Just got this from TB - The 3 star assignments fell off a cliff over a year ago, and even the ones available were ridiculous. Like requiring the author to watch an hour-long program just to write a 250-word synopsis for a couple bucks. I don't understand why more people don't just put articles up on free blogs and monetize them in other ways. Writing for content mills and their strange requirements seems to be an inefficient way to make money with articles, even more so nowadays. I don't think google is as worried about which school of comma placement an article adheres to as a content mill like TB is.
From our CEO: a good time for authors to visit Textbroker
We don?t often send out an email to all of our freelance authors about the number of orders available at textbroker.com. The number of orders changes from
day to day and even from hour to hour. And sometimes, there might be a lot of orders in one category or quality level but not in others, which would make a
mass email particularly inefficient and inappropriate for many of our writers.
That is the case today?we have thousands of 4-star orders available, hundreds of 5-star and TeamOrders, but not so many 2- or 3-star assignments.
However, this email is more about a change we are seeing in what our clients want and how they order. Given that our ability to keep our clients happy and
coming back rests almost entirely on you, our authors, we wanted to make sure you were updated on what we see as a significant change in our business.
Those of you familiar with the improvements Google makes from time to time to its search ranking algorithm know that the Panda update early last year pushed
sites with higher quality, more recently posted content above sites with lower quality and/or older information. It punished sites with poor quality
content on any of their pages even if the site had high quality articles for the keyword being searched. In other words, it forced website owners who cared
about where they ranked in Google?s results to replace their older, lower quality content with newer, better information. That led to a significant
increase in the number of orders placed at the 4- and 5-star levels on Textbroker.
Two main elements of how Google determines where to rank a site for a particular keyword are the content on the page and the links to that page from other
websites. Google considers links to a page to be a -"vote-" for that page, and sites with lots of links from third party sites rank higher than ones without
many links. This year, Google turned its focus to better understanding which links seemed to be real expressions of confidence in a site?s content and
which seemed to be placed by the site owner in an attempt to -"game-" Google?s algorithm. Typically, the ones placed by the site owner had poor quality
content around the link because the site owner didn?t care who read the content as long as Google?s algorithm counted the link within the content as a vote
for the site. This algorithm update has been named Penguin, and it took effect a few months ago. Penguin has led to a decrease in orders placed on
Textbroker, especially 2- and 3-star orders, because Google now ignores or actively penalizes sites that have links that seem to have been placed by the
site owner, dropping them from the top of Google?s search results. Interestingly, if we add up the number of words requested by our clients across all of
their orders, the total words has not dropped. In other words, clients are ordering longer articles from our 4- and 5-star authors, either in our OpenOrder
pool or via DirectOrders, TeamOrders and ExpertOrders, and they are placing less short, 2- and 3-star assignments.
The other change we are seeing is driven by the growth in our U.S. sales force. Our sales people target larger clients who often want us to provide full
service to them, from placing their orders, to reviewing your submissions to make sure their instructions were followed, to proofreading to make sure there
are no spelling or grammar mistakes. We call these full-service clients -"managed clients.-" These clients? orders are very different from the orders we?ve
received historically when we were mostly a self-service platform.
Managed clients want higher quality content, so we tend to place their orders with our 4- or 5-star authors or create Teams of authors who write well and
can commit both to deadlines and to following the instructions closely. As a result, we find ourselves constantly looking for authors willing to make those
two commitments. We have enough managed clients that the authors who can write well and commit to deadlines become well-known in our Las Vegas office and
will get so many more requests from us in the future that they may never have to go back to the OpenOrder pool again.
We provide all of this as background for some requests we have of you, which we think will lead to the proverbial -"win-win-win,-" helping us, you and our
clients. If you have not been to Textbroker in a while and you either are a 4- or 5-star author or you have the capability of becoming one with more focus
on following instructions and proofreading your work, please visit us as soon as you can. Logging into your account and perusing the Show Orders page or
the Casting Call Teams - Open For Application tab on the TeamOrders page, you will quickly see what we mean.
If you have been to Textbroker, we hope you will come back more frequently. Many of our sales clients do an initial test with us, placing a few orders to
see how we do. While it may not be obvious during this pilot phase, if we do well, that can lead to hundreds or thousands more assignments from that
client. One of the most important criteria on which we are judged is speed. Meeting the client?s deadline often determines whether the pilot is
successful. So when we reach out to you to help us with a deadline, know that you are not only going to make some money on that assignment, but you will
help yourself and all of your fellow authors by increasing the number and variety of assignments we will have available in the future. You will also become
known as a trusted author, and this will lead to more and more requests from us to join Teams or take on DirectOrders, which often pay more than the typical
4-star rate.
When we really need help, we will post on the author forum, accessible from the -"Forum-" link that appears just below the Home tab after you log into your
account. We created a new section of the forum called Textbroker Priority Assignments. Reading those forum posts and picking up the assignments listed
there could lead to your being placed on a managed client Team, which could show us that you should be considered one of our go-to authors. Another smart
idea is to make sure your author profile is complete and filled with the category names and keywords of topics you know well. We do author searches just
like our clients when we need someone with very specific industry knowledge. You can access your profile from the -"Public Profile-" link that appears just
below the Account tab from within your author account.
What if you are a 2- or 3-star author? None of this sounds like good news for you. First, note that when we look to create Teams for managed clients, we
will look to 3-star authors that we think can adhere to the clients? instructions and who know the subject matter. So if you are a 3-star author that is
diligent and reliable and the OpenOrder pool does not have a lot of 3-star assignments, check out the Textbroker Priority Assignments forum and look at the
TeamOrder casting calls, spending time on the writing sample or other requirements for applying. Second, if you do grab an OpenOrder, take more time
completing it. We understand that time is money, and 2- and 3-star orders do not make financial sense if they take a long time to complete. But one of the
most gratifying parts of our job is watching authors start at the 2- or 3-star level, hone their writing skills and work their way up to 4- or even 5-star
quality. Even before the recent change in clients? orders to focus on higher quality writing, we were rooting for you to get those promotions. It?s good
for all of us to have more 4- and 5-star authors because it means we get the many assignments placed at those levels done more quickly, which leads to even
more assignments in the future. We try in a number of ways to help you improve, from the comments we provide on your assignments, to the forums where you
can ask other authors for help with a particular assignment or grammar rule, to our author blog, accessible from the -"Blog-" link on the very bottom of every
page in your author account. We have also created a dedicated Author Services team this year in Las Vegas, managed by Melissa, who now has four people on
her team.
