There are bad writers here on DP selling their articles, and I'm one of them who bought them. Haha stupid of me. I bought 14 bad articles! I'm talking bad bad grammar! If you are not expert in the subject please don't write anything without researching first. Last but not least, you should be expert in the english language, and at least have a degree in writing or something. Because I can write myself, but don't have the time. And I should not even bother checking your work and correcting your grammar. I really learned my lesson for not asking for a sample first before buying. If you come across someone who refuse to give you sample of their writing don't buy it! Sorry for venting but I must warn the rest here too.
Yes, of course. You must ask samples before you order them. But I totally disagree with the fact that only expert should write articles. Every expert made by practise. And I don't think experts be cheap like in digitalpoint. I am not a writer but some of your arguments are wrong.
Well, I guess it all depends on your requirements as a website owner. For me the article has to be written correctly and grammatically correct and researched. I mean that is what writing is all about. I'm talking about people who can write decent articles that are grammatically correct, and doesn't necessarily have a degree in writing. Just a well written and informative article worth reading. The best articles are written by people with english being their first language. Here is a sample from an article: "Forget to drink? We have easy trick. Learn to drink a glass of water before each meal. And such glass of water before breakfast helps you start the metabolism, which can benefit the whole day" So your telling me that anyone can write? I don't think so.
Sorry to read about your experience. The way to avoid this in the future is to not only ask to see samples of their work, but also to ask for references from their clientele. If for whatever reason they refuse to provide references, then simply pass them by.
... and sometimes despite good reviews and examples of their (allegedly theirs anyway) work it can still SUCK! Lesson learnt, I will write my own articles! My next bit of writing is ripping the "service provider" to pieces. Now that I will enjoy!
You should write a good article on the service provider called "Google" Ryan! They advertise they provide a "Good search service" to help you/people find what you are looking for, but the results can be very dubious quite often. You can start by pointing out that "Best Expert to hire" on Google is a nonsense search result as Martin Lewis, SEOJay, Tuljo, SmallBuisnessComputing and myself the only sites in the top of the page are not the best experts to hire. And poor old Freelancer.com down in position 9 can be a good subject matter to do your "service provider" article on.
There are tons of so call "writer" at DP, you gotta spend some time to find a good writer but always remember that you get what you pay for. You cant expect top quality with low cost.
I'm new to Digital Point. First post. I'm posting here because joedca's issue is one that drives me to despair. I love the English language. I love words. Every time I see a misspelling or a gross grammar error I cringe. And yet, I see them all the time. I rarely see a website that doesn't contain at least a handful of text errors. And what is really sad is how few people notice. I wouldn't hire a person to write anything for me unless his first language is English. But even that doesn't fix the problem. I taught college seniors a few years ago and their English skills were deplorable. And I was teaching low income minorities. In good conscience, I had to give the more flagrant violators a failing grade. They were appalled. Thirty years ago, when I taught high school, the writing was far superior to what I see today. I wish I had an answer for foedca but I don't, other than to find an article writing software program and write your own articles using the software to streamline the process. I'd mention a program I like but I don't know if it's kosher to mention product names on this forum. (Is this post too long? The writer, Honore Balzac, wrote: "I haven't got time to write a short letter.") I'll take the time to shorten my next post.
As stated by some of the other posters, I think it should go without saying that you should request samples from any writers you hire and, especially on a site like DP, also request references. This doesn't mean that you have to write all of your own articles or use a software program that will never match up to what a good writer can provide. Rather, it means that you need to take this as a lesson for what not to do in the future. There are many of us out there who are exceptional writers who will also give you great content. You just have to learn how to find us over those who don't really have the skills to give you what you are looking for. As for Wisezenheimer - I find it interesting that you seemed to find it necessary to state that these "deplorable writers" were also low-income minorities. These are people who were clearly trying to better themselves and instead of getting an encouraging professor who tried to help them, they got one who looked down on them. No wonder you had to fail several of them. That said, I'm a low-income minority, a writer, and in school to become an astrophysicist. Maybe you need to readjust your stereotypes.
Tarissa,, Obviously I did a terrible job of not clarifying in my post. The minorities I mentioned were THE STUDENTS WHOSE WRITING WAS FAR SUPERIOR TO THE COLLEGE JUNIORS. And these were students struggling with poverty and difficult environments. The college juniors I wrote about were the deplorable writers. And they were all white middle to upper middle class students. My point, that I sore poorly attempted to make, was that writing standards have diminished considerably. I regret the misunderstanding!
I understood what you meant. Although I was appalled that you started a sentence with "and", the meaning was clear. (I'm teasing; it's an old-school view that starting a sentence with a conjunction is incorrect.)
Doesn't always work. I've had writers send me perfect samples, only to learn that they are written by someone else. I've also worked with writers who told me they wrote the articles, but the styles are so different that it's hard to believe the articles were written by the same person. More likely that they got someone else to write the articles. Your best bet is to find ONE honest writer and then use the same person over and over again. Sometimes, that means paying a little more for quality, original work. It's worth it though. Save you time and heart ache.
I've not had that happen to me yet, but even so how would these fakes presume that they could get away with it? So very foolish as a writer cannot fake it for long. I can *always* find out what a writer is made of from the 2nd e-mail that they send me, in which they are responding to my questions. That kind of an e-mail cannot be faked by using someone else's content. Also fake references can easily be checked out, though this is time consuming.
@spoiltdiva - we're dealing on the Internet...there will be some dishonesty. That's why I never let my writer go!
I've had the problem on the opposite end, where I've supplied existing samples and a live sample, plus correspondence to a party that accepted them, then had the person say they couldn't accept the new articles written to their exact specs, because a third party wouldn't accept them. A lot of buyers are resellers to higher paying clients, who make money as the middleman, and at times they aren't on the same page as the end buyer.
I was more interested in looking at the flag on the top-right of your avatar than reading the thread.