Have you ever had a bad experience with a content writer?

[burgerman]

Have you ever had a bad experience when you hired a particular content writer? For instance, the content they created for you turned out to be plagiarized? I've never hired one before and I'd like to know what to look out for.


You don't have to name the particular person or organization.

Thanks

[rebirth]

The equation is simple. You get what you pay for.

Cheap: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
Expensive: http://www.elance.com/

G' luck.

[gingeman]

I have never had a good experience with one.

[DomainMagnate]

Plenty. Not plagiarized, but really low quality, poor grammar etc

[dodo1]

I've only used two different services so far. I must have been lucky, because I'm still using one of them for small projects every now and then.

The other one turned out to be rubbish. I always go through the articles I receive and copy short excerpts into search engines to find out whether they copied the content from other websites. With this writing service it was the case, unfortunately. But I was able to get a refund. My contact there told me it was the fault of one lazy writer on his team, and that he fired the writer after my complaint, but I decided not to give them another try.

[burgerman]

The other one turned out to be rubbish. I always go through the articles I receive and copy short excerpts into search engines to find out whether they copied the content from other websites. Wtry.

Thanks for the good advice. Are there any other ways you can check to see if the content writer plagiarized from another source?

[Pink Misfit]

The best way to check to see if the writing is stolen from another website is to goto www.copyscape.com , you can copy the whole article into it and it will show you any parts that are stolen.

[raoul]

there are more bad, than good people that call themself writers in my experience

[Makis77]

one of the worst "industries" on the web
most of them have poor grammar and awful syntax

[Krshna]

You could use www.articlechecker.com to check for plagiarism. However, by experience, I know that copyscape does a better and more thorough plagiarism check when compared to article checker. However you need the content to be a part of a website to check on copyscape for free. You will have to pay a *whopping* $0.05 to paste and check articles on CS, but article checker is free all the way.

After being in the business for years, I think it's fair to say there are more bad writers than good ones out there. The main thing you should be worried about is how much you're paying them- while a crap content developer may charge you 2 cents per word, you can find a high quality guy to do you a hell of a lot more justice at 1 cent per word! Paying crap writers more (or paying them at all) only encourages them to go out and rip other customers. They actually think they're "worth it". It's a crazy world but you'll harden up the more you deal with them Good luck

[GeoOwners]

I don't think anyone can complain much when paying 1 or 2 cents per word...

[whitebark]

There are some really good writers at great prices - a couple here on dnf.

Stay away from those offering "re-writes". This is usually code for simply substituting one or two words in each sentence with another. This stuff does not fly far.

[Krshna]

@ Dental Pro - Believe it or not, I have seen people who bargained for 10 cents back when i started off. Mind you these were end user clients and not even "middle men". As far as pricing is concerned, I think it is immaterial as long as both the parties involved reach a consensus that makes both happy. If someone who writes well is happy with being paid 1 cent per word, it doesn't mean you have to necessarily pay him more. you can, tell him his market worth though. That should help him out on his pricing.

@ whitebark - yes DNF has a great bunch of copywriters. I think this is one of the cleanest forums for writers- most writers on other forums just sign up to "bag" clients. more often than not, they end up looting or scamming As far as rewrites are concerned, believe me, <almost> everything on the internet is rewritten and reworded. A good rewriter does not substitute words, rather, he retains the meaning of the particular sentence by writing a new one in his own words. Sometimes a rewrite can be better optimized for search engines, have better flow and readability when compared to the original!

[adityas]

Red Flag: When someone promises 10,000 words in four hours, stay away!

You will always find a number of lousy writers everywhere you look, also, that being said, being priced over the top may not be the only indication of one's skills.

Plenty of bad writers out there, and some really good ones too (but you need to look hard)

[MacyT.]

The good ones at low prices don't last...so I try and take chances on people who present themselves well and start off with just a few articles. That way, they get someone to vouch for them and I get a quality article for a low price .

But this is time consuming as it's not easy to find writers who fit this bill.

[sashas]

I've only used two different services so far. I must have been lucky, because I'm still using one of them for small projects every now and then.

The other one turned out to be rubbish. I always go through the articles I receive and copy short excerpts into search engines to find out whether they copied the content from other websites. With this writing service it was the case, unfortunately. But I was able to get a refund. My contact there told me it was the fault of one lazy writer on his team, and that he fired the writer after my complaint, but I decided not to give them another try.

That's the whole thing. Combing through the content like that actually ends up wasting your time, not saving it (which is the idea behind outsourcing).

A tip: find a content re-writer rather than a content writer. Get some PLR articles and get your re-writer to re-write them. Its far easier (and cheaper) to get rewrites than unique content written.

[myst woman]

re writes are not cheaper to do because you have to read rubbish material and write from it and add quality that does not stem from the source material.

[Namefox]

..

[dncsacnt]

There are many wannabie writers who unfortunately couldn't even make a sentence without an error. Anyway, there are still good writers out there, you just need to be very picky. and as far as plagiarism is concern, use copyscape.

[whitebark]

I have had a bad experience here with one writer. I did copyscape on most of his articles after he said "copyscape passed" and it was 97% copied. So be careful. Myst Woman has been good for me so I recommend her.

ditto