It's alarming the number of people charging $0.01 or less per word when it comes to content writing, but I have seen extra workload added to such ludicrous rates. Now people are requesting the services of writers wanting to post on a daily basis with administratrive experience in WordPress and required to post 4-5 original images per post. This is a -$0.01 per word all-inclusive job. Any thoughts? ·
As long as there are writers willing to work for a penny or less a word there will be clients requesting it. I only charge 3 cents/word and even that is too low, but for right now it pays my bills. I will raise my rates again in the near future but I will never write for less than what I am charging right now.
The way I see it, there are two separate markets within the field of writing; one for intelligent writers who are not only slick with the pen but are also open-minded and are marketing-savvy. The other market is for hit-and-run wannabes who think they're writers because they can put a few words together on paper. The latter are mostly the people you see crowding bidding sites and offering their services for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And, of course, for each of these markets, there are buyers with corresponding mentalities. Though the markets sometimes tend to overlap, it would be a very bad idea for a writer from one side of the spectrum to compete with those from the other. If you hate writing for a cent a word, and you've had a few good clients in the past, then you're likely a good writer who just needs to market himself better. Don't get pissed over people that try to whore writers for their own benefit. They won't last long. But, there will always come others to replace these candles-in-the-wind. So, as I've said, do your thing and let them do theirs... they'll get what they pay for
Well I was speaking to someone (a buyer) yesterday and they said that the way they see it is that they can pay $0.01 a word and spend the time editing it to make it upto their standards or pay someone $0.04+ to get the finished product. After everything has been put into consideration by paying the extra cents per word, it will work out better in the long run as he/she will not have to spend time away from their work editing it or hiring another writer to proof read and edit accordingly..
Wow, thanks a lot for your wonderful advice. Guess I'll quit my full-time freelancing now and "gain verious [sic] experience to enlarge their horizon." I'll even take down my website... Anyone interested in buying godofwriting.com and hosting, all paid for until November? Hint: Not selling.
Writing is indeed not the kind of job that 'sits still'. You constantly need to improve yourself in order to stay on that of the market. But that's because the world and it's economy is ever-evolving. The same thing caused the low rates for cheap writers. Everywhere people put up crappy websites with Adsense and such. Eventually the searchengines will hit them and ban all 'lousy' content from their index. Although a system like Google can't ever think as proficient as a human being, their is already a lot of advancement on the path to blocking all MFA (Made For Adsense) sites that don't provide the high-quality content people are looking for. -Dave P.S. - To answer the topic title. I think the next trend is paying for audio and video materials at $0.01 per word spoken
I will be the first to admit that I have outsourced content in the past to cheap writers/researchers and then edited it for myself as it was cheaper to edit the content than research and write it myself. It depends on a lot of variables as to how these people can compete with each other to survive. A good writer in a second or third world country can probably live quite nicely on 1 cent per word. Others, myself included offer wholesale packages for a few pennies per word, ether way its all a question of economics and what you get for your money. For my clients who demand original, well written work its a question of convenience. I have several in my base that I have converted from the >$.01 per word market as once they are delivered a final product it is in such horrible shape they must then hire an editor to rewrite it.
Coexist. I believe there is market for all kinds of writers! Expensive hot shot specialized writers still have their market and there are a lot of good clients out there willing to pay big bucks for good content. If you want to keep up with the competition, specialize yourself; be the best and you will have your top paying clients, I believe.
That's just on DP and other places that mainly feature smaller web site owners. Last I checked, Yahoo and others wouldn't even begin to hire a penny-per-word writer for their Web content. It's all relative. The more professional the buyer, the more professional the writer must be. And thus, the higher the rate. It's like hiring a cook to do your landscaping on the cheap. He'll show up and hack around, but he's not going to do a great job unless you just need the sprinklers turned on. I don't find it alarming at all. Those who write for 1-3 cents can't write at my level and I don't want to write at theirs. They have a big market to play with and they can have fun. As the above poster said, "coexist." I'm more concerned when a pro at or above my level works on the cheap, because that can affect me.
Can you see it? even threads are copied instead of being writing with a personal opinion but certainly coexistint is what all is about. Penny writers seems to be good for a penny markets which mostly requires a bunch on non-sense keywords to get into Google's pagerank while some writers make these jobs to get their bills paid or earn some reputation. Most of us know that the best paid gigs are not posted at DP or any other forum like this so my conclusion is that there will be always an offer for every demand and vice versa. ·
article rewriting is becoming popular too. my friend (who is also a DP member) does originals as well as rewrites. nowadays, most of the work that she gets is for rewriting articles. the cost of rewritten articles is much less than original articles...hardly 20%-40%. webmasters no longer want unique ideas ; unique content is enough for them. SERPs, traffic and earnings is the main goal. user experience means nothing for many webmasters today.
Part of the growth is due to the upward explosion of PLR content offerings. Webmaster X buys 100 PLR articles and pays a small fee to rewrite them to pass the "SE original test." Rinse and repeat.
PLR articles are used by people who don't have a huge budget to put into additional web content. Everyone who wants to try and earn a living on the Internet should be allowed to try even if they don't have a lot of money in the beginning. If the 1 cent per word writers can help them get started then so be it. If at a later date they want to add more quality writing to their website then they can seek out the more professional writers. Begrudging them because they don't have the money to hire a $50 for a 500 word article writer in the beginning isn't right, not everyone can afford that kind of writing. In most cases I do charge only 3 cents per word and my articles have been published in print. The way I found out was a client forwarded me an email for more articles and forgot to remove the previous email from the print publication praising him on his previous 3 articles that were well recieved from their readers and requested more. I had no idea that he was planning to submit those articles to a magazine, but it is definately a great feeling to know that 6 articles I wrote for him have been published even if my name isn't on them. About 6 months ago I was getting too much work for just me to handle so I put up a few ads on a few websites looking for back-up writers that I could use when things got too crazy. I had close to fifty writers apply, some who wrote for a penny per word and some who charged upwards of 20-30 cents per word. None of the writers who charged 20 to 30 cents per word wowed me with their samples. They wrote the same ol stuff everyone else writes complete with errors. I guess the point I am trying to make is you cannot judge a person by how much they charge per word because there are writers who write for a penny who should be making more just as there are writers who charge 30 cents who should definately be making less.
I tell u some thing, but I am not sure whether u will believe it or not. at freelance sites, everyday, writers do work for $0.002/word that is $1 per 500 words.