Some sort of seniority before you can contact customers?

[Celeste Stewart]

Hi,
A recent requester mentioned that she had been spammed in the past by writers. I also experienced something similar when I posted a request here on behalf of a client a few months ago. A couple of unknown writers sent me "I can do these for $1 each" types of messages which I promptly ignored. Knowing the CC community, I didn't recognize these writers as established CC writers and you can bet I wasn't about to entertain any such thing.

When I saw the recent request mentioning this same type of thing, it made me wonder about the communication policy between writers and customers. It's good for us to be able to communicate and ask questions but there is also room for abuse. Anyone can sign up as a CC writer and then try to siphon work away from the system. Plus, if these writers never submit, they never get the three rejections you're out suspension if they are unable to deliver the quality CC needs! How many underground CC writers are out there communicating with our customers yet never submitting a single article?

What if you had to have X amount of accepted articles before you could even see the requests or communicate with customers?

I know such an idea would be kind of sucky for the newer writers, but do we want unoriented writers communicating with the customers before they fully understand how the site works? Maybe let new writers submit to the request but restrict the "ask a question" function until X amount of approved articles have been reached. That way, new writers still have a chance to prove themselves with their content but can't bother the customers with their sales pitches.

Just some thoughts. . .

[audrabianca]

I like your idea.

[Celeste Stewart]

It would at least stop the ones with bad grammar. We want well-spoken cheapos and content thieves :) I don't know how rampant the spamming is but even a few could turn off a customer or direct the customer elsewhere and that's not good for any of us. Plus, the sooner we can get our content sold, the less likely a thief will come along and nab it.

[geniuswaitress]

That sounds like a great idea, Celeste.

Anything that helps the site look more professional gets my vote.

[HayleyWriter]

There has to be some way to prevent people stealing customers from this site by spamming with offers of writing articles, rather than actually writing articles. I see a number of customers who make requests and never come back to purchase, and you have to assume they go elsewhere. In another forum thread, a new author admitted to telling the customers to go to another site to purchase their articles because the author could not write the quality articles to meet the standards at CC. As authors here, we have to stick together too on quality. CC is great for both customers and authors when the site is used properly. However, if some unscrupulous 'authors' are stealing customers away, or spamming the customers with offers of cheap articles, it makes it difficult for the rest of the authors to make a decent profit from writing for this site. If a customer puts out a request and is bombarded with offers to write for a pittance of $1, why would that customer want to pay decent prices for articles? The customer is going to assume that the low offers are actually the current market rate.

However, I think new authors who have only one article approved should have the right to at least submit that article directly to a new public request that comes along after the article was approved.

I know that sometimes emailing a customer through the system with a question, or a response to a specific request is useful, but because it has the potential to be abused and drive genuine customers away from the site, I would prefer to see the comment box done away with. Either that, or restricted so that you can ONLY send a message to the customer when you attach an article relating to the request. Sometimes the customer requests author contact first (a recent one was the five driver articles , but the customer himself stated clearly he would not use any other website except CC), but generally the customers want the articles already written, not to discuss articles with potential authors.

[HayleyWriter]

Continued

Surely there is something support can do to at least censor the question and answer responses that are inappropriate, or that seek to drive customers away from the site. If it is a genuine question about the article, let it go through to the customer, if the email suggests a bidding war or that the customer goes to another site, prevent the customer from seeing it. You should also punish any author who suggests that customers go elsewhere for articles - by suspending their accounts. Please don't spout privacy at me. I would far rather Support reviews the emails to the customers to protect everyone who uses this site properly, than to allow a few individuals to get away with driving our customers away because of "private" emails. More work for you Jeff, but it could protect the business!

Well, that's my two cents worth on this issue.

Hayley

[BarryDavidson]

Another method I've seen is something like Classmates.com had in place. When sending a message to anyone, their filters will get rid of anything which might be an email address, or even sounds like one. For example:

blah@aohell.com

blah@ aohell

blah at aohell

blah at aohell dot com

Messaging systems can usually be tweaked pretty hard. Filter words, symbols and initials like AOL, gmail, hotmail, @, and most of the other email providers. It would get tricky with MSN and Google. You can't very well filter the word Google if the customer wants an article about Google. The same really applies to other email providers, especially the free ones. A customer could potentially send a private request to an author for an article comparing hotmail and gmail.

Another problem with an approach like this that someone would have to update the list of filtered words regularly because a lot of people take great pleasure if finding ways around filters. A political discussion site I'm a member of filtered cuss words. Well, the words would still appear if they were before punctuation, in quotations, or was types three times in a row (appearing only once).

I do like the idea of new authors not being able to see the private message links to the customers before they're "established". If the new system is like the old, anyone clicking on the request would be able to see questions and responses. Anything which suggested impropriety would be reported.

[JKALLEN]

Just to throw in a curve ball...

...I find it hard to believe that by restricting new users you're going to curb this problem. I think that in many cases it's going to be the established writer who has been around long enough to 'work the system' and who has found some sort of loop hole or way to unscrupulously maximize profit at the expense of loyalty or morality.

In fact, it may well be that the younger members (achem, like meself) who are eager and hungry for business would be done a disservice from this restriction.

I hope I'm making sense, my brains are scrambled.

Jenn

[Celeste Stewart]

Here's what I'm talking about. This was in reply to a request for $20 articles:

"Greetings
We would be able to give you the article as per required content

The rate shall be $5 for 500-600 words article

We completely understand copyscape and dupecope and use the same for original material to
be published

Please let us know how can we proceed with you

Best Wishes"
It was signed by someone who had no record of any articles or sales on the CC site. We all know better than to do this but why should anyone off the streets be allowed to communicate with our customers and undercut the work of the rest of us? What I'm proposing is that new writers must pass some sort of criteria before being allowed to click the Q&A links such as having approved articles for sale. Based on this guy's lack of punctuation in his proposal, I doubt he'd pass the test.

[geniuswaitress]

What if we were NOT allowed to contact customers at all, unless they issued a private request (which necessitates discussion)?

We could still ask them questions and have them answered via a PUBLIC area? Then inappropriate stuff could be deleted.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

I like geniuswaitress idea. It's how Guru handles it. There is a public Q&A board where everyone sees the questions and answers.

This system would work better for C-C buyers too, because let's face it, many of them write vague public requests. Why should they answer "Are you looking to buy 5 articles for $20 total, or 5 articles for $10-$20 each?" 20 times when they can answer it once for every author who wants to write for it can see?

There isn't really any communication about a public request between one writer and the buyer that another writer shouldn't be able to see. If that was the case, then it needs to become a private request.

[jrichards]

Having a public space for corresponding with the public requests is an interesting idea. It would certainly open up the process, which would let us collectively benefit from the clarifications and keep people from posting questions that are trying to lure people to go around the system.

I like it! Anyone else have any thoughts on this idea?

[Celeste Stewart]

Ironically, that's how the system used to work a few years back. It worked well from what I remember and it was nice to see clarifications etc. I don't remember why it went away and moved to a private Q&A.

[BarryDavidson]

I too like the idea of Q&A's for requests being public. I could have sworn it was that way when I first joined, but kids make your short term memory go away. I've asked for clarification many times on requests. One customer wanted over a hundred device driver articles. He needed articles which only described the drivers and what their use is, not how to fix or where to download them. Had I not asked, I'd have written fifty articles with fixing and downloading information. If the answer was public, then others like me wouldn't need to ask the customer a hundred times.

[dawngordon]

The whole one dollar thing is a problem on another site, which I joined to try to sell my adminstrative duties. So I layed into the company about a thing called FAIRTRADE.

Horrible experience...