This is one for the more experienced among you. I was recently invited by CC to participate in writing a lot of articles (quite poor rates, but sensible if they're easily produced) for a private client wanting hundreds of articles per day over the course of 3 months. Clearly several other writers have been selected, too. I said I was dubious because the work didn't seem very interesting and might end up being poorly paid. However, it seems I've been shortlisted and now invited to a "Kick-off Webinar" between CC and the client.
Can anyone, from experience, elucidate for me what this is all about? Is this best avoided? Am I getting sucked into a writers' sweatshop? Or is this a reasonable, easy way to earn a few $$$ quickly?
I've never been a part of that, but working for less and working more hours seems like you're going backwards. With experience comes higher pay and fewer hours. I'm down to just needing to bill 20 hours per week although I want 25. Whenever someone offers me tons of hours for lesser pay, I ask them how that makes logical sense.
They want 400 word "articles" (I suspect they're actually wanting product description level stuff) for which they'll pay $20 ($16 after CC takes their cut). Way I see it, that's just 4 cents a word. Which is pretty dismal. They reckon on each piece taking 40 minutes to write/edit/submit. I have a pretty slick workflow and use Dragon so I can probably do that in half the time. It seems they just give you bullet points per articles, which you then turn into flowing prose. If I did 2 in an hour, that would be an hourly rate of $32. It's still not very good, is it? And it sounds deathly dull.
I think I'm talking myself out of it!
But I'll silently haunt the webinar on Thursday anyway just out of curiosity.
It's up to you and your financial goals I suppose. I charge $85/hour, so that wouldn't be worth it to me. Trying to figure out how much I can work by doing this or that isn't my thing. I also bill by the hour, so for a 40 minute article, I would charge an hour at least regardless of what they give me to "help." An hour here is $135 because of the 35% cut.
I'm not really into seeing how much I can cram into an hour. 1-500 words is an hour. 500-1000 words is at least 2 hours. That's for low end things. Higher level stuff cost more.
Obviously, I don't do any private requests anymore for CC but I still sell pretty well in the marketplace and I sell at my rate (with the 35% added), so I'm happy here. Seems to me there are a lot of clients like that here and I realize it's a content farm so that's the nature of the game. But some of those emails with the low rates make me chuckle. The sad thing is they probably have plenty of writers who will do it too.
I used to do some of these things that I see other writers do and working all of those hours and figuring out how to just get by is a terrible way to live and you can't grow a business. This is my business, so scraping by just means I'm dying anyway. I need to make a profit. Clients don't tell me how long something will take or what I charge. I tell them what I charge and how long it will take.
Lysis wrote:
I used to do some of these things that I see other writers do and working all of those hours and figuring out how to just get by is a terrible way to live and you can't grow a business. This is my business, so scraping by just means I'm dying anyway. I need to make a profit. Clients don't tell me how long something will take or what I charge. I tell them what I charge and how long it will take.
Where's the thumbs up button when you need one? Guess paws up will have to do! ฅʕ•ᴥ•ʔฅ
^ LOL Nothing annoys me more than when someone tells me how much they will give me. Umm, no, I'll tell you how much I charge and you decide if you want to pay the price. But so many writers just take whatever is offered and then complain when they don't make any money or budgets are too low. What do you expect? If I can get some high priced attorney because he'll take whatever I give him, damn of course I'll offer him $50 and hope he'll do it. lol
Words, I'm on Upwork. It's a huge beast but doable. I'd post my profile but eh I don't think I want to post it. I recently signed up for Guru too but they don't have the volume. I'm still kinda feeling them out.
I signed up on that writer pool. Holy mother of all crap, never again! The work was deathly boring, and to be honest, a monkey could have done it blindfolded and doped. But...
... forget monkeys. It seems there were a large number of amoeba on the team, unable to follow the simplest instructions. The client complained about the poor quality of much of the copy and bailed.
They bought all the "articles" I'd done up to that point, so at least I wasn't ripped off entirely. (65 350 word pieces @ $13 net per piece)
But by the gods, it was drudgery. I guess I had to find out for myself.
Never, never again. I feel tarnished. Lol.
But every cloud... My response to that experience? Well, I'll only use CC to add to my catalog, as I sell 60% of everything I write here. I've doubled my rates (with no negative impact on sales, which is interesting). I'm building myself a Wordpress site for my freelancing business, with clips and all that. Once that's up and ready, I'll start "cold emailing" clients I'd like to work with (not for) and tell them what I'm offering and my rates. What's to lose?
If the only other direction is back into one of those contract-free sweatshops, I'm tooling up to rocket as far away from that as fast as I can go.
$10/article? I wouldn't even stop playing a video game at that price lol You can't offer sweatshop budgets and expect quality. People need to learn the hard way I guess.
Yes, it is funny. But you know what? I've already written a blog post about my experience prostituting myself to a content farm based on the experience. No material is wasted on a writer, right?
In the meantime, I've totally revolutionized the way I think about this business. Or rather, about how I'm operating my business. I can write fooking darn well, and I can prove it. I have specialized knowledge. I have a degree in Life Sciences for chrissakes. No more selling myself short. I'm incensed by the pitiful disregard these people show for writers. Enough already.
Just remember you don't have to take what people offer you. Obviously, people will throw you something low hoping you'll take it. You just tell them what you require and they either take it or leave it. If they are talking to you, then you know they are already interested.
I see so many writers complaining about what clients offer and I don't get the problem. Just tell them your rates and what it costs and go from there. Easy. lol
