post?
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Sep 16, 2013 16:19
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MTurk is in there under penny work, because every time I've ever checked, there's been nothing but surveys for a few cents each and other such garbage. I'll certainly welcome an efforpost about them, though.
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Sep 16, 2013 18:31
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Noted and added. RE: Crowdcloud, reading this site (http://www.wahm.com/forum/writing-freelancing-46/568535-cloud-crowd-scam-just-horribly-unorganized.html) indicates that they're horribly disorganized. People are reporting that they'll write an article, have it accepted, and then a week later have it rejected, have their balance dropped negative and their credibility rating (what you use to get jobs) dropped. Seems not worth the hassle to me, but I can still add it if anyone wants to chime in with firsthand experience.
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Sep 16, 2013 23:17
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 06:00 |
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I got 32 on the writing test. I did spend basically a whole day agonizing over my blurbs when I write them, and apparently they liked that. So either they weight some questions more than others, or the blurbs count more than we're giving them credit for. Or, as Kilo said, a dozen other metrics they don't tell you about, who knows. RE: Constant Content, I've only sold a couple of articles I've posted on there, but I also haven't posted as much as I'd like to. I've saved the text of basically everything I've written for Textbroker to rewrite and post, but I only manage to post one or two a month. Some of what I have up are way long and thus probably out of the range of most people shopping on the site. Looking now, I've sold eight total articles since I started using the site (out of a grand total of 20 posted) so I have a higher sale percentage than I thought. However, five of the articles I sold were ones I submitted when CC sent out e-mails saying "we've got a client coming in next week wanting to buy 500 articles on Insurance and Credit Cards, so submit them to this standing order and you'll probably sell them tomorrow." Lo and behold, they mostly did. I've never sold anything there for use rights, they've all sold for Full. Here's the word counts and prices: 990 for $65 (first sale when I was still getting the hang of the site pricing) 660 for $60 530 for $40 610 for $50 740 for $45 (Now that I look at it, I'm not sure if I mis-priced this or if I considered it a lovely article and underpriced it.) 970 for $85 950 for $80 890 for $80 So yeah, about $10 per 100 words on average seems to sell. Nothing over 1000 words has sold for me. Most of those, again, were for a standing order they advertised via e-mail. (Sidenote: Any of you can feel free to hit me up on AIM if you use it, my name is in my profile. I know AIM is a bit... antiquated, by now, but what can ya do.)
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Sep 17, 2013 05:07
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