Hi Writers and Client We are about to launch a new site called UniqueSEOcontent which we have been developing for a couple of months and there are a few questions I would love your opinions about. Our site will invite you the writers to upload your work for sale and we would promote your work. We have a lot of experience in this field as we are a 4 year old company with many contacts. We will also offer a register for your skills and take on requested work also (which we also have many enquiries) We will not charge a registration fee. All articles would be edited. The writer is payed each Friday for that weeks sales. We would like to offer only one length of article - 400 words and offer it with full rights as a unique article for $8. My questions are............... Given the fact that in this forum and most other places most people are paying 1cent a word for exclusive articles what do you think is an optimum price to offer a 400 word article bearing in mind that both the writer and the client has to be considered? At the moment, after a lot of research we have pitched this at $9 with the writer receiving $5. On the face of it this seems to be cheap but we know we could sell practically all the work that the writers can upload which would also keep the clients returning. You may wonder why we would take 36% - here is a breakdown............ $9 received $5 for the writer --- Balance $4 $0.50 for editor $0.50 for advertising $0.50 Paypal fees $0.50 general admin Which leaves a balance of $2 There are companies that offer articles for articles for $25 upwards but I ask how many client in this market here would pay this? For all writers that are accepted we will also offer our writers the backup of our client base with ordered work too. Ok firstly.... Writers - What price would you offer your 400 word articles for? Clients - What price would you be happy paying for a 400 word quality edited article? We also planned on showing say just a 100 word snippet of the article to stop any copy stuff going on. This we think would safeguard both the writer and the client. Clients - Would you purchase a $9 on the basis of seeing 100 word paragraph? Would be most grateful for your ideas and thoughts and an email would be fantastic for us to get it right. Regards Louise
I like the idea, but I don't think you're going to find very many good editors who will work for 50 cents an article. If you have a writer who's not so good with spelling, grammar, etc, it could take half an hour or more to edit 400 words. Would you want to get paid 50 cents for 30 minutes of work? That's only $1 per hour!
Hi thank you for your comments. In fact we already have 5 editors who already write for our main portal and are editing at least 120 articles per week between them L
I think that you should also offer a PLR service ($1.50 for PLR rights maybe) since that would let authors get a little more range. As a content writer, I would think that $5 would be good for an article. But you wouldn't probably be more of a backup option for slow times than a real solution.
Hopefully they have other writing assignments. 120 articles per week is only $60, and if it's spread out among five editors, it's even less. I wasn't trying to be snide or rude above. I'm just saying that high-caliber editors won't work for 50 cents an article. I'd be interested in reading some of the edited articles.
I had considered doing something similar. When I started looking at the responsibilities of selling content written by someone else I kept coming back to the article spinners and otherwise stolen content as a big issue. How long would it take to verify the ownership of each article? How long would it take to fact check the articles? With so many articles being sold in e-books and PLR packs (hidden from the search engine spiders), it is becoming harder to verify if something is truly original. Fifty cents to check all that? How hard do you think your editors are going to look at ownership and facts for .50? And that doesn't even include the more traditional spelling and grammar checking. What responsibilities would the seller have when it came to possible copyright infringements? Would you be legally liable? How would you handle it when a buyer discovers they have purchased stolen content? With the price points you mention I suspect you will get more reformulated and stolen work then truly original work. I think you will have to up your prices and payments quite a bit to make the project viable long-term.
We have written over 5000 articles alone for Hotel.com all of which have been in house edited. For over 4 years we have offered a quality service to a significant number of major clients. The very reason they return to us is because of the edited end product. Many writers (and clients) think that writing articles filled with keywords is all that is required. The fact of the matter is that this is no longer good enough. Our policy is to keep abreast with the search engines ever changing algorithms. Google in particular are frequently changing the way they index your websites and we constantly monitor these changes and consequently alter our approach. I think that should answer your remarks. L QUOTE=seowritinggroup;5128045]Hopefully they have other writing assignments. 120 articles per week is only $60, and if it's spread out among five editors, it's even less. I wasn't trying to be snide or rude above. I'm just saying that high-caliber editors won't work for 50 cents an article. I'd be interested in reading some of the edited articles.[/QUOTE]
You seem to be missing the point. Take a look at the request in this very forum. How does anyone truly know what they are getting? To be realistic we are talking about a $9 article and we do our utmost to make certain it is authentic, factual and grammar correct. L
There's a reason the competitors are charging more for similar services in this case. As others have said, you can't expect editors to look into everything they would have to account for at the rates you're offering. It's just not realistic... at least not if the editors know enough about the language and legal issues involved to be qualified for the job in the first place. Remember, even if they check something in Copyscape, it doesn't mean it's legal. You can't legally edit someone else's work and call it your own (which is what much of the so-called "unique" content really is). If you can confirm that you'd never be giving clients rewritten work, that you'd assume all legal risk (including if the clients end up sued over copyright infringement), and truly offer quality work and not re-hashed, poorly written garbage at those rates, then go for it. If you can't, rethink the business model.
As a writer, I wouldn't write an article for less than $10, and that would be a low word count, say 250. I only write quality articles for any client I have. I make a living with my writing so if I produce anything less than high quality it hurts my reputation and bank account. Quality pay = quality work.
I completely agree with you Traci. Quality will definitely suffer with low pay. Simply because with low paid work, one gets loaded with work and quality suffers.
I am amazed that the business model claims to include only "Quality writers", and still needs "Editors" ! I find a contradiction in the model itself.
I agree that its a great point but from the other perspective it is valid.. Writing is something which is done from the heart. Before i personally write on something, i spend a good time researching on the topic and then when i write, i just put in words whatever thoughts come to my mind. Then after writing, i again go through it all over again and do the necessary corrections. But with few other people, when they do the research, they just jot down everything and they get during the research period, and while writing they keep on referring back to the researched material and before submitting they dont even bother to read it again. Might be their command over the language is good and hence grammar and all are perfect, but due to continuous back referring to the research material they lost the flow in the article, and hence editing is required. Their article has quality in terms of information and research, but lacks the basic quality of a general flow and keeping the reader in hold till the last word of the article, many of us do not understand the need of this!!! This calls for the need of EDITORS.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but all writers can do well with an excellent editor. Magazines have editors. Book authors have editors. Quality ezines have editors. I'd love to have an editor for everything I write, but I have to make do with my own editing skills. Of course, I'm great at editting the work of others (you have to be to be an English teacher), but editing my own work is a bit more challenging. I know very little about this site and the quality of the editors, but excellent and experienced editors are worth their weight...
This is an interesting thread but there are already sites like this out there that are well established. Many writers deal with these sites already and complain that as time goes on the rates drop and the red tape and hassles increase. These types of sites are often used by newbies or those who are idle for one reason or another but it would be difficult to police this and ensure from legal and quality standpoints that you have all your bases covered. The idea of launching it more like a PLR model as mentioned somewhere in this thread might make more sense with a strict pre-screening policy for the writers you work with.
That's not amazing (see Rebecca's point about the need for editors, even for "quality writers." What amazes me is the fact that they are only going to pay their editors .50 cents for... what? Each piece they edit? You are not going to find an editor worth their salt to work for that kind of money. I wouldn't be surprised if those "editors" ended up making the piece sound worse than it did when the writer originally wrote it. Perhaps that sounds harsh, but if you have to resort to paying peanuts then you should expect that quality will be lacking.
They can't be fully editing the pieces. For .50/piece, I'd imagine they glance over for spelling and grammar and keep going. Is $8 is a typo? Everywhere else in the post, you state you're selling the articles for $9.
You are probably correct Latoya. Who has time to thoroughly edit a piece when they're getting paid peanuts? I don't.