She may be paying bi-weekly to allow herself time to edit your work and make sure her employer approves it, I’ve seen that happen before. I don’t do much subcontracting though because I’ve been burned. The last time, the person came back after two months (she’d already paid me) and demanded I rewrite four of the ten articles to match her viewpoint on parenting, not my own. She claimed she hadn’t had time to edit them until two months later. Had she said the articles had to be from a specific viewpoint, I would have matched, but it seemed odd that she waited two months.

The outcome to this was that she’d purchased the articles from me to turn around and sell as a PLR package on the Internet and one of her buyers wanted changes. I also learned that she’d been selling the 10 articles she paid me $80 total for $99 a shot and she’d sold 12 of them already. So her profits off my articles was already far more than she’d paid me. Once I discovered that (thanks to the woman’s business partner), I was steamed and put her on my block list and refused to do any rewrites.

Is it a little weird that she gets paid weekly from the company she is sub-contracting for, but then only paying her writers bi-weekly? She said that my first payment date would be exactly two weeks from my start date…so it’s possibly not falling on the same days as other writers. Sounds a bit unorganized to me, and I don’t know if I should do two weeks worth of writing before getting my first payment. What do you guys think??

I emailed her and said I’d give it a go but made it pretty clear I’m not too sure of the work she’s wanting me to do vs. the pay. It will be the first actual job I’ve ever had my foot in the door for so I’m just trying to find a jumping off point… however, I’m not willing to work my rear off for ridiculous pay. We’ll see how it works out!

I hit enter before I was done. I’m deciding against it. It sounds like everyone who applied was sent the same email. After copying and pasting the sample she gave and then cutting it down to the minimum 5 to 7 lines she suggested, I came up with about 60 words. So that’s 60 to 80 words for 75cents. She wants a guarantee of 20 of these a day, all submitted by midnight daily, plus possible weekends. That around 1200 to 1600 words per day for $15. She claims she has writer’s doing 200 of these a day earning $150 a day. While I’m sure that’s true, it also sounds like something that would cause writer’s to burn out pretty quickly.

I heard back from her too and am undecided. Her email address is only linked to her own freelance writing company, so odds are high that she is sub-contracting the work. I’ve never had extremely good luck with subcontracted work, many times the person has taken the work and run off without paying. While this isn’t always true, I’m not sure I want to put in that much work for 75 cents each, even if it is only a few lines each.