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Any Writers Have Trouble Getting Paid On oDesk?

Villain

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I have taken my first job on odesk writing articles.

The client has a positive rating (4.8/5 stars, 50 reviews), has paid out over $6,000 to freelancers, and has been a member for about 18 months.

So far so good!

But...he is not very forthcoming with payment information.

I had to ask for a contract after writing the first few articles. I got one with a milestone for work already completed. So I asked about payment and I was told to contact an email address and that payments are made bi-weekly. I contacted the email address and received a similar response. I made the payment request 3 days ago and have not been paid.

One freelancers claims not to have been paid, but basically all other reviews are positive.

There are a bunch of hires with $0 paid but they are all current hires.

Should I be worried?

And yes, I know oDesk writing isn't very fastlane but it's part of a bigger plan. :)
 
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csalvato

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This is a reason you shouldn't be writing on oDesk/eLance.

I recently hired a writer on iWriter to write 500 word articles at $3/each. Turns out he was hiring writers on eLance, getting the content then stiffing them on their fees making $3 an article for some of his time, and a lot of wasted writers time.

It sucks, and I am sure it's not what you are going through...but its possible. This is what you do when you sacrifice control. Handing over writing without payment is the definition of a total lack of control.

Sorry dude :( Don't kill the messenger.
 

Villain

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That could be what's happening, who knows.

My plan was to take any writing job I could get on oDesk to build up positive feedback, and go on to write sales copy for better money. Then use the cash to fund affiliate marketing experiments, and eventually switch over to my own products for complete control.

It doesn't bode well that I'm having hassle with the first job I landed!

I think I'll just tell him that I can't deliver any more work until I see payment. If he doesn't pay then I can find some use for the articles myself...
 

csalvato

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That could be what's happening, who knows.

My plan was to take any writing job I could get on oDesk to build up positive feedback, and go on to write sales copy for better money. Then use the cash to fund affiliate marketing experiments, and eventually switch over to my own products for complete control.

It doesn't bode well that I'm having hassle with the first job I landed!

I think I'll just tell him that I can't deliver any more work until I see payment. If he doesn't pay then I can find some use for the articles myself...
is it Sales Copy you're writing? or is it articles/web content?
 
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Villain

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This particular job is 500 word SEO articles...just content writing based on a given keyword.

But I am aiming to do sales copywriting.
 

Villain

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I might be better just marketing my own freelance writing website and take payments upfront. Then see if I can outsource jobs.
 

csalvato

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This particular job is 500 word SEO articles...just content writing based on a given keyword.

But I am aiming to do sales copywriting.

IMHO these type of writing gigs have almost no translation into real sales copy. I have done both for my own purposes (which is why I outsource the SEO writing).

Do you have a budget?
 
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Villain

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I wasn't expecting to gain any transferable skill really, I just wanted the positive feedback.

Budget for the odesk job is $200. $2 an article and I've done 7 or 8.
 

csalvato

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I wasn't expecting to gain any transferable skill really, I just wanted the positive feedback.

Budget for the odesk job is $100. $2 an article and I've done 7 or 8.

I meant did you have a budget of your own to run traffic to your own freelance writing gigs?
 

Villain

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I'm in a bad situation right now with pretty much no disposable cash. I could scrape together say $100 to give it a shot, but I don't have consistent disposable income.

I am moving abroad early next year for work though, at which point I should have a few hundred to play with each month.

The website would need a rebuild as well.
 
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D

DeletedUser12

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I only work with people on oDesk with their hourly guaranteed payment (but I don't do writing). Bi-weekly can mean two different things, every two weeks or twice a week. You might get paid in a couple of weeks ...

You may be able to make more reliable cash writing for texbroker.com
 

Villain

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Hopefully he means once every two weeks then. I had heard of textbroker from searching the forum so I will check it out.

The job is fixed price unfortunately.
 
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Unknown

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There's no other way you can earn money? $2 for 500 words sounds painful.
 

Villain

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It's not for the cash, it's to build positive feedback. Then I can get better paid jobs.
 

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Villain

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I told the guy I needed some time off writing for a few days as I have other projects and am in the process of moving abroad.

He responds with, "How many days do you need off?"

I'm done with this guy.
 
D

Deleted17784

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I have dabbled in the freelance writing stuff. Elance and Odesk suck. That rate is brutal man... I landed some decent paying gigs on this board.

http://jobs.problogger.net/

Do you have any content online? A blog or something? I have several niche sites I monetize with affiliate ads. They don't make much but I use them as my writing resume to land jobs. Then you can build your resume further as you gain experience to get better rates. You are worth more then $2 an article...

When I spend hours writing mind numbing content for other people it makes me crazy... Rather grind on my own projects but I understand you need to pay the bills.
 
D

DeletedUser12

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I told the guy I needed some time off writing for a few days as I have other projects and am in the process of moving abroad.

He responds with, "How many days do you need off?"

I'm done with this guy.

Yah, I've found myself in a situation on oDesk where I'm expected to be available 5 days a week (or more). People don't really grasp the concept of freelance/ independent contractor anymore, online or offline. They want an employee without the pay / benefits.
 
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Thiago Machado

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Does anyone even make money from these websites?

$2 for 500 words sounds ridiculous.

I tried to get some freelance jobs from there but no matter what you do, somebody is always willing to work for less and do the same amount of work.

Are there any other websites in which you guys had sucess with other than textbroker?

I could use a quick buck to fund my projects.
 

Villain

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@Skins - I have some niche content but it's not suitable to be used as a portfolio due to the subject matter.

I wouldn't mind making something that I could fund with Amazon affiliate or something and also advertise writing services on. Do you do any keyword research to identify a niche, and then what blog posts to write?

Once I know what keywords to use, then I can easily weave them into an article as this is what I've been doing for people on Odesk. What I don't know however, is how to come up with the keywords in the first place.
 

csalvato

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Once I know what keywords to use, then I can easily weave them into an article as this is what I've been doing for people on Odesk. What I don't know however, is how to come up with the keywords in the first place.

These SEO tactics are going the way of the dinosaur, so it's not really essential to learn how to identify these keywords anymore.

I could educate you on that, but the $2 articles you are writing won't work well for SEO anymore, so it would be a waste of time.

You mentioned a bigger plan. What is that?

Sales copywriting? For what purpose? To be a sales copywriting consultant? Or did you want to create your own amazing products?

SEO and this writing stuff you're doing right now won't lead you to the rich life you desire. This is an X-Y problem (asking about your attempted solution rather than the real problem).

You need to ID your real problem and chart a course to get to your destination. Writing $2 SEO articles (that won't even work for the purchaser) isn't going to get you there.
 
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Villain

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The plan was to have my own freelance copywriting business where people dealt with me directly instead of through odesk etc.


The only reason for writing SEO articles was to get some good feedback on my odesk account to help land copywriting jobs that pay better. Then use the funds to create and market my own freelance website for greater control. Depending on the prices I am able to command by this point, I might be able to outsource some of the work.


My overall plan is not to be a writer however. It's not exactly concrete, but here it is:


1) Learn copy and do some freelance copywriting

I didn’t know where to start with entrepreneurship, and somebody suggested this so I just got started. I then saw posts by zen******* and ICK so I was encouraged to keep going.


2) Use cash and skills from copywriting to get into affiliate marketing.

Maybe a waste of time when I could just go straight to step 3.


3) Create fast-lane business. Either replace affiliate products with ones that I have commissioned, or just start a fully-fledged fastlane business that meets the CENTS criteria. Whether that’s creating a niche site with my own info products and affiliate program, or some other idea. I'm interested in the possibility of hiring a team to manage several niche sites if possible so that I can remove myself from the process.


I figured that each step would give me skills to help me do the next thing.
 
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D

Deleted17784

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@Skins - I have some niche content but it's not suitable to be used as a portfolio due to the subject matter.

I wouldn't mind making something that I could fund with Amazon affiliate or something and also advertise writing services on. Do you do any keyword research to identify a niche, and then what blog posts to write?

Once I know what keywords to use, then I can easily weave them into an article as this is what I've been doing for people on Odesk. What I don't know however, is how to come up with the keywords in the first place.

I don't worry about SEO besides the basic on page stuff. I just picked topics I was interested in and wrote some articles. One is advice/how to. Another is product reviews in certain niche. I did very little marketing just on forums relevant to the niches and shot a few Youtube vids which drive traffic.

I don't make much but I have used these sites as my resume and got a few freelance jobs. You can make decent money with the niche sites if you work at it. I abandoned mine and they still make a few hundred a month. Just pick a topic you can write 50 articles about and make sure there are some decent paying affiliate links you can weave into them. Amazon sucks in my experience but I know some people make money there...

Regardless, Odesk and Elance seem to be the bottom of the barrel as far as writing jobs. Any monkey with a key board is willing to write for less then a penny a word... Look elsewhere man. Or spend that time writing content for your own site. It's nice sitting on the beach and receiving an email that you just received another payment for an article you wrote last year.
 

Villain

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Ok that sounds good.

Would it be better to write on a small niche that I'm interested about, or go after a larger one that I'm not interested in?
 
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Villain

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I have about 10,000 words on a political niche. It could never be used as portfolio material because that's such a divisive topic, but I could use it for a niche site or kindle book.

I doubt there are many popular affiliate programs in this niche, but at least on Amazon Kindle I would get paid for sales.
 

csalvato

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3) Create fast-lane business. Either replace affiliate products with ones that I have commissioned, or just start a fully-fledged fastlane business that meets the CENTS criteria. Whether that’s creating a niche site with my own info products and affiliate program, or some other idea. I'm interested in the possibility of hiring a team to manage several niche sites if possible so that I can remove myself from the process.

Why are you not jumping right into this step of a Fastlane business?

Why do you feel that you need to do small niche sites before you can hit your real goal?
 
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Villain

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I have basically zero cash flow and wanted to get something going to fund projects.
 
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Villain

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I figured I would at least learn something relevant to biz rather than taking a part-time job.
 

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