Yes, excitingly, I did!

And, trust me, it’s not like a million dollar breadwinner kind of thing… but, it’s a good thing going and it’s giving me some extra cash every month!

So, here’s what this is really all about.

I stumbled across an internet ad for a website called iwriter a few months ago, a place for people to hire writers online to write website content and articles for themselves (and also one of the only times in my life I actually paid attention to an internet ad).

I looked around the website a bit, and then got a little curious about the writing side of it all. I decided to do my own research on reviews from writers on the site, and I ended up finding out that there are many other websites similar to this one; it’s just that iwriter is the most popular right now.

I found another site called WriterAccess…

And then another called Textbroker, among a few others that I obviously don’t remember much of.

So, I did my homework on all of the websites and tried to figure out which one seemed the most promising, if and when I’d eventually decide to sign up with one of them.

And, after about really one a day or two of deciding, I chose to just give one of them a shot. I mean… I didn’t really have much to lose or anything, so I ended up picking… Textbroker!

And, needless to say, since it’s been a few months now, I think I made a pretty good choice.

So, first, when you sign up as a writer with this site, you have to submit a really short sample post in response to a writing prompt. It was pretty easy and quick for me, though I think I found it hard to stay within the word count range of the prompt. Really, though, it was simple and and pretty straightforward.

After that, while the Textbroker team was reviewing my sample submission, I had to email in a copy of my ID and W-2 form. Again, not difficult at all, once I got the printer/scanner at home to work.

I only had to wait a little over 24 hours, then, to hear back about my sample submission. It had been reviewed for quality and grammar and junk, and… I got a 4/5 star rating with it!

And, if you’d like to know more about the star quality, here’s… how all of it works… 

Everyone who signs up with the site has to provide a sample writing to be judged and given a star rating. This rating then determines how much you can get paid per word on every article you write. The higher the star rating, the better payout you get. And, I do believe that 4/5 is the highest rating you can start out with… but you can get promoted up from each rating later on, after the team evaluates your paid written articles. Also, the lowest rating you can get is 2 (which is pretty low pay), and 3 is about average. 4 is pretty easy to obtain (given you’re already a pretty well-rounded writer), and 5… as far as I can tell, is a lot harder to get to.

After you pass all of that, though… you can start writing!

So far, I’ve only had experience with ‘open orders’, which are just all of the writing orders posted by clients for anyone to pick up, so long as you have the right star rating for the job. You can also get ‘direct orders’ from clients who specifically request only you to write an article, or you can join a team of other writers for ‘team orders’ if you’re qualified, though I haven’t gotten into either of those types of orders just yet.

(Actual screenshot of the open orders webpage)

You can also browse orders by the list of categories, and there’s everything from fashion to real estate to programming.

I will also say, though, that it always seems that 4 star rated writers have the most available orders, and those with only 2 or 3 stars seem to have a lot less. Also, there will sometimes be upwards of 1,000 available orders to choose from, but only a few hundred total other times.

Now… how much money does it really pay?

I knew you’d all want to know, haha.

Well, I’m currently a 4 star author, so I get paid 1.4 cents per word. 2 star ones get .7 per word, 3 star 1.0 per word, and 5 star authors get a whopping 5.0 cents/word. Most (good) articles requested are around 400-500 words and, at 4 stars, you can get about $6-7 for each one of those. Longer articles add up a lot faster, though, and doing multiple shorter ones can stack up as well.

There’s also a portion of the site for proofreading orders… but you have to pass an AP style grammar test to qualify for those. I tried to take the test a while ago… but, of course, I got two questions wrong when you’re only allowed to miss one and now I have to wait a full 3 more months before I can try retaking the test. Yeah… maybe not the site’s best feature.

I also kind of wish there were more translation jobs to write more often, since I can read and write in a few languages other than English… but I haven’t been able to find a good translation job just yet. But, nobody’s perfect!

So, like I said before… it’s not a main income earner, but it’s a really nice side job to have. Also, there’s no minimum or maximum limit to how much or often you have to write, so it’s a really good thing to try out in your spare time.

And, for me, at least, it’s just like writing a few extra blog posts like these every week… for real cash, too!

So, yay me, right?

Please let me know if you’ve ever had experience with Textbroker or any other similar site, or if you’ve ever debating signing up for a service like this!

-iKari