I started writing for iWriter.com to give me a venue to help me speed up the time it takes me to output great content. I highly recommend that you try writing for one of these lowcost outsourcing firms before you start ordering articles.

I say this because as a writer, I soon learned NOT to accept assignments from:

– buyers who gave only keywords and no instructions. There’s a 50/50 chance that you’ll get rejected and will have wasted your precious writing time with no chance of payment. Bad odds and not worth the risk.

– buyers whose instructions let you know you’ll spend 10 times too long researching the article before you write it, with little reward. Whether it’s for 300 or 1,000 words, if it takes you 2-3 hours to research AND write, your $1.60-10.00 is really not worth it.

– buyers with less than 50% approval rate, meaning they reject articles more than half the time. Duuuuuuuhhh! These are probably the ones who give no instructions, only keywords. Skip them.

– buyers who routinely give 1-star ratings to rejected stories, regardless of quality. Worthy buyer, those worth working for, are those who appreciate the time it took you to submit your best efforts to them. Giving anyone a 1-star rating is just mean and icky. And since there’s no way to rate a buyer if your article is rejected, all you can do is politely thank them for the time you invested in the learning experience (or lambast them and risk getting kicked off the site).

The sweet spot, where you can zip out excellent quality articles in 30 minutes or less, is when you find a buyer whose listings have…

simple precise keywords,

a sample story for you to use as a guide to use for style, tone, type content, etc. (not for spinning) within the instructions

or at least a link to a sample article to use as a guide,

detailed information regarding the use of their keywords in the article, e.g., 3% keyword density or “use the keyword in the first sentence, last sentence, and 3 times in the rest of the story,

detailed information about how the article should be structured, e.g., “divide into three paragraphs” or divide into five paragraphs, use kws 1-2 time in each paragraph, give each paragraph a subtitle that contains the keyword at the beginning of the subtitle,”

and a reputation for at least a 75% acceptance rating for submitted articles.

When I took the time to pump out 20 or more stories on iWriter, I soon realized there was a lot buyers could do help themselves get better quality writing for their needs. These are just a few things I’ve noticed about how buyers could help themselves do just that.

What’s your experience with outsourced writing sites? Are you a one-note keyword buyer giving few instructions or do you give more help than that?

Do you find more instructions mean better writing or not? Any other outsource writers out there? What do you think?

Kristi, I completely agree. You can’t let rejection affect your writing confidence. I keep the story about all of Abraham Lincoln’s voluminous failures close by to remind me that great things come from taking the time to turn a series of little failures into great success.

I like what you did in that instance, immediately turning what someone else thought was your failure into immediate profitable success for you. Good for you, girl! That’s the way success becomes a habit. Not waiting too long to do something to turn things around. I’m stealing that from you starting today! I must confess I’ve got a handful of rejects I could easily retool and submit to another buyer. Your example gave me instant ideas into how I can still profit from them.

@stewkelly Unfortunately, iWriter’s rating system is unjust. An excellent story with perfect grammar can be given a 1star rating by a buyer simply because… a fly flew up there nose and it wasn’t what they were looking for. One to three hours gone for nothing? With a lowered overall rating because the buyer was from Malaysia and can barely speak English? And because your article was rejected, you aren’t allowed to rate the buyer… the one who gave no directions and could not even spell their own keywords correctly (when they intended to spell it correctly).

I’ve been writing on iWriter to help me speed up my production time while keeping quality high and to keep my promise to write X number of words per day, no matter what. It’s now a little “time-out” writing game I play every day just for fun, not for the low money. I have a high rating because I didn’t let the first couple of bombed stories I wrote get to me. It was a tenaciousness test for me.

But other writers living around the world do earn their livings there, so I do hope iWriter makes its rating system a little more helpful and fair to both sides of the fence.

@stewkelly

Here’s one way to find a good writer on iWriter:

• Choose “Write articles.”
• Choose “Maximize” to open up all assignment requests so you can see complete keywords and special instructions from other Buyers.
• Click on the special instructions for a few listings until you find some that are well crafted, thoughtful, specific or detailed.
  
• Then click on the Buyer’s name. This takes you to his review page with Writers’ comments about the Buyer. No one ever rates a buyer under 5 or they won’t get hired again and rejected writers can’t rate them so some will leave pretty accurate comments of the problem involved while others only vent. Most important, this is where you can click on multiple Writers’ names that worked for this Buyer, notice how many articles the Buyer bought from the same Writers, and see the comments the Buyer made.
• Click on a repeat Writer’s name and look at the comments and ratings (1-5 stars) they were given by Buyers.
  

I do this because many Buyers there do not speak or read English well enough to judge writing without being arbitrary, usually write poor instructions if any at all, and I’d never base my hiring of an iWriter on the comments or purchases of someone who can’t read or write well enough themselves.

If a Buyer’s comments are highly specific, helpful or very well-written, I backtrack and look at the profiles of other writers for which the Buyer left similarly positive comments. I’ve identified at least a dozen excellent writers this way