Being German living in the Philippines since 9 years, I guess I got a bit of insight about that pricing issue. The City I stay is a University town with 35,000 students. most of them with brilliant english (English is the official Language in the PI since 26 years). we have 4 bigger US-callcenter here. Well, they pay about 12K-15k Peso a month which comes down to 300 US$. A good local friend of mine makes 25k-30k (Peso) a month w/ 2-3 dollar articles with way less working-hours than his call-center friends... and those articles are top-notch and don't need to hide behind any 10US$ article. I do understand that many 1st world writers wanna let those guys down but honestly, why should I pay 3-5 times as much for the same quality. Surely there are also a lot of "black sheep"out there and it might take a few tries to find a good one, still they are there and happy to earn more than their friends.
Quality articles takes some time and a bit of research to be written... So they demand more... You can't expect quality articles for $3...
Well, it has again become a battle field for no reason! The rates and the quality delivered are up to the buyer and the seller, and of course, its aftermaths too. The only issue that these very affordable writers make is that they hijack the reputed ones who demand a standards payout, for what they are delivering is of such standards. Setting an industry level standard on payments is not possible, and the best way to get paid well is to get away from the cheapest buyers. It should also be noted that some of those cheap writers are delivering top quality, they do not know their value though!
@Fem I don't think so. People who are paying $50 per article won't change their minds and pay $3 the next time. May be $45, but not $3. Also people paying $3 for previous writers, won't pay $100, it just seems sens-less to them; unless they were really looking for something different and ready to pay the royalty.
Don't sweat it! Now that Google has made some algorithm changes (more to come), these sites with bad content are suffering. Once website owners figure this out it will only benefit writers like us who have higher premiums.
If your'e paying a writer $3 to write content, I believe you're getting ripped off. Think about it. Search engines and the internet community at large decided to disallow in-page keyword stuffing a long while back. In those days, how much would you pay someone to cut and paste a bunch of keywords into your source or metadata? Probably not much. Fast forward to now. Like michaelgrisso mentioned, the search engines and the internet community at large are frowning on crap articles written by SEO "experts". If you take out the weak verbs, the misused pronouns and incoherent babble, what are you left with? Yep. Keywords. Keywords stuffed into a template called "article". You could argue that these SEO articles string keywords together to form basic concepts which make them more valuable than straight keywords. And you may be right. However, if you're honest with yourself, and most marketers here are, you know that the $3 articles are just to exploit the sections of search engine algos that calculate backlinks. Much the way keyword stuffing exploited sections of the old algos that rewarded relevance points based on keyword usage. $3 articles are nothing more than keyword stuffing once removed. I believe globalization is getting a bad rap. Are there foreign writers that write English prose and copy better than Americans. Sure. But, here's the thing . . . Before the boom of internet publishing (everybody's a publisher now), most Americans could not make it into print in newspapers, popular magazines or trade magazines. Even educated writers, folks who made writing their craft, couldn't get published all the time. And that's because . . . Writing entertaining, engaging and informative articles is hard work. It's not easy. It even sucks sometimes. These days, there are as many publishers as there are websites. The demand for talented writers outweighs the supply. Any good businessperson, (Filipino, German, Chinese, Indian, American, etc...), will see that demand and take advantage of it. Why not? No one wants to leave a dollar on the floor -- no matter what your nationality. It's not about globalization. I mean, it's sort of globalization. But, even if English websites were forced to hire only writers from countries where English is the primary language and the cost of living is relatively similar, you'd still have a huge demand for content and you'd still see English speaking writers who would've never been published twenty years ago in the market charging as much as they can get away with for their articles. It's more about capitalism and the free market. People can exploit holes in the market for a while, but eventually the market and the regulators show up with bonding cement.
Let me fix that for you: "good re-writers starting from $5 in my opinion" Indeed. Once you learn to appreciate silk boxers, believe me, you will never go back to cotton briefs...
It is hard to judge. Good or bad is depend on Personal preference. $3 article can be perfect in grammar but you can never expect them to provide first class article like experience editor. Many writer get little pay before they being known by public
I think copywriters who accept such deals shortchange us. Writing is a lot of work just like any other creative profession. It requires considerable flair ab\nd I for one will never accept such pea nut deals.
Wow! Thanks hittboss! A great resource indeed. I'll check them out next time I want to force every visitor I have to hate my guts and badmouth me forever. It'd be like having thousands of clones of my ex-girlfriends roaming the web.
quality definitely matters if you want actual traffic the spun articles are good for building backlinks though.
Quality writers come in all shapes in sizes. I should know, I started there once. Judge the work, not the price.
I think writers from India and the Asian subcontinent are willing to work for that less. Mainly college students look forward to earning some 'pocket money' by writing articles for a cheap price. They are not doing it as a professional service or anything -- but just want to make some money when they are idle or during vacations. I hired a writer who was willing to work for $2 for 500 word articles. She just needed some quick pocket money so she accepted the offer. The quality of the articles weren't bad either. Both the seller and the buyer are happy so why complain? Another thing is if you start charging high prices at the start, you probably won't get much clients. You start off on a low price and then increase it when you get more customers and when you are in demand!
Okay well this thread was simply too hard to avoid posting in, so here goes. I have worked within the content creation business for a number of years and have worked with some of the biggest affiliate marketers across a large spectrum of niches. When i first started writing content i found that people who were offering work for as little as $1 per 100 words were creating content that wouldn't pass as broken English, let alone a lower grade. But with content creation being a hugely competitive market and so many website owners on the internet having little more than a couple of dollars laying about, you have to force yourself to lower your prices where you see fit. Now there is no law against altering your pricing in order to get clients so you should not assume that writers that are only charging that amount are incapable of creating quality content without looking over their previous work. Believe me when i say that there are a huge percentage of writers that are creating content for prices as high as $0.06c per word that are making simple mistakes within their finished products. The quality of content that you can receive in exchange for your money will differ from writer to writer, so if you can find the time to write your content yourself, do so.