Don't buy any articles.

portalweb said:

I'm asking her to sign up to become a new BHW member here, then comment on this thread. To be honest, she is kinda afraid of BHW due to the "dark side" here. I told her that there are cool people here who would be very sincere to her.

She will try to sign up here later today.

Until then, please stay tuned.

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Tell her to beware of 40 year old men who are going through mid-life crisis. Rest everything is fine. On a serious note, this is the best forum on the net which has a plethora of ageless information. Truly Gem. I think every IMer must have an account on BHW because there's so much to learn here.

There are some decent article writers on Fiverr, although some do take a while to complete the job. My favourite one can take a while sometimes.

If anyone's interested in articles at 4c per word, copyscape passed by a duo (one Australian and one retired English teacher from the US) feel free to PM me and I'll pass you the details. They are usually on time and always pass Copyscape.

You see, this is the problem with buying articles. The majority of clients are generally cheap fuckers who don't want to pay for quality service and work. Fiverr only pays them $4 per every $5 gig but people wonder why they get jumbled garbage like the example sentence you posted.

"I can has your task? I write you many gud qualities articlez for 1 per 100 wordz!"

I myself have been on both the writing and hiring end for articles. I've hired over 50 people more than likely over the years and I've written thousands of articles over the years. I just recently raised my prices after talking to other established quality writers and finding out what they charge. You would drop your jaw on the floor if you knew how much SEO Content writers charge or how much some other quality writers charge. I'm talking in the upwards of $10-25 per 100 words. No, that's not a joke.

Currently, I myself am charging $3 per 100 words which is what they told me is "writing for peanuts", but I need to build a portfolio.

The problem with $1 per 100 word clients:
In my general experience, the clients who only pay $1 per 100 words are complete fucking nightmares. They usually have a ridiculous amount of requirements and things they want done with their article. Usually, they're never happy with content, no matter how it's written. They're a lot harder to get a hold of.

The problem with $1 per 100 word writers:
They disappear for days or weeks at a time and often produce jumbled up cluster fuck garbage.

Cheap people suck; plain and simple.

If you hire people for such an abysmal rate, no kidding you're going to get shit quality like the example you posted or people who copy paste their work. I used to have writers try to copy straight from Wikipedia links, so trust me I feel your pain. I then realized what quality writing costs, raised my prices (to $3 per 100 words until I can get a portfolio and a site made). The clients who've hired me for 2-3/100 words have been easy to work with and happy with my service.

Think of it like a shitty job. Fast Food service for example has some of the highest requirements to work there and is one of the lowest paying jobs in the country (being minimum wage).

Corporate executive jobs usually require an extensive amount of experience but the job is far more relaxed, easier and the employees being paid more, get more things done to the jobs standards.

I've purchased articles from iWriter and to be honest the english in some of them was atrocious (worse than the Downs Syndrome snippet above). I think I rejected 3 times more than I purchased. The payment for writers there is stupidly low just over $1. You do get natural english speakers but I think a lot of them are Indian going by some of the names. I re-wrote them just to make sure they weren't copies and to make sure the english was in correct.

kiminono said:

I've purchased articles from iWriter and to be honest the english in some of them was atrocious (worse than the Downs Syndrome snippet above). I think I rejected 3 times more than I purchased. The payment for writers there is stupidly low just over $1. You do get natural english speakers but I think a lot of them are Indian going by some of the names. I re-wrote them just to make sure they weren't copies and to make sure the english was in correct.

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Oh good ol iWriter. I get put off before writing anyone's content because I see most clients have an approval rating of lower than 50%. I understand a lot of them get probably some of the worst fucked up quality articles they've ever seen but I've had articles rejected by a few people for no reason. What a shitty thing to do, especially for that kind of pay.

I understand now though; they give you an image of the article rather than the article so people don't do that as much anymore. I'm a "Premium" writer on there but I can't bring myself to write for less than $1.00 per 100 words as a premium member. Hell, even their "Elite" only pays like $1.25 or $1.50 per 100 words. That's still writing for Ramen Noodles at that point.

I?m here to defend and thank portalweb for his post about spun articles. (Yes, I?m that writer. No, I don?t charge $25-$50/post. Those are my consulting rates, and have been removed as misleading.) I noticed how quickly the conversation turned to focus on rates over quality, so here?s my 2 cents:

I live in the US, where the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. That rate- minimum wage- is appropriate for workers with no/minimal valuable skills or experience. Not to say ?bottom feeders? but even a fast food worker will expect more money as they work their way up from cashier to fast food management.

I?ve been a professional writer for nearly 10 years, which doesn?t mean shit. I consider myself a premium writer because I?m passionate about what I do, and because I never stop learning and improving my own skills as a writer. More importantly, I consider myself a great writer because my clients aren?t just ?satisfied? with the work I do?they are always super-excited about the effort I put in.

But I won?t work with just anybody. Only those who care about long term results will appreciate working with me, because long term results are what I focus on.

To put written words in an edible analogy, I would not work in a fast food restaurant and I would not settle for minimum wage. I would own a 5 star restaurant, and serve only meals guaranteed to satisfy and keep you coming back for more. Who wants greasy fries and a mystery ingredient burger that insects won?t even touch when you can have filet mignon and fresh locally grown asparagus with homemade hollandaise sauce?
I believe the point wasn?t about my rates, or anyone?s rates, other than you get what you pay for. So what do you expect? Any writer who can churn out 100 words for only $1 is only going to half ass it, because that?s cheap. But for the skills, experience, and care that goes into something valuable? it?s going to cost a bit more and be worth every damn penny spent. It will be done right the first time, and it will actually matter.

Content on the web isn?t JUST about SEO.

?Unique? isn?t JUST about passing copyscape.

Originality isn?t JUST about twisting competitors words around so they seem different enough to make your own.

If you want to skate by and go nowhere, feel free to stick to the $5 articles that are flavorless. But if you want to be different, you need personality. A brand. You need people to read your content and say ?Wow, this is great!? (not ?Wow, this is terrible!?).

Look at The Oatmeal. Look at Moosejaw. Look at Groupon. Look at RedHeadWriting. Look at brands that have fans. They are the kind of unique that matters? and you will never get there looking for shortcuts on content writing.

Good one Quality content writer.

Welcome to BHW....

QualityContentWriter - Welcome to BHW

I'm Glad QualityContentWriter understands.

The problem is, a lot of newbies here spend so much time browsing the freebies and downloads section, they feel entitled to free and cheap things. They're the same people who download WSO's and get mad when they find out the WSO is garbage

A writer with absolutely no skills, no clue on what sticks out to readers and engages them will be a bottom of the barrel writer. Not only that, but dealing with people who only pay and charge $1.00 per 100 words is just fucking awful. It's just a general cluster fuck of a nightmare.

People think "You get what you pay for" is too cliche but it's true. A lot of the people here download the freebie tools they see here and get too accustomed to downloading free things looking for that easy money button. That's why a lot of people get into Blackhat in the first place. Not because they want to use some frivolous methods to help their earnings or cash in on a side business. They're just looking for an easy button.

NOTE: I said "A lot" implying that most of the people I notice here are like that. It's definitely not everyone. There's still some good people on this forum. Far less than 2008, but there's still good people around here who understand.

BigBuddy said:

Good one Quality content writer.

Welcome to BHW....

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Thank you

coreygeer said:

A writer with absolutely no skills, no clue on what sticks out to readers and engages them will be a bottom of the barrel writer. Not only that, but dealing with people who only pay and charge $1.00 per 100 words is just awful. It's just a general cluster of a nightmare. People think "You get what you pay for" is too cliche but it's true.

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Thank you I have a theory that the problem isn't just "cheap" (though that's a BIG part of it) but also focusing on word count. I see a TON of posts about ($x for XXX words) and therein lies the mistake. You're paying for words. Instead, you should be paying for RESULTS. Words can be fluffed up and jumbled together very quickly. True quality isn't so simple, but it's only appreciated by those who recognize the value of long term results.

As I saw somewhere else, there's a big difference between black hat and white hat,. and the long term goals are different. This might explain why some people, who are looking to sell more of a product/service, will recognize that quality content isn't measured by word count or even SERP, it's measured by conversions. Others, who surround themselves with like-minded bad ideas, can't imagine spending more than $X for XXX words because they are used to those jumbled up fluff words- not results.

in fiverr there are only few article writers but 80% of them scrapes articles, spins it and checks through copyscape.

davie9x said:

in fiverr there are only few article writers but 80% of them scrapes articles, spins it and checks through copyscape.

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As someone who doesn't trust others to spin my articles and does it all manually. It takes me very little time to detect a manually spun article, just by certain combination phrases and synonyms that appear in it (they make sense, but no writer would ever use them in a quality article). Unless of course they build their own synonym/phrase database from scratch.

I personally use iwriter with very strict guidelines on what I want and if ANY guideline is broken, I do not accept (I make it very clear in the isntructions, some don't even read it). I pay $0.6 per 100 words. Now before everyone jumps in and calls me cheap, I do this for 2 reasons.

1) I have used services on forums which charge $2-$3 per 100 words, and usually the first and 2nd batches come out great prompting me to leave incredible and raving reviews. What usually happens from this point is, people see the reviews and they all jump in too. This is around the time I start to order in bulk (50+ at a time) because I feel as if I've finally found a quality writer, although a bit higher costing than others (still worth it for good content). Then the problem arises... any good article writing service will always reach a point where the demand is simply higher than the supply. The article writer generally has about 4 options they can take (only 3 of them maintains the quality): Raise the price of articles, stop taking new orders, hire new high quality article writers (time consuming due to screening processes required), or hire cheap freelancers.

From my experience, most services will hire cheap freelancers or in combination with one of the other options, from what I've seen (I am not saying all services do this, but a majority of them from various forums have gone down this path). I have jumped from service to service in my past and have always gotten great articles written. However it only lasts until the service becomes really popular with hundreds of orders being made per day. Most early content buyers by this time do not even check the articles anymore because they assume the quality is maintained. However, if you compare the first few articles you received vs the next 300-400, you'll notice a huge decline in quality. I stopped buying through 3rd party article sellers simply because I don't feel it's worth it to pay someone 2-3x the rate, and have them outsource it to someone who's willing to do it for a fraction. (I'd rather go out and find these writers myself and pay them that rate, which brings me to my next point)

2) Although a lot of writers are unwilling to write a good article for $0.6 per 100 words, there will be one that pops up every now and again willing to write at that price but will provide you an article that's easily *worth* $3-5 per 100 word. This is the reason I use iwriter. To find these gems. These excellent writers who give it their best regardless of the pay. These are the premium writers in the making and I add them to my favorite so once they get their 30 reviews and 4.5 star, I start manually sending them work at the higher price and I know I will get a quality article each time because of the relationship I have with the writer. (direct and not through a 3rd party provider who might start sourcing my article to a lower rate writer simply because his queue is too long.) I notice a lot of services reserve their top writers for new clients, probably because they know most of their old clients are already satisfied and won't even check the quality anymore because of past articles. Once again, I am not saying article services are bad and they all do this, I am just speaking from my experience and what I notice to be the case based on the quality drop which happens with the services that I've worked with.

phpfail said:

Google can definitely recognize different fonts, because they use source code to read the sites, and fonts are in the source code, its just plain text. View the source on both websites, and you will see what I mean. They don't read the site as the browser see's it, they read the raw coding that the browse is interpreting.

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phpfail definitely know what he's talkin bout.

When Google bot fetch your content, it's not the same as you seen on your browser.

I figured this out today lol. I think he used Miraclespinner.com, this is an encoding tool and make the article looks the same but unique for computers.

Character encoding "spinning" is old as shit. You'd expect anyone who's outsourcing articles to know that already.

skadster said:

When I wrote articles on Fiverr they where always unique. I soon realized though that me researching crap like Mongolian slippers, whilst SEOing the articles to the best of my ability simply wasn't worth it, especially after everyone had their cut and it was converted to UK pounds.

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Really gives the phrase: "A penny for your thoughts" a refreshingly new take

I am on the buyer side of content writing. Even though I use some of the paid plagiarism software, I don't really know too much about character spinning and such stuff. Anybody care to explain.