The Core
Why We Are Here => Web Development => Topic started by: JamesR on November 17, 2010, 06:09:15 PM
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I started out with Retired and Writing but retired that one when I found Text Broker which I have used pretty heavily. However I have run into limitations with Text Broker and looking for options.
I know some of you use Philipino slave labor
Anyone tried People Per Hour? Other options for high quality, real cheap content writing? Not sure Craigslist is the way I want to go.
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James,
Depends on the quality you are after. Philippinos do cheap. imho. What is you limitation with textbroker?
Is it type of content?
Price?
quality to low or High?
I have had Philippino, Madagascan (for french) a Swiss German Parisian for German, writing for me, all different qualities, and all different prices. I have known an article to cost £50, or $1.6.
Someone (cannot remember who,) posted this. Not tried it yet:
http://www.purecontent.com/
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Quality - I would say 7 or 8 out of 10
Price - around .02 a word
Type of content - reviews, info pages, faqs - typical web content
Did a bit of searching on Pure Content - comment on a shoemoney page says about $16 per 250 word article and they have a 100 article min. equals about 6.4 cents a word which is pretty high.
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purecontent will hit quality but probably not at that price. Good when you need some intelligence behind whats being generated though.
Slightly related - anyone know any good cheap english language audio/video transcription services? I've used some in the past but for ad hoc stuff they tend to be either expensive or rubbish. I don't need any type of industry specific knowledge at the moment, just good accuracy at a decent price, and ability to timestamp would be handy.
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James, sounds perfect for Textbroker. Love to know the limitations you have hit :)
Gurtie, you mean listening to an audio tape, and typing it in? If so, that has to be straight forward Secretarial. There must be loads with that skill looking for a job at the mo. Have you tried locally?
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We've been using Craigslist to find writers
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>TextBroker limitations
1) Hard to find good writers. Once you find them, they tend to be slow.
2) Open orders are hit and miss
3) Can't ask for screen shots or other non-text type work
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Interesting. I've always had very very good luck finding good writers on TextBroker. I've only had two bad experiences with them. Everyone else is very good, very professional.
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Gurtie, you mean listening to an audio tape, and typing it in? If so, that has to be straight forward Secretarial. There must be loads with that skill looking for a job at the mo. Have you tried locally?
you'd think so, wouldn't you?. Mayby now its a new city I should give it a go again! when i tried in london I couldn't get one for less than a week at a horrible rate.
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Ah, yes, I bet London would be expensive. Should be cheaper in the sticks. might be someone at a job centre even, or put an ad in the post office. Must be plenty of Mums about who could do it.
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This is Brizzle. All the mums are 15 and feeding the babies neat vodka.
But grandmothers.... yeah I expect a few of them can type.
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>craigslist
Same here and, overall, it's worked out decently but you are going to have assume an active editor-in-charge role. Even so, you are going to be panning for gold and only one of five is going to produce something you can use. So I reduced my payout to .005 per word and at that price I can afford to cull or perhaps remix. I've also found 3 superpro writers via Craigslist --they are pricey .05/word but their work has been incredible. I've generally used their works as centerpiece articles though at somewhat secondary positions in the network pyramid.
By far the best quality writers were name-brand print magazine freelancers. I bought 2nd rights to their print articles. Some required some tweaking (usually to make them evergreen) but these are my root articles. Their job is to provide legitimacy.
I also have a "Write For Us" page linked from the footer. It has brought in a few directly. It's also very handy for quickly regimenting any writer, no matter where I found him. One writer that came in directly had been trained by Demand Media. The quality was slightly above the CL average but -damn- the volume and speed he could produce was almost disconcerting.
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@grnidone
Open orders? what quality level? How fast of a turn around? what type of content? care to share any names? :)
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James, got myself one at TB that writes an article a week, I put 10 up for her at a time, and she has learned how to load it into wordpress. So now I have little hands on, just the occasional bit of encouragement :)
Planning to give her more, so rather not share her! (feel awful saying that should I? )
Gurtie... Grandmothers... good ol' Brizzle.
BTW James. India is cheaper than the Philippines, but the work ethic not as good. imho. Not a vaste experience, but worth condidering.
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Planning to give her more, so rather not share her! (feel awful saying that should I? )
No, you shouldn't :)
I guess I need to work the Open Orders a bit more and get some more reliable writers that can work quicker. (and I need to stop being a cheapskate ;) ) However, I would like to have a go to system work I can get things like screen shots and maybe even simple video done at some point.
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I have been trying to find a good (& cheap) content spinner for ages - damned thin on the ground.
I have one filipina now who is Ok - not perfect, but cheap enough - but I will definitely need more.
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Have you tried Odesk.com?
I believe it is generally more expensive, but you get a screen shot of the workers desktop every few mins.
Your comment made me remember it.
As for cheapskate... well, it depends what the vertical can stand eh? Thats the trouble for me.
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it depends what the vertical can stand eh?
absolutely. we are trying to break into higher value verticals and this is all initial cost for launching a site so they aren't earning yet. Once they start earning and we get a feel for the value of the traffic, I can be more confident in reinvesting.
At this point, I think I am wasting too much of my time trying to get a perfect solution when I just need to "git er done". I think 4 star open orders at TB is going to be the way of it for now.
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Have you tried Odesk.com?
Yeah, that was the first place I tried - every single applicant made grammatical errors in their application!
Ming boggling - God knows how bad their spinning would have been.
The girl I have now is good enough that I need to do only a few minor corrections - just can only do 4 hours a day :(
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>>>Other options for high quality, real cheap content writing
Mommy bloggers. They can be golden.
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>I think I am wasting too much of my time trying to get a perfect solution when I just need to "git er done"
Lemme see, this is the 4th or 5th time you've come to that conclusion, right Jim?
>mommy bloggers
pay range?
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Lemme see, this is the 4th or 5th time you've come to that conclusion, right Jim?
There is something hard coded in my head that I am continually fighting against :)
also interested in mommy blogger outreach
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>cheap
http://tucsoncitizen.com/mark-evans/archives/18
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http://tucsoncitizen.com/mark-evans/archives/18
interesting, wonder how high they are setting the bar for authors
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This is one of the best calls for writers I've seen, Jim. Apparently, it's been working well as I've seen a few guest articles get into Digg and Redditt over the last couple of years.
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2006/08/submit-article-to-dlm.html
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>>>>pay range?
Varies a ton but you can get fantastic copy for .04 - .08C cents a word.
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Have you tried Odesk.com?
Yeah, that was the first place I tried - every single applicant made grammatical errors in their application!
Ming boggling - God knows how bad their spinning would have been.
I found a brilliant writer on oDesk. Guess i could have been lucky.
Posted a job to rewrite some news posts. Majority of applicants had English as a 2nd language(guess i should have selected regions people could apply from more carefully) . To my surprise a few Brits applied, the one i selected was degree educated living in spain, charges $1.5 to rewrite 400-500 words. Pay $1.5 for 100 words when research needed. Quality is superb, she's now fully booked with our work for for next few years.
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This is one of the best calls for writers I've seen, Jim.
Was it the altruism angle or something else that caught your attention?
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3 or so years ago, when I first ran across it, I was impressed by the overall thoroughness of the "walk through" particularly the addressing of problem areas upfront. I found that it wasn't specific enough for my own writers' page but it pointed the way.
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I've had good success with Criagslist. I've hired some really good , reliable guys and gals in the past. You do have to pay a little more but I find it's worth it if you don't have to edit the hell out of it.
I found textbroker to provide sketchy results.
I have also experimented with ordering up content from Fiverr (since seeing the link here). Found someone who will write a pretty good 500 word article for $5 which needs no editing.
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If you need copy in a hurry and you don't have titles in mind already, then Constant Content might be worth a look. While you can still order copy to spec from their pool of writers, the most useful feature is the ability to buy or license pre-written articles. I've found it to be more expensive than TB, but if you're stuck for copy it's worth a look.
As others have said, Craigslist is worth the effort. I've had published authors and journalists apply for positions on there, but some of the rates you get quoted are insane. £200 for an article? I think not!
Don't overlook Gumtree either. You can find some fairly decent writers there and for some reason they tend to be cheaper than those on Craigslist.
I've used the ProBlogger job board in the past, which has been hit or miss. Another one that's well worth a look is the Freelance Switch marketplace, which tends to be of quite high standard.
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Welcome Boydster!
Please take a moment to introduce yourself:
http://th3core.com/talk/water-coolerextra/the-official-introduction-thread/?topicseen
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I have used odesk in the past and it has been a very positive experience, received well written interesting ontheme content within a reasonable time frame and great price. However it depends on who you hire of course.
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@littleman: thanks!
Found this decent list of services on Quora... some I haven't heard of, others have already been mentioned in this thread. It's worth keeping an eye on as more answers are added.
http://www.quora.com/Compiling-a-big-long-list-of-outsourced-content-creation-options-who-do-you-use-recommend
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has anyone considered targeting, say, English/Journalism Majors, in local colleges?
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yeah, done that and fairly cheap (not just journalism majors, depending on your subject you can get literate intelligent articles on almost any subject. sometimes just for the experience/byline credit) BUT they can be incredibly bad at delivery dates. Don't ever expect a student to deliver by 8am every weekday morning, its not going to happen!
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>targeting, say, English/Journalism Majors, in local colleges?
Yup. found at least one good one, but got a bunch of applicants.
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I know some of you will know the organisation and owners, and I use purecontent.com for almost all of my stuff.
I was looking at purecontent.com a while back. From the outside they looked expensive. Are they?
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in my view not for the service you get. They're primarily first language writers and its checked for duplication, goes through editorial and they redo it if its cruddy quality, so for me the extra charge means I don't have to worry much about it. Obviously if you want quick cheap spun stuff they're not your best bet....