Freelance writing and conveyor belt content - Mounds, you're going to hate this

[moonrambler]

I think James is helping make my point because the process he describes is nothing like writing for Demand, or for many other writing gigs either. And James, you even left out the part about finding markets and sending out queries and having queries turned down and sometimes having an article rejected and then when they do accept an article, you don't have any idea how long it's going to take to get paid.

The way you describe it, is I can write a 400-word article for 50 cents a word and make $200, but I have to jump through all those hoops you set out there, and more. Or I can walk from my kitchen to the guest room with a cup of coffee and spend 7 or 10 hours writing how-to articles for Demand and make $200 and I know they will send me the money within one week.

[Daffy Duck]

Wow, this is very very interesting. I used to write for a large technology blog that paid me $40 an article, but it took me a good 3-4 hours to write a solid article up to their high standards, so it only ended up being like $10 an hour. I quit after a few months. I can crank out a good quality 500 word article in less than an hour though. I've done it frequently for my own sites.

Based on what I know and have seen, earning $80 an hour for your writing is unrealistic unless you're an author of a famous book or an author for a famous blog (like Steve). Generally speaking, if you're writing for someone else, then even making $50 an hour is on the very high end. I'm with Moon on this one.

I feel a rate of $15 an hour is actually quite decent. No, if you live in New York City, you're gonna be homeless at that rate. But in many places in this country (and ESPECIALLY in some other countries), $15-$20 an hour is enough to support a household. It wouldn't be a glamorous life... but hey, you're writing articles for the Internet in your pajamas.

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

My idea:

1) Write for them part-time just enough to live off of comfortably.

2) Build my online businesses in my spare time!

3) Once the online business provides enough passive income to live off of comfortably, stop working! Actually just keep working but only on things I want to work on

I'm working on something similar to this, though for #1 I'm working in my normal career. I really enjoy my normal career though, so I don't find myself in a mad rush to build my online businesses. I'm happy whether or not my online stuff ever earns me more than $3,000-$4,000 a year as it has in the past.

[WarrenG]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Or I can walk from my kitchen to the guest room with a cup of coffee and spend 7 or 10 hours writing how-to articles for Demand and make $200 and I know they will send me the money within one week.

Speaking of which moon, I just had my first article approved! Woo hoo!

I'm impressed at the speed of the process. I started this thread only about 50 hours ago, and I've already got signed up and completed a job done. I'll get paid on Monday.

By the way, that must be a huge cup of coffee...

[James81]

Originally Posted by Mounds

Sheesh, sorry I sent you off the deep end there James. I'll put a new pair of underwear in the mail for you.

For starters, those star athletes are overpaid. Plain and simple. My co-worker personally knows a player from the Philadelphia Flyers and he even says it's a joke.

As for the rest, can every writer on the internet make $150,000/year? I don't think so. That's what I found unrealistic. The way I read it is, "Write articles and don't accept anything less than $80/hr". If you are an excellent writer with experience, then by all means, charge more. Should I, with no experience at all, start writing and charging $80/hour? Should I expect to succeed? Or should I work the trenches?
What I also see happen a lot is people want to go from unemployed to CEO. Anything less isn't worth your time. I've met them irl and they tend to waste tons of time and opportunity. So ya, I will speak out against that. All it takes for a thousand people to jump on board is one success. Once again, not realistic!

Well, first of all, you're not listening and compehending what I wrote. You're viewing it through your filter, I'm viewing it through mine.

You're talking about the nature of apples.

I'm talking about the nature of googles.

Probably not real productive to continue this discussion.

[Mounds]

Let me know if this helps ease the frustration:

I never said professional writing was easy. If you do a good job, by all means you should charge a high price for your work.

Well, first of all, you're not listening and compehending what I wrote. You're viewing it through your filter, I'm viewing it through mine.

So it is in the world of online communication.

[moonrambler]

Originally Posted by WarrenG

Speaking of which moon, I just had my first article approved! Woo hoo!

I'm impressed at the speed of the process. I started this thread only about 50 hours ago, and I've already got signed up and completed a job done. I'll get paid on Monday.

Excellent!! That really was fast. Pay is on Tuesday though.

By the way, that must be a huge cup of coffee...

Har! Well, I left out trivia about going back to the kitchen for lunch and being able to hang laundry outside and fill the bird feeders and watch a chipmunk stuff his face with spilled sunflower seeds!

[James81]

Originally Posted by Mounds

Let me know if this helps ease the frustration:

I never said professional writing was easy. If you do a good job, by all means you should charge a high price for your work.

There you go. You just said what I said.

[Mounds]

Originally Posted by James81

There you go. You just said what I said.

Internet communication isn't so bad. Just gotta be straight to the point.

-Tim

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by Daffy Duck

I'm working on something similar to this, though for #1 I'm working in my normal career. I really enjoy my normal career though, so I don't find myself in a mad rush to build my online businesses. I'm happy whether or not my online stuff ever earns me more than $3,000-$4,000 a year as it has in the past.

Most people using SBI, and probably any online business venture that is just starting up, are doing it in their spare time while working a regular job, so you are not alone!

Also, if you make $50,000 a year, and manage to build a site that makes $5,000 a year, you have basically given yourself a 10% raise! So just wanting some extra cash, not necessarily wanting to replace your job, is totally understandable.

Originally Posted by WarrenG

By the way, that must be a huge cup of coffee...

Lol.

Originally Posted by James81;

Blah blah blah Pay me a lot! Blah

Originally Posted by Mounds;

Blah blah blah No go f- yourself! Blah

As for the big argument, I think James has been talking about writing high-quality, original and insightful content for a big-name publication like a national magazine.

For that situation, yes it certainly is true that you should probably be paid very well for how much work goes into that.

Meanwhile Mounds has been talking about the general atmosphere of writing content for random people online who have a website and need content for it. In that case, you usually are out of your mind if you think anyone will pay $80 an hour or $0.50 a word. Often times these jobs are just individuals (like me!) who need website content for a website idea they have, and have a couple hundred bucks available to hire someone to write that content.


So, I think you both have been talking about different aspects of writing.

The thing is, probably 99% of people who write for money will never actually get published in a big name magazine or any physical print media that pays $250 for an article. So for the vast majority of freelance writers, a guaranteed $15/article pay is pretty good, especially considering that many writers never get an ongoing gig that lasts forever and always have a little bit of "will I find another buyer?" uncertainty after they finish a job they are working on.

[Mounds]

Lol, I like your representation of James and I. On top of that, I think you pretty much nailed what we were both saying.

From now on, I will send all my posts to your private inbox so you can translate them into James speak. James should send his posts through your inbox to translate them to Mounds speak. How does $0.03 a word sound?

[WarrenG]

For me, it depends how you define 'pay'. In pure monetary terms, this is lower than the more glamorous and involved writing gigs, but I completely hate some of the downsides to that which moon and other mentioned - having to hustle for work and so on. I hate job interviews... to have something along those lines built into my job would suck and stress me out.

Say this is about $15 / hour. If I had a job where I was on $40 / hour, and they said we have a new deal for you: "you can work from home, from a beach, from a pub, anywhere. Day or night. You can take holidays whenever you want for as long as you want, you can take over-time whenever you want. But there's a catch - you have to cut your pay to $15 / hour" I'd snap that up instantly. Freedom and flexibility are two of the things I value most.

[SatvikBeri]

Originally Posted by WarrenG

For me, it depends how you define 'pay'. In pure monetary terms, this is lower than the more glamorous and involved writing gigs, but I completely hate some of the downsides to that which moon and other mentioned - having to hustle for work and so on. I hate job interviews... to have something along those lines built into my job would suck and stress me out.

Say this is about $15 / hour. If I had a job where I was on $40 / hour, and they said we have a new deal for you: "you can work from home, from a beach, from a pub, anywhere. Day or night. You can take holidays whenever you want for as long as you want, you can take over-time whenever you want. But there's a catch - you have to cut your pay to $15 / hour" I'd snap that up instantly. Freedom and flexibility are two of the things I value most.

I think many employers would gladly take up that deal at $30/hour. Some would even do it at $40/hour if you can convince them that you can be more productive, which you could.

[mikethedrummer44]

Well I can make $80 per hour, but I won't be working for 40 hours. Depending on how fast I write articles, I make more in an hour. I guess that's not really a realistic way of determining how much you make per hour, though.

I've been freelance writing for nearly a year now. I started out writing 400 word articles at $1.60 each.

It was mainly because I had no idea that my $1.60 articles were a lot better than most people's $6 articles, so I started low. Then I thought getting paid $5 per article was amazing, because it was almost five times as good, and I could crank out like 10 of them in an hour. I now get paid around $10-20 per article, and have constant work. Right now I'd be earning about $2500 per month, but I like to outsource. That's not a ton of money, but it's definitely enough for me right now.

The thing is, I don't really like to write. I'm really using freelance writing as a way to make money while I design a system that will allow me to mass hire and write fairly low quality articles. I'll be able to use the knowledge I've gained from writing for a year to do this, and the business model does have serious potential.

[curiouslyrandom]

Originally Posted by votoshka

What I wanna know is where those $600 article gigs are, curiouslyrandom?? I just don't know how to actually FIND work like that.

I have found myself some reasonably paid writing work, but nothing of that calibre!

Not 600 dollars, 600 words! I get paid around 30 cents a word for the particular magazine that I write those articles for. Other magazines pay different rates, but that one is the one I also edit for, so they tend to send me nice checks.

Although I do have a private client who wrote me a check for $500 this week as a retainer to help her with a book she's writing. That was rather nice.

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by WarrenG

For me, it depends how you define 'pay'. In pure monetary terms, this is lower than the more glamorous and involved writing gigs, but I completely hate some of the downsides to that which moon and other mentioned - having to hustle for work and so on. I hate job interviews... to have something along those lines built into my job would suck and stress me out.

Say this is about $15 / hour. If I had a job where I was on $40 / hour, and they said we have a new deal for you: "you can work from home, from a beach, from a pub, anywhere. Day or night. You can take holidays whenever you want for as long as you want, you can take over-time whenever you want. But there's a catch - you have to cut your pay to $15 / hour" I'd snap that up instantly. Freedom and flexibility are two of the things I value most.

I'm with you man.

Many people spend an hour or more just driving to and from work every day. If you can cut out that wasted time and also wasted gas money, that's an extra "unseen" savings/monetary benefit as well.

Originally Posted by SatvikBeri

I think many employers would gladly take up that deal at $30/hour. Some would even do it at $40/hour if you can convince them that you can be more productive, which you could.

Many managers and companies are still waaay behind the times.

I read a story recently about a guy who got a job offer paying something like $60,000 a year to work in a tech-related job. He said since he could do the entire job from home, he asked the employer if he could work remotely from home since the job he got was something like a 3 hour drive in each direction (they wanted him to move for it).

He said he offered to take a $10,000 a year pay cut if they would just let him work from home. They practically laughed at him and said no. He was like "Wtf are you retarded?"

[Daffy Duck]

If they let him work from home, how are they going to interrupt him and bring him into useless meetings every day to sap his productivity?

[mikethedrummer44]

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

I read a story recently about a guy who got a job offer paying something like $60,000 a year to work in a tech-related job. He said since he could do the entire job from home, he asked the employer if he could work remotely from home since the job he got was something like a 3 hour drive in each direction (they wanted him to move for it).

He said he offered to take a $10,000 a year pay cut if they would just let him work from home. They practically laughed at him and said no. He was like "Wtf are you retarded?"

Welcome to the real world, kids!

Gross.

[James81]

Originally Posted by Daffy Duck

If they let him work from home, how are they going to interrupt him and bring him into useless meetings every day to sap his productivity?

I've got the solution to that... Teleconferencing!

So, even at home they could sap his productivity if they wanted to.