Working from home-eCopywriters

Whew, sorry so long since my last post, but I've been workworkworking and think I've found my best gig ever. But today I'm blogging about eCopywriters, so here we go.

I wrote for eCopywriters only for a short time in late 2009. The company had plenty of 2 star assignments for writers, as it seems to now. The supply of work was never an issue for me, but getting paid was. I wrote less than a dozen articles for the company, and was paid for them in multiple transactions over three months, with the last payment coming over two months after my last article.

I emailed several times to discuss the payment situation, and was assured that my payment would be made on the next payout date. Sometimes I got nothing, other times I got a partial payment. Now, this may have been due to the way that they invoiced their clients, but the bottom line was that I could not afford to wait months for my pay, especially at that point in my career, when I wasn't making much per article as it was.

I was going to say I don't necessarily recommend staying away from eCopywriters, especially as I do not know if they've improved their payment system. Plus, plenty of work was available and I did eventually get paid for all the work I did for them. However, Google is telling me that many other people have had the same experience, with some posts dated after my time with them. So if you choose to try eCopywriters, I would do so with caution at first, or only if you are comfortable waiting for payment.

After eCopywriters, I joined Demand Media Studios. More on that next time.

More Working from Home - Textbroker

As I mentioned in my last post, I applied to Textbroker, a Web content site, in July 2009. Their application process was and still is very easy. Simply register at their site and submit a short writing sample. I was brought on as a level 3 author on a scale of 2-5, and have since worked my way up to a level 5. Textbroker pays authors from 0.07 to 5.0 cents per word, depending on level. Level 3 writers start at at 1.0 cent per word.

Textbroker writers must request payout to their Paypal accounts to get paid. Currently, there is a minimum payout amount of $10, meaning that if you don't have that much in pending pay, you must wait until the next payout date. The site pays twice a month, though, with all requests due in by the 5th or 20th. They state to allow 5 days for payments to be processed, but I have never once been paid later than the 6th or 21st, even when those dates fall on the weekend. UPDATE: Textbroker now allows authors to request payout weekly if they are owed $10 or more. Funds are transferred to Paypal on the next business day after the Thursday 11:59 PM Pacific time cutoff. They are a highly reliable company in terms of paying out promptly.

Of course, many clients who use content sites are on a tight budget, and some don't deal with this very well. It's downright insulting to see clients place orders for 2-star pay, then make it clear they expect 5-star quality. You can generally avoid taking these orders by reading the descriptions carefully-if they seem too complex for the pay level, simply pass them up. Some orders also specify too many keywords for the desired word count, to the point that if the keyword density was met, the article would be a bunch of senseless rubbish. Avoid these as well.

I am extremely pleased with Textbroker, and even though I've been accepted at several other writing sites, it is still one of my favorites. I check the site daily for available jobs and recommend it to everyone I know who is interested in getting into writing.

The next writing site I joined was eCopywriters. More on that later.