Lack of English Writers on DP?

The short answer is... there is no short answer! This is a problem that could only be solved (possibly) when Google come up with the 'writers algorithm' . If Google were to step in and come up with something that can detect poor English then things will change, they would have to. Until then no test would ever do the job it is intended for. Having a test like that in an international industry just wouldn't work. The first problem would be which 'English' would be used for the test, American English or UK English? (sorry guys we had it first ) At what level do you have the test? Do you really have to have a degree to write properly? I don't think you do. The fact that Google is making the internet more end-user friendly, does the content have to be at Degree level? If you think of all the people who use the internet, how many of them have a degree or would fully understand 'degree standard' technical writing? I have found that down to earth honest writing is by far more effective than technical writing.
I know that some of you will disagree with this but if you really think about it, doesn't it make sense?

Sorry, no answers here!!

 

Highly qualified English writers cannot AFFORD to work for most of the clients here, but it is worth mentioning that this problem is not exclusive to DP.

 

As far as detecting poor English goes, Google does have something that can do that. It's not exactly targeted towards that but I believe it serves the same purpose.

Websites with unnaturally high bounce rates are usually the result of horrible content or horrible user design. From my own personal experience, the clients only willing to pay beer money usually also have these $9 awful Wordpress themes that come loaded with outdated plugins, a framework that would make a developer cry and shortcodes that were written in a hurry.

Oh definitely. Anywhere that doesn't have an application process is going to have a wide selection of writers including what I call scribblers.

As far as I know on here, anyone and everyone can join and start messaging these clients.

 

As an internet user, it generally doesn't bother me if the website doesn't look great, I'm more concerned with what is on the site. I often find busy websites, with lots of bells and whistles really irritating. As long as the site does what is intended then I am happy, isn't that what it is all about?

 

To be honest YMC, while you have made some excellent points there, I think there is a lot of tension at play here and a lot of frustration among the writing ranks and what you are seeing here is not really a language barrier, its a competition barrier. There are posts here that coherently and cogently state "No offence is intended". That said, I think there are three things to realize here.

1. The culprit here is self-evident in that they either a) ignored the disclaimers that stated there was no offence intended or b) they understood them and still chose to ignore them and carried on flaming.

2. The problem of good quality content vs poor quality content needs to be addressed before it snowballs. Its an elephant in the room that should not be ignored.

3. The authors who are providing good quality material need validation of their superiority in their own language (just as any other person would in any other country in the world) and a chance to earn money just as much as every other screamingly desperate soul across the world. I'm not sure what form that would take, perhaps an offsite solution? And in that I include everyone of every creed and race and colour and shape and origin and hair colour (I find that hard to say as I don't acknowledge race, creed colour etc. For me a person is a person, nothing more nothing less).

My tuppence on the above argument: The culprit here (and for me and others the culprit needs to be acknowledged) was the one who started trying to take it further and escalate this into something it was never intended to be by anyone unfortunate enough to be involved in it (a racial flame war), and I'm sorry but it is quite, quite clear who that person is. I tried to diffuse these blatant incitements, and whether they were born through misunderstanding, or through misreading of a comment, the fact that a person wrote "I mean no offence, nor am I trying to be racist" should be enough to quell any doubts on the part of the flamer. Anyone who misunderstands that phrase in a second language probably shouldn't be a writer in that language.

Malky, I am not racist, nor have I ever intended to be racist and quite frankly it offends my very nature and causes a vile taste in my mouth when someone calls me that. Had this been a face to face confrontation I'm sure things would be ending very, very differently. However i will say this: if I have inadvertently said something that has offended you, I apologise. However, I would request politely, but firmly that you do not ever call me a racist. They are the filth of the earth, a vile, abhorrent, ignorant, repugnant scum that I make every effort to distance myself from wherever possible.

 

I'm not sure that a lot of people would recognize degree-level English to be honest. Saying that, I have a degree BECAUSE of my English language skills, I don't have better English language skills because I have a degree (if that makes sense). If I'm honest, I think people prefer a personal touch when they are reading and its quite possible that degree level technical English would scare a lot of people away from the material. However a line must be drawn (on the part of Google who are trying to help the web evolve) between "decent and readable" and "downright shoddy". Everyone has the right to earn money, of course. But I would never go to a Spanish forum and try to sell articles in Catalan, simply because i would feel too bad at ripping off the buyers. I guess for the writers here its more a question of ethics and missed opportunities than anything else.

 

I think this is what people (especially clients) need to remember, if you want native quality writing then you need a native writer UNLESS you have the skills to 'test' the writer yourself. Of course if you had those skills then you would have the skills to write yourself!! It would seem logical to not advertise yourself as a native English writer if you are not native English. Unfortunately ethics seem to be a little thin among the writers who are falling short!
Here is something I wrote a while back http://adultretailwriter.co.uk/cost-quality-content-much-pay

 

Joseph...

1. These forums seem to be full of people just hoping to jump into or start a flame war. Bring up people from a particular country and the way many of its residents do business and you will bring all sorts of folks out of the woodwork to scream racism. Most of them clearly have no idea what the word even means. They have simply found it to be a great way to derail the conversation and keep any real changes from happening. Others simply get their jollies from launching flame wars.

2. This elephant has been brought up before, many times. Just go back through the threads, you'll see plenty of other similar conversations. As long as people want cheap content and don't care if it is nothing more than useless words strung together, there will be people offering it to them. No forum thread is going to change that. Some of us have been caught up in this "global marketplace" since the mid 1990s. Don't assume by my comments that I do not see what is going on throughout the IT industry or that I don't have strong opinions about it. I just choose to not voice them on a public forum.

3. DP is an open marketplace. You see how well that works. It is well-known on the Internet as a place to hire people cheaply. To create a marketplace that only offers good quality materials would mean excluding those who aren't up to the task. As soon people start being excluded, it doesn't take too long before someone throws out the race card. Including everyone would just be recreating what we already have here.

Testing is a joke. Just as samples are. Both can be easily gamed. Both are totally worthless if you accept everyone.

Figure out if you are selling Lamborghinis or broken-down, second-hand scooters. Then work on finding clients who need/want what you are selling. My suggestion is to try your best to ignore the used scooter sellers. I know that's easier said than done. The other option is to work on building your own sites to generate an income. Validation will come when your words make money for your clients or yourself.

 

Well, I'll jump back in here and point out my intention wasn't to start a flame war with anyone, my first comment in the thread was a jokey throw away comment about someone with appalling English saying there should be a test for anyone wanting to provide content, I was just pointing out the irony in his post and his lack of a sense of humour turned it into something else and the red mist descended and I probably went off the deep end a bit, maybe calling him out as a racist was a bit harsh but that's just how he came across to me (I have my own personal reasons for despising racism in any form but that has nothing to do with this thread).

I know this is an English speaking forum but this is a global forum and everyone has the right to participate on it without being segregated (which was something he was also calling for) anyone remember Apartheid?

This will be my last post in this thread and again my intention wasn't to offend or harass anyone and if I did I apologize, I just wanted to point out what I thought was wrong with what he had posted, this is a platform for debate after all

Peace.

 

Exactly, mate.

Buyers should be smart and choose wisely. You can't knock someone for trying to make some money. After all, you don't get anywhere in life without making the effort. Buyers are free to choose who they want to hire and whiners should STFU and market themselves better.

As for the standard of English, one also needs to consider knowledge and passion for a subject, but also the audience. The fact is, perfect grammar is not always a pre-requisite. A passionately written article/blog post, filled with knowledge and - if appropriate - humour, that has some grammatical mistakes can be a lot more convincing than a clinical, boring 1000 word article written by some university-educated individual who can't tie their own shoelaces.

FYI, people, the best writer I ever hired was Indian. Screw the (minor) mistakes in the article; it was so engagingly written that they were invisible (it took a second read, with the intent of looking for any mistakes, to spot them).

 

You are right ryan_uk. I would say an "interactive" article can serve the purpose rather an article which follow the grammar rules fully but unable to catch the attention of visitors. In addition to good English, writers must have knowledge of that particular subject on which he/she is going to write. Like very few writers have good command on subjects like finance, technology, medicines etc. For example, while writing on dental care, if you have no idea what tooth enamel is all about... whether it is something related to the tooth structure or it is some kind of dental treatment then one must not get surprised if his site is facing high bounce rate. There are many more such examples and it really looks annoying to someone having basic knowledge of the subject.

 

Being a 'native English writer' is not enough 'eligibility' to claim high rates. But if you have real knowledge of the subject along with good writing skills then you really deserve to be highly paid. But here comes the market...if there is a huge gap between demand and supply for good writers and you are knocking at the right door then you are lucky. Unfortunately, this is not the situation. Like many other markets where highly skilled people are low paid only because they have no information of the market or there is less demand for the quality. If there is very small percentage of "native English writers" available in 'internet' market then you also certainly know that there is huge number of internet users whom second language is English. So they hardly bother about grammatical mistake until and unless they come across big blunders. Command on a subject and command on a language are two different things but highly correlated if you are looking for a 'good piece of writing'.

 

I have to agree on that. $3 for 500 words article is a bit too little. The average market rate is a about $6 - $8 for 500 words. Some even charge up to $12 for 500 words article

 

"even charge up to $12 for 500 words"? Assuming they are well written, that is still peanut wages.

 

Actually majority is having huge network of websites ... so market focus has been changed from quality to quantity. If a person having 100+ websites and want to have 50 - 75+ pages on each site...total number of articles will be 5000 - 7500 at least. He will have to spend 60K to 90K (@ $12/article) for content only. So what you think he would spend this much amount or not? However, people owning few sites may prefer to have good content on their sites if they really know its worth.

 

The amount of money people are willing to pay for services on DP is most likely the reason. US/UK based writers can land gigs paying $10-20 per article on websites like Odesk and Elance so the $3 or $5 per article offerings are a lot less appealing to native English speakers.

 

You can't ask forums to limit their traffic. It's petty because this way live standards tend to go down because of so much low pricey bids. I hardly understand why there are so many who are able to go that route instead keeping all heads up. That's life..

 

I see this is starting to turn into an argument over what wages are fair and what are not.

I don't think there is a specific or set number that makes writing quality content justifiable. Something has to be worth the writer's time and investment into the project.

This is usually how the process for most $1 writers goes:
- They get the assignment
- They Google search for the topic they're writing about
- They usually just reword the first article they find
- Once it fills up the client's word count requirement, they send the project off, hoping to be paid

That doesn't include those $1 clients who want you to personally manage their Wordpress, upload the articles for them or do other various tasks such as including pictures.

This is how it should go:
- The client and the writer discuss the project and gather all the specifications
- A quote is given and payment terms are set (usually this is 50% upfront from my own personal experience)
- The client's target demographic is then researched and brainstorming begins
- An outline of the project is done and usually revised as more research is done
- THEN the real writing begins
- There's usually quite a few drafts, edits and scrapped ideas that seemed good at the time in there somewhere as well

It may be easy to find a hungry market of writers willing to sell themselves cheaper than the price of an American McDonalds Happy Meal but what are you really getting? How many of those writers do you honestly think are going to take the time to outline a process and come up with some type of strategy to make sure that a brilliant piece is delivered?

That's the problem with a lot of new site owners. A lot of new people in town think if they plaster the web with cheap content and it meets some generalized SEO requirements they believe in, that they'll rake in the cash.

Of course don't let them tell you otherwise though because if you ask them personally, they're all making a killing off of that content

Now if only those people could sell their secrets to high authority journal websites that pay writers hundreds of dollars per assignment... Just think, since so many of those people are supposedly paying peanut shells and making so much money, if high authority websites knew their secret.

I would personally rather enjoy an assignment and put love and care into it. I personally will not do that for $10 an article. If there's people out there who will, then more power to you and I wish you well. Scribbling out 500 words just to meet some cheap client's laundry list of requirements over doing the outline above might get you more content but it's definitely not going to retain any kind of audience or engage anyone.