M*Turk (just venting!)

[anng]

Originally Posted by jwinter

I have to admit, the money is a little less per article but I am getting articles that I can clip out in about 15-20 minutes. Because of that my average per hour is higher. It's weird how it worked out.

I'm fine with lowering rates if I'm still pulling in the money I need, but with this one, I agreed to what came in at $15 an hour instead of $20, which was my original bid, and then they vanished completely. The other offers I've had, one wanted to pay $5 for a 500 word article and the other was $7 for 500 words, but they wanted it cited with at least 20 different sources and formatted to meet their 30 page guidelines, meta tags and HTML formatting, and it takes more time finding sources that meet their guidelines, so an article I could easily whip out in under an hour is suddenly taking two.

[jwinter]

That's what I've been running into! I don't mind doing lower jobs if I'm making what I need an hour and I can breeze through the articles. I do mind it when its that many links, sources, etc for the same price. A 500 word article takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to write. That is with a basic edit for formatting, basic guidelines and of course grammar. If I make $8 per article and I'm clearing 3 to 4 per hour....well for me that's what I need minimum per hour. If you start adding in references and links that end up with the article taking 40 minutes or more then it isn't worth it.

[tenderone]

I am lucky if I can finish one article in an hour - a basic one at that! Sad. I go over and over the article and tweak it so much that I end up hurting myself, earning-wise.

[anng]

Originally Posted by tenderone

I am lucky if I can finish one article in an hour - a basic one at that! Sad. I go over and over the article and tweak it so much that I end up hurting myself, earning-wise.

I'm lucky in that I had a typing teacher who would blindfold us to keep us from every looking at the keys. As a result, my typing speed is 80wpm if I don't have to deal with numbers and 70 wpm if I have to type in numbers, as my laptop doesn't have a 10-key pad. She also forced us to turn in our content immediately. We were given one chance to read it over and fix mistakes and after that we had to turn it in. As a result, I learned to be happy with what I've done the first time around.

[jwinter]

I've been doing freelance writing for clients so long that I no longer spend too much time on the articles. Most of the guidelines are the same across the board. SEO, 2% density, formatting to match the style (about, how-to, etc). If it requires me to be concerned and tweak and re-tweak an article then that is too much stress and usually the money doesn't equal the stress.