I can see it from both sides, but no matter the price people want quality, so if you don't want to provide quality at $2 per 500 words then don't advertise at that rate. Pretty straight forward.
This conversation has been going on for years. There will always be people who are willing to write for peanuts. And when you're hungry, I can see the logic behind doing so. But you don't get the quality, nor should you expect to, when you pay $2 for a 500 word article. Frankly, $15 to $20 for a 500 word article is cheap for a professional writer. (I've been paid $750 for a 1,000 word article that was published in a print magazine.) It takes a LOT more work, research, and time to write for print so I prefer to write for the web most of the time. When I can kick out a 500 word article in a few minutes, as opposed to spending a week or two on a print article, it's worth the lower rates. But that's $15 low, not $2 which is ridiculous. The fact that others are willing to write for those rates, though, even though the quality doesn't even begin to compare with the quality a professional can generate does make the competition stiffer and make it harder to get decent rates. Wish there was an easier solution, that's for sure.
I think writers should be paid a decent price for their work and effort in writing good quality articles.
Exactly. We expect other professionals to be paid for their work and effort. Writers should be no different.