However, I am busy with work, make enough money to support my entire family from home on my own with these ‘two cents per word’ articles. I dont overwork myself, many days i choose not to work at all, and still i make good money. I realize that by your standards I could do all that in less time if I looked for work that paid more than two cents per word, but the fact is, that work can be hard to come by and there’s nothing to say that I will win those jobs.

Ouch!

Not for me, thanks!

Especially if they need two full pages of samples to decide if you can write right.

I’ve worked with a number of other similar writing groups and put up with unprofessional and unethical treatment, far lower pay than I get writing for AA, and more headaches than I have time or patience for these days. Writing for AA, I don’t have to worry about chasing clients for my money, being cheated or spending my writing time drumming up work – that’s the boss’ job and I’m more than happy to part with a cut of the pay to not have to worry about it.

I agree with everything that Steph said about the quality of writing, about the time it takes to write a 250 word article and about the competitiveness of the market. With nearly five years of freelancing under my belt, I’ve researched and learned enough about almost any subject under the sun that I can easily write a 500 word article that is fresh, original and written to order without doing more than fact-checking in far less than an hour. I regularly make $18-30 an hour writing web content, and I stopped being ashamed of it the day I realized that – y’know, I’m too busy writing things I get paid for to spend much time writing whiny complaints that I’m not getting paid what I’m worth.

I could easily write one paragraph and make it stellar- anyone could, but not everyone can write four paragraphs and put them together so that they flow into a natural sounding article. There’s nothing to say you can’t send a link with your previously published work.

With that said, yes, the payouts are much better than $4 for a 250 word article. It’s better than $0.02 a word, which is fair, especially because the freelance market is so completely fierce and competitive. Don’t forget there are clients who are out there that will use a $1 / 500 word freelancer and know they’re there. They don’t understand that the article isn’t well written until they receive it from the writer.

With that said, I love AA. I love working there and the group of authors is great. I’ve been a mod there for quite some time, more than a year and a half, and none of the writers on the team seem to balk at the pricing. In fact, for many, AA is their bread and butter place. Our boss works hard to increase our client base and the articles posted on the board.

As for “Considering research and writing time, that means you will be working for less than $4/hour.” Well, I write a 250 word article in much less than an hour. If its a hard one to research, then it *might* take me a half an hour, if its an easy keyword driven SEO article, 15 mins tops. I’ve been a professional writer freelancing for more than 5 years, as well as a reporter for a newspaper and an editor for a newspaper. I know that the key to making it is to have a broad range of knowledge and to be able to turn out an article quickly. I don’t take articles I’d have to research for 45 minutes in order to write it, unless its a big one with big pay. So, with that said in accordance with AA, there are enough writers around with enough specialties that there’s no reason to have to research a lot to write an article. Something will come up that meets your expertise and you won’t have to research much at all.

Just my $0.02.

As for the “writing samples” question, I sent links to previously-published articles online for mine. They’re in no way asking you to do original content for them… they just want to see that you can actually write more than just a paragraph.

I didn’t mean to start yet another discussion on what is acceptable pay. But the discussion seems to be going in that direction, and since I am employed by Article Authors, I am going to respectfully remove myself from the conversation.