Writing Articles for Freelancer.com

*Star06*

It's always good to know about all options, just a pity that AC is only US for payment, would be a good one otherwise. Though they might change it in the future. Demand has only just recently started taking UK writers.

I do agree about it being hard to make a full time living on just content writing if you are at the lower paying end of things - and you get that with most of the starting out content sites at the start. For anything decent you are looking at $15-20 per article, which you can find through certain sites or private clients etc, and that is just the lower end of the line.

I need to be making at least £100 a day ($161) to make a full time living from home.

This is how I want my ideal work schedule to look like: *estimates may change obviously.

£100 - a day. Keep working the hours until I get to that figure.
£500 - week. Working 5 days per week
£2,000 - a month

that's obviously before taking any tax out. But that's where I want to be.

These are just the upfront paying ones though, if you want to think about longer term plans, I would look at residual income sites as well.

beeswax_3

I've just been offered a project - on my first bid believe it or not. So fingers crossed. I know the rate is poor, but I'm trying to look at the long term. Am I naive in thinking I can build up a portfolio and go on to better paid work? Any advice from people already working for freelancer would be welcome.

*Star06*

Well done on your first job!

I do not really use the freelancing sites that much to get writing jobs, but if you do then some say it's a good idea to get some jobs under your belt there and some good feedback and then go for the higher paying jobs, as they are more likely to accept someone who has done some work already, than someone who has not.

Off the freelancing sites, I started out doing articles for little pay, but once you have written a few and have the hang of it, then you need to be looking for higher paying ones, more so if you are wanting to do writing for good money and not just some pocket change.

Building up a portfolio is a good idea as well, including links of published articles (though obviously if you are ghost writing you will not always be able to do that) but any work that you have had published, samples of articles and even great blog posts on your blog - I think it's always good to have a range of samples for clients to look at, you never know what they may be looking for after all.

Good luck.

beeswax_3

Hi Star

Thanks for your reply. After a good few hours thought I decided to turn the job down. After the 10% they take, it worked out at $135 for 150 articles of 500 words in 15 days. So less than a dollar per 500 words, I estimated 45 mins per article, so 7.5 hours a day for less than $10.

I'll keep looking and build up a portfolio as I go along.

louise12113

beeswax wrote: »

Hi Star

Thanks for your reply. After a good few hours thought I decided to turn the job down. After the 10% they take, it worked out at $135 for 150 articles of 500 words in 15 days. So less than a dollar per 500 words, I estimated 45 mins per article, so 7.5 hours a day for less than $10.

I'll keep looking and build up a portfolio as I go along.

Hi
I was thinking the same as you - but a bid in for 25 articles at 50 dollers and I have been asked to produce sample. Seems alot of work for less than £2 an article.

*Star06*

That is very low and I wouldn't have took that little either. Sometimes on the freelancing sites, you get lucky, other times the pay is so unrealistic, especially when you take into account re-searching time.
If you are new to the article writing world, then the content sites might be a good place to start, it's where I did.

Some content sites ask you to do UAW article packs, with which you do your article, then rewrite it 2 other times so you have 3 articles, with the same meaning but totally original. Though I prefer the single articles that I can get through much faster.

Once you have some experience under your belt, I would apply to the higher paying companies, from $15 (about £9.36 at the moment - which for one article, if you can do it within an hour is way more than min wage) per article upwards. Though on some I know that you can get $40 - $50 or more per article - though these tend to be *not always but most of the time* 600-1000+ words. I have no problem with that, I can go on forever!

Then there is always the private clients, look on job boards, blogging job boards etc private requests. I always look for much more than min wage as we have to do our own tax so you have to take that into account, I always put aside about 30%, then when it comes to tax time you have your money saved up, and if you have saved too much and your bill isn't that big, you have some spare saved up!

DS4215

One thing to watch out for is being ripped off away from the sites. When I first started I was approached by someone to do some UAW articles off-site and after I did 3-4 and just before payment was due I was told that I had been plagiarising and that was it (I hadn't and all of them passed plagiarism testing). Luckily it was only a little amount of work, but stick to the employers paying through the site at least until you have built up a relationship with them.

thriftymoo

Star - what are the content sites that you mentioned that you write articles for?

vanpiggy

Hello, I thought I'd bump this up. Does anyone have the names of other companies who pay for short articles?

ampafc

vanpiggy wrote: »

Hello, I thought I'd bump this up. Does anyone have the names of other companies who pay for short articles?

Demand Studios pay $15 for a 400-500 word article. I have probably written about 20 for them since the end of last year. I'm not sure if they are taking on new freelancers at the moment, but it's worth a look.