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The best place to find freelance writers

Discussion in 'Copywriting' started by howarddavidson, May 20, 2014.

  1. Melisa455

    Melisa455 Active Member

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    #41
    I think most of the seller here go for the cheapest. $2-$3 article. $15 article may be too high for most.
    But I do agree we pay for the quality.
     
    Melisa455, Jul 21, 2014 IP
  2. DionisK

    DionisK Peon

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    #42
    The average payment is: 1$/100 words now as I know. What do you think, it is enough?
     
    DionisK, Jul 24, 2014 IP
  3. Melisa455

    Melisa455 Active Member

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    #43
    Haha.. If you ask me.. Is is not enough. Especially things in my country is so expensive. But can be consider if it is a bulk order.
     
    Melisa455, Jul 24, 2014 IP
  4. DionisK

    DionisK Peon

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    #44
    Thanks for your opinion. Yep, it is for a lot of articles of course. So people can earn some money
     
    DionisK, Jul 25, 2014 IP
  5. Content Maestro

    Content Maestro Notable Member

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    #45
    It's way far from 'enough', even for bulk orders. What you know seems only to be from global freelance sites where most offers are anything but cheap. Here are the rates copywriters actually charge, but I'm not sure if it's up-to-date - http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2014
    Content Maestro, Jul 25, 2014 IP
  6. Melisa455

    Melisa455 Active Member

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    #46
    Wow.. I didn't know we can charge so much for writing article. Do you charge that rate yourself too?
     
    Melisa455, Jul 26, 2014 IP
  7. Content Maestro

    Content Maestro Notable Member

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    #47
    Haha, not as of now, but hope to get there soon.:)
     
    Content Maestro, Jul 26, 2014 IP
  8. YMC

    YMC Well-Known Member

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    #48
    Those rates are for professionals with near perfect English or dare I say, native-level writing skills.
     
    YMC, Jul 26, 2014 IP
  9. Content Maestro

    Content Maestro Notable Member

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    #49
    Even if you slash those rates by 50%, they are still way beyond what's mostly offered on freelance sites.
     
    Content Maestro, Jul 26, 2014 IP
  10. Melisa455

    Melisa455 Active Member

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    #50
    That's true. I have never seen people charge so high.
     
    Melisa455, Jul 27, 2014 IP
  11. DionisK

    DionisK Peon

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    #51
    Looking into http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php : wow! It is very high payments there. And info is a bit old, two years later.
    As far as I know now the middle-market it is 1-3$ per 100 words. It is good money from company who are just the beginners
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2014
    DionisK, Jul 29, 2014 IP
  12. Emma Pollard

    Emma Pollard Active Member

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    #52
    I hate to state the obvious BUT....what are you expecting for $1-3?
    If you consider what the writer does for that money ask yourself, would YOU work for that? Let's break it down a bit and see what is involved:
    First is the research, most writers will look at keywords and research if those given (if any) are the best ones, this can take up to 15 minutes (sometimes longer) then there is the research for the article itself 15 minutes is often an average depending on the subject.
    Second is planning the article, sorting the data from the research phase in to an order which makes sense (and making sure there are no holes in the research) 15-20 minutes.
    Then comes the writing itself, if the previous steps have been done properly then this should take no more than 30-45 minutes, depending on typing speed.
    So we are up to an hour and a half and we are still not done.
    Proofreading and editing is something that all writers do themselves now and can take anything from 10-30 minutes depending on the subject (I often find myself re-wording sentences during editing).
    This would mean that a fairly easy piece of writing can take up to an hour before being sent to the client, $15 for an hours work could be considered good but what if the client wants something changed? Now the theory here is that the writer should do this without question (and I agree) but if the client wasn't 100% clear in the brief or has since changed the brief is it then fair to expect this in the original price? Most writers will do it regardless.
    If you also factor in conversion rates (I live in the UK and lose about 1 third). This brings $15 for 500 words down to £10 for at least an hours work before you think about expenses!
    For some this might be ok but for those of us who are trying to make a living wage it doesn't quite cut it.
     
    Emma Pollard, Aug 1, 2014 IP
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  13. Normanwalker

    Normanwalker Greenhorn

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    #53
    The thing about hiring freelancers is that you take up the risk of paying for shoddy work. Some of them can be a real pain to work with as well. Especially those charging low rates. You really do get what you pay for.
     
    Normanwalker, Aug 3, 2014 IP
  14. ladymacbeth9

    ladymacbeth9 Well-Known Member

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    #54
    The fact is that in freelancing, be it writing, or coding or development, if you pay peanuts, you hire monkeys.

    I have been writing for many years. My texts are in white papers, on forums, and under my own name in technical and marketing companies.I freelance and am also an administrator for one of the larger content sites. Having been so for more than five years, I do work full time and I am very committed to my job.

    Working for a service and being a professional with a solid online name and presence are not mutually exclusive. Nor in fact, is it impossible to have built your own name, be known for what you do and bring down a good price if you work for a service. I believe that working with a service offers advantages such as not doing your own billing, not dealing with the endless foolishness, being free to attend to what you do best, which is writing, or site development.In many cases, freelancers are freelancers because they've gone to multiple sites such as Textbroker or NeedanArticle and so on and have been found lacking in skill or in work ethic or in attitude. I can say that definitively because I have personally removed people who are endlessly rude to customers or who cannot spell (amazing in this day and age) but refuse to use a spell checker.

    I would certainly disagree with the commentary that anyone who writes well or is a professional does not write for a service. The service for which I work provides proofreaders, copyscapes the work of each writer prior to release, and offers full copyright release on each item. Moreover, they charge the writers just fifty cents per item for working there and using the service and we market their services, even down to marketing writers who excel in a specific type of copy such as sales content. I find that cost to be quite reasonable in light of all that you must do in order to maintain a presence and do your own billing.

    Insofar as working for 3 dollars for 500 words, that's ludicrous and it's nearly a guarantee that the person you've hired has little experience and quite likely little skill in their craft. At no time have I worked for 3 dollars for 500 words of well written sales text or a white paper, although people try it on all the time. Lowering your prices to the point where you can't live in order to bring in a client means very little more than that you have one of two things-- a cheap client who won't get better, or a client who doesn't appreciate the time and effort that you put in to increase his or her traffic and bottom line. In either case, that's not a client for whom you can afford to work.
     
    ladymacbeth9, Aug 7, 2014 IP
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  15. ladymacbeth9

    ladymacbeth9 Well-Known Member

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    #55
    That's true and it's usually not enough. I've also never really understood the "bulk discount." People ask me for those all the time. If I order ten will you give me ten. Um. no LOL. More articles= more research, more effort and more typing. It's not like baking cookies where you can make 10 as easily as you can make 5. It's like asking the power company to give you 24 hours worth of electricity free because you paid for 24 hours. I doubt very much that you're going to get a positive response to that. Each article requires it's own effort. Sometimes if they order ten I will add one free of charge, but lowering the price because they ordered more isn't a feasible thing really.
     
    ladymacbeth9, Aug 7, 2014 IP
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  16. Content Maestro

    Content Maestro Notable Member

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    #56
    Some people think that writers can write more no. of articles in a comparatively shorter time. Say it takes you an hour to write a 500-words article, so for 10 such articles it would take 10 hours by this rate. Now what happens is sometimes when you're writing all 10 articles on same or similar topics, the time consumed for researching each article is saved because you find most of the information about those topics in one place. This cuts the time you would spend in researching and consecutively you can complete 10 articles in less than 10 hours. Also, if you do all data-hunting, researching, sorting and organizing in one go and later sit down for typing and editing the whole stuff in one separate session, the total time consumed is also less somewhat. When you are in a flow, you tend to write faster.
    However, if all 10 articles are on different topics, you have to repeat the whole process from researching to editing the final draft individually for each article (or for most articles). If this takes an hour for each, it would take you 10 complete hours for finishing 10 articles up or sometimes even more.

    Some writers charge per hour. So clients figure out that more no. of words ordered around the same/similar topics will require less time (& effort) on the writer's part. Hence they ask for discounts.

    IMO, it's just a sweet or sugar-coated way of saying that we (the clients) are doing you (the writers) a favor by ordering more work; so return us the favor by offering a discount. Nothing more.
     
    Content Maestro, Aug 8, 2014 IP
  17. ladymacbeth9

    ladymacbeth9 Well-Known Member

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    #57
    Normally I do about two an hour. Even for the same article topics, I try to incorporate new information rather than to just regurgitate the old so that all of the articles have a similar look and feel to them. Not only can the people tell when we do that, but the search engines can tell too and they rank them accordingly. One habit that I have--because I also do client SEO-- and one that I think has my customers coming back is the I take the location of the article, where it will be, run a baseline of that page along with the logical keywords. If the page doesn't rise in the serps in a short amount of time I offer them a revision and fix it so that it will. I think that you'll find that little extra touches are what keep your customers coming back and realizing that you are worth what they pay you. Today, customer service is in short supply and ethics are not always part of the online experience. While that's sad, it's also a blessing of sorts because if you provide cost effective, quality services and you back them up with solid customer service, your customers will come back. It's a lot easier and a lot less expensive to serve repeat customers rather than continuously striving to replace those that leave because we were short sighted in what we offered.
     
    ladymacbeth9, Aug 8, 2014 IP
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  18. Content Maestro

    Content Maestro Notable Member

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    #58
    It's good that you are offering this as an extra perk to your clients since it's your habit, but I would classify it as something exclusive to SEO. This leaves it, at least for me, out of scope of pure writing. If some client asks me for this additional work, I would charge him/her extra for it.
    I agree that these little extra touches are a greatly contributing factor in bringing clients back to you over and over, but the client should also be worth it. No point in offering them to someone who doesn't value the time, efforts and ability of writers and pays peanuts for high-quality content.
     
    Content Maestro, Aug 8, 2014 IP
  19. ladymacbeth9

    ladymacbeth9 Well-Known Member

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    #59
    "I agree that these little extra touches are a greatly contributing factor in bringing clients back to you over and over, but the client should also be worth it. No point in offering them to someone who doesn't value the time, efforts and ability of writers and pays peanuts for high-quality content."

    I absolutely agree with that. I do SEO and SEM as well as content writing so it's within the scope of what I do and it uses software that I use anyway to keep track of other seo clients. That makes it a fairly easy add on to give customers, which is why I do it. Again as you say, when it's a customer who tries to get something for nothing, that's usually a huge red flag to me. I've written free of charge to companies or people who honestly needed the help, but when someone just pushes the envelope and tries to convince you that anyone can do your job, I usually respond with, "then you won't mind if I decline your kind offer of work." and let it go at that. You can please some of the people... :)
     
    ladymacbeth9, Aug 8, 2014 IP
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  20. PeterStraw

    PeterStraw Greenhorn

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    #60
    Odesk is the right place to find writers and copywriters.
     
    PeterStraw, Aug 8, 2014 IP