How low can the DP forums go?

I've never used writting services.. but I've noticed the low prices they are paid. Basically they use it because alot of the asian market will do the job for less than US/UK/EU

 

There are still people like me looking for quality writers and I'm willing to pay a little more for quality.

 

I admit, I've avoided DP for the past few months... primarily because of the rates I'd seen "publicly". I would still apply though I knew I would be beat out by the lowest bidder. It's OK with me though because I know I don't get all of my work here. Someone who comes here because they've heard it was a great place to find work might be disappointed because the public forums aren't what they expect.

Though I did land a new gig from the public forums from someone who is looking to pay my rates (and my rates aren't outrageous) so I believe that if you build a good foundation - there is hope for finding clients looking for quality services.

I'm a writer because I like the sound of words, I love the sound my fingers make on the laptop and because I frankly can't keep my mind from wanting to write something out... Not to get rich.

 

One of many reasons....Stupid people+Jetspinner= Driving the price of the market down!

 

Jetspinner only gets you so far... I agree with the above posts, you get what you pay for. If your goal is to just get content published, regardless of what your readers will think... then go cheap. On the other hand, if you don't want to look and sound like a complete idiot, pay for quality work.

My 2 cents.

 

As a buyer, I go for quality first and price second. But if I can see comparable quality, I'll pick lower price. Why pay more if you can get similar results for less. It's a natural market selection. If you used to get lots of business off of DP and it is not so anymore, maybe you should look into what you’re doing wrongly that buyers are not interested in you. There's still a lot of business taking place, maybe more than it was a year ago, but if you’re not seeing any of it, maybe your asking price/quality ratio is not of interest to any buyer.

As such, you can continue bitching and saying that DP has gone low or you can take notice and do something about it. One of those two leads to no business. The other potentially to some. Which one will you choose?

 

The third choice: look for work elsewhere. If my skills are better than the average writer on here and I can find higher paying work somewhere else, why bother to spend as much time on here? If I spend less time on DP then I will probably participate in less discussions.

The loss of one user isn't a big enough thing but the loss of several users can quickly add up and contribute negatively to a site's community. The bottom line shouldn't always about having a site known for having lowest paid writers.

 

I think I would have to choose not to put all my eggs in one basket. I walked away from DP for awhile because far too often I was beaten out by the lower bidders. I've had people come back and tell me how professional I was and how what excellent samples I had but I was out of their price range. I've had people nickel me down to the lowest penny. If I choose to stay and try to combat the lower paying bidders, then I could be losing out on better paying opportunities elsewhere. It's a double-edged sword if you ask me.

Stay and fight the system that seems to be building and hope you get your foot in the door OR spend my time marketing myself in other places.

The more I put myself out there, the more time I take to market myself in places other than here, the more opportunities and doors I have open to me.

It's worked so far. The moment I stopped focusing so much on the lower paying buyers here and being frustrated and started marketing elsewhere, the more doors started opening and the better paying gigs started coming to me. I stop in from time to time, if I see something I am interested in, I act on it.

 

I think Writingcreations has it down pretty well. You just have to learn how to ignore the low bidders or the "non-quality". When you work in the sales field you quickly learn that you need to filter quality leads from non-quality. You may fancy yourself writers, but if you fancy yourself writers that need to eat you're also salesmen (and women).

Figure out who is a quality bidder that you should work on and who is not. If DP isn't a good source to find quality bidders, look elsewhere. Craigslist, Scriptlance, GetAFreelancer, etc. I still love writing even though I make more money through contracting and affiliates. I actually got a job off of Scriptlance that paid decent (over $50/hr) and ended up with me getting contributing credits in a published book.

Here's some tips for the fledgling writer looking to find quality clients:

Ask Questions: Quality clients tend to love when you take an interest in their project. The more information you get back, the more quality the client likely is.

Look Closely: Non-quality clients usually show signs really early on. If the client seems a bit too frantic, if their word choice seems a little harsh/snappy or things of that nature you may want to reconsider. If they seem extremely forceful they're likely to be a controlling clients and in my experience controlling clients rarely pay well.

Watch the Haggle: Business involves haggling. You've just got to deal with that. But you can tell a lot about a person by the way they haggle. Haggling isn't just about money either. Bring up the quality of your writing, the fact that you have gotten comments on your articles, that you're published in places or all manner of other points to increase your leverage.

Also, don't get tunnelvision. Money is important, but as was stated a lot above, so are relationships. If you can build a long term relationship with this client or they are well integrated into the community it may be worth it to accept a little nickel and diming and then hit them with results worth far more than they're paying. If they have a friend in need of writing services, your name will come up.

Don't Hesitate to Drop: Some clients really aren't worth the money they're offering, even after you accept. I recently dropped a client, refunded his deposit and paid my own workers who had done some work for him already all out of my own pocket because he was far too finnicky and I could tell he'd be more of a headache if I kept him. He was a $300 mistake, but dropping him at least let me get a job where my hourly rate wasn't dropping to pennies just trying to manage him.


Quality clients can be hard to find, but if you look hard enough, make the right friends, and promote properly you can find them. Also, if you can write decently there's plenty of contests out there for fledgling writers to help you get your start. At the very least, placing decently in them will be another haggling point .

Good luck writing.

-Josh

 

For normal content - the quick and dirty kind - there is no reason to pay way more than it takes somebody to produce it. Here you do not ask for 'writers' because you do not want art nor pay somebody for it. You want content, period. As a buyer that of course is something I am aware of.

But while I am going through the forums, I do take notice on better service providers, how they behave, what they answer etc. I have forwarded several links of good profiles or service descriptions to people looking for these services and they where not the cheap versions.

I myself have a rather long list of 'good profiles' - and with them I not only pay more but I expect more service as well.

In this thread alone, Writingcreations and Josh provided content which makes me want to check out their offerings. Your signature has nothing in it which I could / would click. You are missing out on a lot of chances on this.

 

I think you simply need to offer advice when appropriate and do what you do well and in the end you will get quality jobs if you do quality work.

Getting the quality clients is not always that easy. I admit to turning down a lot of work because there is no understanding of what it takes to write a "page". To a client, "it's just a page". They had no clue that you spend hours, sometimes 10-40 hours researching the market so it converts and holds interest. It's not just about the SEO, it's about having good target market knowledge, titles, subheads and a call to action where appropriate. There are simply people who don't value that until they've fallen on their faces.

Instead of trying to push the idea on people, start your own website and simply focus on clients who are more seasoned. They're the ones who know. Why kill yourself with hard sell by going after those who have no idea what you offer?

I have gotten great projects here--none of them listed in the jobs section. In fact, I didn't even know there was a listing of jobs at first. So just relax, don't get bent out of shape, add to the discussion and things will happen.

 

It's a buyers market--bottom line. Get out of DP as a writer, come back if you're looking to buy.

 

Now everyone looking for cost down. Let's say i do need 70% quality article, i will not rather to pay for the writer who can provide me 100% quality article with high price, the cheaper article which is able to fulfill my requirement is OK for me. That's the market.

 

Ok, now I will note not to higher you if you are a writter. Forum posts are usually of lower quality than the norm but this post above was completely impossible to understand. Wow!!

 

I am writing this from the perspective of someone who has hired writers in the past and wants to hire writers.

(I have a writing company but there is too much work for the writers so I need to get my personal articles elsewhere..doh!)

I've experienced every type of writer there is, the ones who send great samples, that are far higher quality than what you end up with. The ones that deliver 3 weeks after the deadline, the ones that decide after a week that they aren't going to write anymore and the ones that send you excellent articles one day and rubbish the next day. plus the worst type the ones you spend 2 or 3 months correcting their work and helping them to develop into a great quality writer then they tell you they have a big client and won't be able to write for you anymore.

The thing is it didn't matter if I paid $5 an article or $10 an article I still had various problems.

What I want from an article is one that converts readers to buyers I look for 20% -30% clickthrough rate. This is the bottom line the article can be good quality or even bad quality but the thing thats counts is the clickthrough rate. Can any writer here tell me what their clickthrough rate is? Have you ever written to a client a month later and asked how your articles converted?

If a writer is going to provide me with articles that convert I'll pay them what they want. But I don't want to have to spend $200 on a set of 10 articles to find out that they don't know how to write a converting article. For that reason I like to find writers at around $5 per 400-500 word article. If they then prove that their aticles are good enough quality and they convert then I am happy to pay much more for each article as I know that that article will earn me money.

This is a pretty standard practice in the business world, the supplier provides the product as a lower rate to start with and if that is satisfactory the price goes up to normal with maybe a discount for bulk. However many writers don't work like this, If they did they may actuallly earn much more in the long run. If I had a writer who could guarantee a 20% plus clickthrough rate I wouldn't be haggling over whether to pay $5 or $10 per article but I'd be negotiating performance bonus's and retainers.

Hopefully that will give some writers food for thought

 

Tommo - While you'll find problems at every level (especially early on as the writer is getting to better understand your needs), $5 and $10 per article are really in very similar groups. While it may sound like a big difference, they're both on the very low end, and the writers aren't necessarily that different.

You also mention conversions. You have to understand that article writers are not copywriters. If you're looking to have your writers motivate people into clicking, buying, etc., you really should be looking for professional copywriters instead.

 

i was just thinking. b/s/t was just used to build a client base then start to charge more as you get more experince. Other then that i find people writing for .005 a word im amazed at how little they charge. (or they could be jsut scammers) (Thanks god for copyscape)

 

I know I mentioned this in another thread, but good content is good enough to get 20-30% clickthrough when coupled with good resource boxes.

I work with copywriters for my sales pages and believe me you aren't going to get a copywriter to write 10 500 word articles at an econonomical amount and if you expect them to deliver in a day or even a week..dream on!


The content articles I use aren't selling anything and i believe most articles should be like this, they are for informing and getting people curious enough that they want to know more.

 

I'm new to DP, so let me start off by saying hello! This thread is interesting to me because I see many of these trends throughout the industry. There are many people who are testing the waters writing. They are perhaps hoping that writing on the web is an easy way to make money. Those of us who have been writing on the web for any amount of time realize that it is far from easy. In my case it has taken 3 years of navigating the web to learn all of the ins and outs. The same will be true for the new writers as well, and many of them will simply not make it.

In addition, some writers can afford to write for less because they live in countries where a living wage is much lower. I for one would never begrudge them the opportunity to make money online. If they can afford to work for those rates and they want to do so, then so be it. In the end they are only limiting themselves by doing so, but it isn't my call to make.

Personally, I think every writer needs to set their own standard and stick to it. For instance, I don't take academic writing nor do I mass produce meaningless content for pennies. I'm not trying to sound like a snob here, I'm simply saying that it doesn't work for me to do so.

There is a world full of work on the net, plenty for all of us. The trick is finding your own place in the scheme of things.

 

Low paid writers... Sometimes they are good too, thats the problem!