iWriter - Content requesters ridiculous standards.

Hey guys I am new to the article writing scene and I plan on doing it on the side of other projects to supplement my income. I just want to ask what your experience is with iWriter.

I wrote a 550 word article this morning and I took my time with it and thought the quality was quite good. I made a couple of punctuation mistakes here and there, but I am writing these articles for less than 3 dollars for 500 words. Why the hell are they setting their expectations so high?

FYI the requester gave me 1 star. How do you long term writers not get annoyed at people like that?

It brings your rating right down and it takes a long time to recover.

Hi

My advice is don't touch that place with a barge pole. I have been writing content for years for my own sites and other peoples, as well as sometimes using freelancers myself for writing jobs when I've been time strapped - so I have plenty of experience. Brad Callen, the owner of iWriter sends emails to clients basically encouraging them to take advantage of writers and get articles written for pennies. It's just a piss take for providers and you never know what type of douche you are writing for who will treat you like a bit of shit in return for your efforts.

My advice is to get half a dozen or so samples of your writing together and email SEO companies offering yourself as a content provider. These people always need content and they don't want to be bothered messing around with freelancer sites like ODesk and elance. I find the pay offered is usually well in line with the work...i.e. Some might not want to pay much but they don't expect you to spend too much time on the articles either. Others might be looking for more quality content, but are usually prepared to pay a reasonable rate.

Thanks for the heads up.

It's a real shame that writer's are being taken advantage of on iWriter. I can see why people get rejected if they spin useless rubbish, but when you spend a good 30-40 minutes working on an article that you know is worth more than 3 dollars only for it to get rejected for the most ridiculous reasons, it begins to irritate me.

I think I will take your advice and start looking for SEO companies looking for long term writers.

Yes, I also understand that if you get a spun article you aren't going to be thrilled, but a large number of the buyers on that site are a joke. Some of them must spend longer writing their nitpicking instructions than it would take them to write the damn article themselves...seriously!

It's a shame because the concept is good, but until someone who has at least equal respect for the writers and buyers starts a similar service it won't work for most providers - I found it when it first came out and told two friends in my town about it (lots of people struggling here in Spain and having to work for pennies) but within a few weeks we all agreed it was a waste of time and effort.

It's also a crap deal that the commission the site takes on each transaction is only paid by the writer - WTF??? So you are expected to write 500 words for $3 which often takes an hour or more, as you have to go through many listings trying to decipher the instructions before finding a job that is doable - and at the end iWriter or rather Brad Callen takes 19% of that, leaving you with a whopping $2.43.

Thankfully, after putting myself out there a bit sending emails, I now have two SEO companies and a private guy that send me regular work. They don't ask for the moon, they pay me a fair rate, and even better I hardly have to research now, as the topics and niches tend to repeat themselves. So I just fire up Dragon Naturally Speaking and speak my articles into a word doc.

Good riddance to BC and iWriter - Let the buyers on iWriter get what they deserve for the rate they are willing to pay - spun garbage.

Any advice you could give me for managing to get such SEO firm deals? By random chance I found an SEO company's job offer and they seem to be offering pretty neat terms. I am in the process of writing an application but I am unsure of what exactly to tell them.

Avoid writing for iWriter as much as possible. Few months back I came to know about this website and I thought that it would be a great website. However, as I kept using it, I noticed many flaws in the website and its processing. iWriter sucks whether you are buyer or a seller. I wrote around 15 articles on the website over a period of 1 week. 3 articles out of them were rejected out-rightly. The buyers just wrote "poor grammar", and my efforts for writing those articles went in vain. They pay a meager $2.41 per 500 words and expect writers to come up with articles worth $8-10. I have a friend of mine who buys articles from iWriter. He says that the writers on the website are really terrible and most of them send crap, which forces buyers to reject their articles. It's a common case on iWriter. At the moment, I am writing for off-line clients because they are the best bet and they pay good too. Look for SEO companies in your state and send them a professional proposal. This will be a great deal.

Yep, I am not going back to iWriter.

Yesterday I began emailing SEO firms and Webmasters about content creation. No luck yet but it's early days.

michaelr1988 said:

Yep, I am not going back to iWriter.

Yesterday I began emailing SEO firms and Webmasters about content creation. No luck yet but it's early days.

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When I started mailing SEO and Internet marketing companies, I noticed that most of them replied after a week or even after couple of weeks time, so I would suggest you to be patient and keep trying rather than relying upon shit like iWriter. Cheers

What a lot of people do is request articles, copy the image of the article that is given for proofreading, reject the article and run the article through an OCR (image to text reader).

Its the bum's way of getting articles.

skgoa said:

Any advice you could give me for managing to get such SEO firm deals? By random chance I found an SEO company's job offer and they seem to be offering pretty neat terms. I am in the process of writing an application but I am unsure of what exactly to tell them.

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I didn't email any companies that were advertising, as that way you're competing against a whole bunch of other writers. I just googled "SEO company UK" and "SEO company US" and made a list of about 50 emails. I put the country names in because if you google "SEO company" without them, many results you get are form India and the Philipines, and these guys are able to hire local people who can work for less due to a lower cost of living. So I recommend trying to work with SEO guys from the US, Canada, AUS, UK etc to get better rates.

In my email I wrote something like this:

Hi Mike (try to find a name if you can)

My name is Steve Davis and I am a web content provider. I have been writing articles, blog posts, and short reports for busy webmasters as well as for my own sites since 2004.

I am contacting you because I have recently finished a project working with an SEO company, and as you guys always need original, well-written and unique content for backlinks or to build your client's brand, I am hoping to find similar work.

I understand that sometimes you need jobs completed quickly, and can assure you I am able to meet deadlines. I am online 9 hours daily, including weekends, and you would be able to contact me via Skype or phone if you should ever want to discuss a project.

Having a provider on board will hopefully help you as you won't have to mess around with finding a freelancer every time you need content.

I would not expect to receive a set amount of work from you every month, but rather am hoping you will think of me first when you need written content. My rate is $1.25 for 100 words. However, I am willing to negotiate this if your requirements would not involve much research.

I have attached several samples of my work.

I hope my offer is interesting and relevant for your company's needs, and look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards
Steve

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My offer was $1 for 100 words, because as I use Dragon and have trained it very well, I am able to get articles done pretty quickly. I have also accumulated a small arsenal of tools like article directory scrapers (for research and rewriting) to help me get decent stuff cranked out fast. I used to spend ages writing an article, but have thankfully now taught myself to get them done as fast as possible, so even at $1/100 words I am now able to earn a decent hourly rate. Obviously the cheaper you are the more likely you are to get hired, but I would not go under $1/100 words and if you are still slow, charge a bit more while also looking for programs that will help you speed up.

ETA: Is also good to add a phone number. Both my main guys have called me up after they sent me work, and it helps build a working relationship - seems lots of freelancers won't give out proper contact details yet it's something they seem to appreciate.

If you are writing on a website like IWriter that needs to keep a certain standard in order to ensure their customers only get the best, you should expect to be held at a high standard. If they allow any slack with the writers, the end product would show it. Therefore, I think it is great that they such high standards, because it keeps the quality of their product high and it also encourages you as a writer to do the best you can.

StefanPiek said:

If you are writing on a website like IWriter that needs to keep a certain standard in order to ensure their customers only get the best, you should expect to be held at a high standard. If they allow any slack with the writers, the end product would show it. Therefore, I think it is great that they such high standards, because it keeps the quality of their product high and it also encourages you as a writer to do the best you can.

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You aren't perhaps going for the $25 are you mate?

http://www.iwriter.com/blog/2013/12/wed-like-to-give-you-free-money/

I'm using them for the last week or so. I've put around $500 in, and only request articles from Elite writers, with 500+ words.
I can say I'm satisfied, I maybe rejected one or two from 30 articles I got. What's better, that I get a lot of positive feedback from the readers and little complaints, but that's normal, you can't make everyone happy

StefanPiek said:

If you are writing on a website like IWriter that needs to keep a certain standard in order to ensure their customers only get the best, you should expect to be held at a high standard. If they allow any slack with the writers, the end product would show it. Therefore, I think it is great that they such high standards, because it keeps the quality of their product high and it also encourages you as a writer to do the best you can.

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Why bump a year old thread?

Haz136 said:

You aren't perhaps going for the $25 are you mate?

http://www.iwriter.com/blog/2013/12/wed-like-to-give-you-free-money/

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lolol I was going to say the same.


Let's face it, if a company has to bribe people to post positive reviews then clearly they have a problem.

Avoid IWriter like the plague. The only freelancer site worth using is Odesk, and that's only if you have the time to build up a very solid reputation.

Yeah iWriter is for the clients not the writers.