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.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Working from home
Today, I'd like to discuss working from home. On the whole, it's a pretty good thing. I don't have to buy clothes for work (professional clothes, that is-I don't work naked) or gas to get there or food to eat while I'm there. I also don't have to deal with customers anymore. Much like Randal on "Clerks," I felt retail would have been great if it wasn't for the effing customers. Oh, there were some really nice ones. But when they were bad, they were horrid. And I don't have to pay taxes upfront. So far, our deductions have been large enough that I could just take the taxes out of our yearly refund, even without itemizing. This obviously means I need to make more money.
It can be hard to concentrate at times, especially with little ones around. But another benefit is that I can stop what I'm doing and attend to whatever I need to anytime, unless I'm having a frazzled day. In those cases, I will scream like a shrew at Mr. Snarky to go take care of it. I'm kidding. Maybe.
I started my adventures in working at home in 2007, when Princess was 1 and Lightning was a wee one. Mr. Snarky's job took care of the bills, but I wanted some breathing room and to contribute again. I started doing SEO writing for a woman on a pregnancy board. Boooooooring but I was getting paid.
A few months after that job dried up, I found ChaCha, a text message answer service, in August 2008. It was really great. I don't really recommend this job anymore, however, unless you're willing to work very long hours for very little pay.
ChaCha has always maintained that the job is meant for fun money only, but most Guides were paying decent amounts of bills when I started there. It's hard to adjust. With ChaCha losing customers who use Sprint/Nextel (meaning *I* can't even use the service I work with!), T-Mobile and Boost, I really don't know how much longer they can keep a free answer service paid for by advertisers going.
I have worked in every role ChaCha offers, with the exception of Voice Transcriber. I changed roles and took pay cuts due to concerns over being able to get enough traffic. Prior to my first role change, ChaCha instituted a pay scale based on question category, so most questions paid less than when I originally started anyway.
There was a period in late 2008 when traffic came to a virtual standstill. It's actually why I changed roles then and again later because I was scared of a repeat. It became pretty apparent to me that I needed to broaden my work at home horizons in case ChaCha went under. So in 2009 I began looking for other things I could do from home so that I could continue as a stay-at-home mom and not just work to pay the daycare.
I kept coming back to writing. It seemed to be the best fit since I had two children and one on the way. I couldn't work the phone jobs due to background noise, and the other text message services either didn't pay any better and required a schedule or were dirty texting (ew) and still didn't pay any better. Plus, I now had a little experience with SEO writing and always did well on essays and reports for school. I surfed work-at-home mom boards, looking for places that would hire with little experience (or none, since I could not verify my previous experience because I was no longer in contact with the lady) and chose to apply to Textbroker in July 2009. More on that in my next post.
It can be hard to concentrate at times, especially with little ones around. But another benefit is that I can stop what I'm doing and attend to whatever I need to anytime, unless I'm having a frazzled day. In those cases, I will scream like a shrew at Mr. Snarky to go take care of it. I'm kidding. Maybe.
I started my adventures in working at home in 2007, when Princess was 1 and Lightning was a wee one. Mr. Snarky's job took care of the bills, but I wanted some breathing room and to contribute again. I started doing SEO writing for a woman on a pregnancy board. Boooooooring but I was getting paid.
A few months after that job dried up, I found ChaCha, a text message answer service, in August 2008. It was really great. I don't really recommend this job anymore, however, unless you're willing to work very long hours for very little pay.
ChaCha has always maintained that the job is meant for fun money only, but most Guides were paying decent amounts of bills when I started there. It's hard to adjust. With ChaCha losing customers who use Sprint/Nextel (meaning *I* can't even use the service I work with!), T-Mobile and Boost, I really don't know how much longer they can keep a free answer service paid for by advertisers going.
I have worked in every role ChaCha offers, with the exception of Voice Transcriber. I changed roles and took pay cuts due to concerns over being able to get enough traffic. Prior to my first role change, ChaCha instituted a pay scale based on question category, so most questions paid less than when I originally started anyway.
There was a period in late 2008 when traffic came to a virtual standstill. It's actually why I changed roles then and again later because I was scared of a repeat. It became pretty apparent to me that I needed to broaden my work at home horizons in case ChaCha went under. So in 2009 I began looking for other things I could do from home so that I could continue as a stay-at-home mom and not just work to pay the daycare.
I kept coming back to writing. It seemed to be the best fit since I had two children and one on the way. I couldn't work the phone jobs due to background noise, and the other text message services either didn't pay any better and required a schedule or were dirty texting (ew) and still didn't pay any better. Plus, I now had a little experience with SEO writing and always did well on essays and reports for school. I surfed work-at-home mom boards, looking for places that would hire with little experience (or none, since I could not verify my previous experience because I was no longer in contact with the lady) and chose to apply to Textbroker in July 2009. More on that in my next post.
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