I saw a thread in the general business forum where an employer was complaining about being scammed by a freelance writer that they hired from the Digital Point forums. It's not the first time that I have seen this kind of complaint where an employer talks about the poor writing skills, missed deadlines, broken promises and so on of a writer that they hired from these forums. I also say that for most of these instances (not all) the writer that is hired is offering bargain basement rates. In the end the employer loses out whatever money they paid that writer and DP looks like as a place where you can't trust a writer. For those of us that are good freelance writers our credibility takes another hit. I was thinking about this some more and the idea struck me that an association of quality minded writers could band together and become a part of an association on Digital Point. We could draft a mission statement stating the rules that govern this group, that way it could serve to act as another layer of protection for employers and at the same time further demonstrate that if you want quality workmanship and professionalism you need to pay a decent rate. I know that writing covers a broad definition of talents (content writing, blogging, reviewing, copywriting, SEO, marketing, forum posting, etc.) but each of us have our own individual talents and niches. If a very simple charter and list of guarantees could be worked out, including a minimum rate for services, and a fair sampling of writers interested in agreeing to those terms joined up, I thought that it might be of benefit to a lot of us on here, both as a freelancer and as an employer looking for writers. A mod could make sticky the thread and that way it could stay at the top of the forum where new potential employers could read it and have a starting place where to look for writers. Off the top of my head I would say that these things are important to the group: -- guarantee that all writing delivered will be unique and original and not taken from somewhere else -- deadlines will be met -- professionalism of writing (correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, use of quotations, grammar, etc.) and of work (on time, available for communication, timely replies to queries, remain in contact with the employer) -- an understanding of the language and subject matter that you are writing for (research, writing for the market, using the proper voice, etc.) -- a minimum rate for these services and skills that are provided I know that iTrader is supposed to take care of some of this but it doesn't go far enough. On top of that there are so many new writers (and employers) on here that seem to think the bottom line is how much the content will cost until promises are broken and red reps start being handed out. I wanted to solicit some thoughts from the writers that check out this forum about this idea and if you see it helping or hurting us. Even if it doesn't do much to stop the trend of employers looking for the cheapest writer that's around to do the work, at the very least there will be a thread in this forum listing off the writers that promote their work is of a high standard and as such they should get paid fairly for it. Maybe that way after an employer has been burned a couple of times they might try the more expensive way of doing things and be surprised at the quality and ease in which the writing gets done.
Woudl DP allow it? And who is going to decide whether a writer meets these high standards? Wouldn't you be subject to the same thing, people claiming to be great when they aren't? I just read through one of those threads, and while there was lots of talk of trashing the writer on any thread that got started, I gathered the complainer hadn't bothered to do a negative iTrader.
Chant, You are sharing a very intriguing idea. In general, my vote goes for it. But I somehow doubt that DP will let it live. And besides, stilloutthere is right to ask - who will be the one to judge the writers' knowledge, abilities and skills? Have the best of your day, --Tiggs
Tiggi, "who will be the one to judge the writers' knowledge, abilities and skills?" - skilled people who will sit on DP and who will get money for this. Shawn is going to do this ? Probably no. But who knows ?
Several of us already joined together in various ways off-site. We have our own forum at AllFreelancing.com now as one example. I don't think you'll get it to happen however on DP itself. DP can't really back any kind of guarantees, b/c it's not their responsibility. For people wanting a group of writers like that, they'll generally hire a firm that has their own guarantees set up. One problem you'd face even if DP set something up (which I highly doubt) would be that you have different classes of writers, types of writers, writers in different locations, etc. You couldn't get the highest quality writers who may charge 10 times DP averages involved, b/c they'll make more focusing on their own reputations independently. Writers who will work on the far low end and take anything that comes along certainly won't want to be restricted in any way regarding minimum prices. And those in the middle face a pretty competitive environment where many are offering nearly identical services, so they'd have no good reason to want to partner together. On top of it, there wouldn't be any way to enforce anything. If a writer still screwed over a client, the most you could do is boot them from the "club." The client wouldnt' get their money back necessarily, so they'd have no real benefit or protection, and it would risk hurting the group's reputation, including that of other innocent members. The closest thing you could do privately would be to set up almost a professional organization membership kind of system, where members are screened, they adhere to a certain code of ethics, and where being a member carries some kind of benefit to them image-wise if nothing else. I have something similar (although a bit more complicated) launching next year if all goes well, but it's the best idea I can come up with for what you'd like to do.
SeoLinker, Thanks for your response. I now got your idea clearly. But from what Jenn has written in the quote above, I see she is right. The idea is nice, I am sure there will be many enthusiasts here on DP but I doubt it can be realized either. For Jenn's reasons word by word. However, I hope some smart idea how to make it happen would pop up somewhere on the way. --Tiggi
There are already writer's associations out there. But, there's never a guarantee of service no matter what organization someone is part of. Buyers of services need to be smarter. If you're paying dirt cheap prices by hiring someone in a country without solid laws and that's know for "sketchy" behavior, you can't be upset when you get crap or nothing at all.
It seems that you have a valid and approachable idea, I would love to be part of such an organisation but would DP allow such an organisation in the first place? Many questions come to mind when thinking of freelance writing in terms of an organisation. Firstly, who would decide on the quality of such authors? Who would moderate the organisation? How would you in-fact uphold your idea on authors making deadlines, how could this be moderated? The very thought of pricing such services makes me nauseous. There are many categories, genres and contexts of writing, how could you price one set of writing to another? These are just my initial thoughts when reading your thread, it is certain that many more questions will disperse themselves from this thread and for this reason I would suggest that your idea should firstly be took up with DP. Good luck with your venture, and please PM me if anything materialises out of this as I would be sincerely interested.