Writing Text for Textbroker

After about two weeks of writing text with textbroker, it seems like a good time to review my experience so far. Part of this motivation comes from the fact that as of this morning, I have been promoted to a "four star" level, which means I can bid on jobs that pay more, and demand more in terms of the quality of writing they are looking for.

So far I have written a total of eight texts for textbroker. Here is a summary of articles I have written so far:

1) Heavily defined keyword texts. The client will provide several keywords like "cheap travel, cheap vacation, cheap travel reservations" and you will be assigned to write a short text of 100-150 words which focuses exclusively on using these keywords a certain amount of times while creating something that is still intelligible to read. There are many of these types of short jobs available on textbroker. The pay for these shorts is quite low, and they are somewhat mind numbing, but you can do a lot of them quickly (if it doesn't drive you insane first).

2) Lightly defined keyword texts. Here the client usually has one keyword (like "organic gardening") that they want you to write an article about. Usually the client will specify how long the article is to be (e.g. 500 words) and how many times the keyword should appear (no more than four, for example). The pay rate may be a bit higher than the heavily defined short keyword texts. If the topic is something I am knowledgeable about already, these articles can be quite enjoyable as they allow for much more creativity then the heavily defined keyword texts.

3) Research based reviews of websites. I have accepted two jobs which consisted of evaluating and writing reviews of websites. These jobs were at a low pay scale, but I took them because I thought they would be fun (and they were). In terms of paying the rent, they are probably not a good choice as the time spent researching the website and writing the review was quite intensive compared to the previous formats, but I did learn some interesting facts while composing the text, so that was an intellectual bonus of sorts.

I imagine there are other types of jobs available as well that I have not yet come across. But I can see that one issue that will be a struggle for me is the tension between cheap, quick, mind-numbing freelancing jobs that pay, and creative writing outlets that don't (or pay very little)!

October Summary

Although I only have been writing freelance online for a couple of weeks, I thought it might be useful to summarize on a monthly basis the work I've done for various companies and do some reflections on this summary.

In October, I estimated I spent approximately five hours doing paid writing jobs. Here is a breakdown of the earnings:

Textbroker.com - $8.30 for four articles (most articles were 100-150 words in length)
Mechanical Turks - $5.45 for four articles (most articles between 100-150 words in length)
Today.com - $10.86 for nine blog entries plus hits
Associated Content - $4.31 for one article about 500 words in length (upfront pay, will continue earning via hits)

Total Earned in October: $28.92

Reflections: In terms of hourly wage, I earned just under $6 an hour, which is hardly a living wage. In terms of actual writing, most of the articles I were between 100-150 words in length, and I estimate my average pay per word to be 1 cent.

I expect that for November, my hourly wage will improve quite a bit as much of my time was learning how to write for these companies using keywords and in the proper format. I would like to raise my pay per word quite a bit, and will try to look into other outlets this month to see if I can boost that rate.