Textbroker - Writing for money (not vouchers)

Catriona_P

Bit annoyed. Finished the team order buying guides now - but noticed my last couple of articles gave out much lower pay than the ones I did earlier, 30-40 Euros instead of 50-60 for the same amount of words, which is a big jump. I asked Vikki what was going on and she promised to look into it, but I havn't heard anything back.

Seems a bit off, really.

CWSmith

omg, I had such a panic attack!

Eventually plucked up courage to have a go at this ..... I'm such a wimp.

Got back a revision, which I just didn't understand! They said that 2 sentences were "too close to an original". They gave me a web addy, (which didn't work!) but I managed to find the original in the end. There were two words in common, and not even important words! But the next sentence I had to change bore no resemblance to my equivalent. The only thing was the first 2 words were used elsewhere in the piece so I changed them ............... I have no idea if that was the right or wrong, so I added a note saying so.
No idea if that was right or wrong either ..............!!

(I thought my piece was ever so good too!:rotfl:)

googler

CWSmith wrote: »

Got back a revision, which I just didn't understand! They said that 2 sentences were "too close to an original". They gave me a web addy, (which didn't work!) but I managed to find the ....

'They' as in the client, or Textbroker's reviewers?

CWSmith

I don't know who it was ...........but it came back very quickly if that's a clue. Anyway my changes seemed to be ok, as far as I can tell.

Anyway flushed with success and with increasing courage I've started another one, which despite being twice as long, seems to be a whole lot easier. Getting the hang of it now, I hope!

EDIT: My second article got accepted with no revisions!!:j

Natu

If the revision came back quite quick, it's probably been flagged by the Textbroker system. I've had a few of these myself - very frustrating as it's usually for a client who asks for rewrites of news article. It always flags up a revision when I write about, say, "Mr John Smith, 49, from Chester" because there's loads of other news articles about the same person because they have been in the news! I usually have to change it so it's harder to read, just so it doesn't resemble dozens of other articles about the same person. Rather annoying! :mad:

I wish they'd check any plagiarism flags themselves, tbh, as a little bit of context will show that it's not a deliberate straight copy from another source.

CWSmith

That's exactly it Natu. I had to change the words "is placed round" because they appeared on another similar article on a website. Having a quick glance at all websites on the same subject, every single one of them had "is placed round" somewhere in the text ........... probably because that is exactly what is happening and there are few other ways to say it!:(

So I ended up making a good, clear sentence sound clumsy and I haven't heard back from the client. 2 days now.

On the 2nd article, I actually enjoyed writing it so much, I got a bit carried away. It was only after I had submitted it that I realised I had gone off on a bit of a tangent of my own and hadn't, strictly speaking, written quite what they had asked for. Yet that passed inspection straight away.

I'm new to this and still finding it all slightly weird ..........!:p

Natu

It can be annoying, especially when you barely use other sources for an article! Scientific explanations and references usually get flagged too, in my experience. It's hard to avoid in some instances, but if you know you haven't plagiarised I wouldn't worry about it. It's just a shame when you have to completely ruin the flow of a sentence just to appease the filter

Clients can take a while to approve articles, so 2 days doesn't always mean something is wrong! I don't think they mind tangents, as long as it's relevant. Very few clients give very specific instructions, and I think most are happy if you just use the keywords and keep it relevant to the title. I've only had 2 client revisions since I started in March (and one of them were *very* specific with what they wanted).

wheezy57

I have read this thread with great interest and I have signed up with my first submission this morning. I so enjoyed doing the 250 word test that I hope I can get my teeth into this as soon as they have assessed me. I found that I wrote as I was thinking and no doubt there will be plenty of revisions but I did like the short piece that I have sent off. (Not modest at all am I!!)

wheezy.

miwa

wheezy57 wrote: »

I have read this thread with great interest and I have signed up with my first submission this morning. I so enjoyed doing the 250 word test that I hope I can get my teeth into this as soon as they have assessed me. I found that I wrote as I was thinking and no doubt there will be plenty of revisions but I did like the short piece that I have sent off. (Not modest at all am I!!)

wheezy.

Good luck

miwa

I was approved today and wrote my 5 articles and now I'm being reviewed, by both the site and the buyers... Nervous!