Guru.com and other dastardly schemes
If you’re looking for a freelance writer, designer, Web person, or other creative, please, PLEASE do not hire one from Guru.com. Or Elance.com.
I belonged to each of these outfits for a short time and found that the whole concept is designed to suck money out of a creative person’s bank account for the privilege of bidding against fellow creatives for projects and driving the cost of creative work down, down, down to the depths of hell.
Creatives fighting for a bite of client
Keep in mind you’re bidding against people in India, China and some faraway places with strange-sounding names, where a dollar can buy a week’s worth of food. You can find a writer there (or even here, if you’re talking about a jobless teen living in his parents’ basement) who will write 20 500-word blog articles for $15.00.
How much time do you think those writers spend on “research” or “polishing” their prose? Or even “thinking?” Nada, that’s how much. The same is true of some writers for low-paying content mills like DemandStudios.com and Examiner.com*. Recently, I read a supposedly informative article from Examiner.com. I could have pulled better content out of my nose.
At a recent manufacturing conference, one attendee piped up, “I found a marketing manager on Guru.com!” I groaned. “She’s really good, too!” he claimed. I wonder whether an engineer knows what a good marketing manager is. What a miracle if it turned out to be the lowest bidder on Guru.com.
If you are looking for creative help, please don’t get writers around the globe slashing at each others’ throats to snag a cheap job. ‘Cause the only kind of work you’ll get is… cheap. And probably bad. You get what you pay for, and if you pay a decent rate, you’ll usually get decent writing, design, or other creative work. And you may even develop a productive long-term relationship with the creative you hire.
Don’t go global for creative help. Outsourcing is bad, especially when there’s plenty of great talent right here in the good ol’ U.S.A. Be a patriot — Buy American! Thank you!
*Qualification: I have read at least one excellent blog post by an Examiner.com writer I know. Quality at Examiner.com is not always bad, but it is variable.
Applause! Applause!
I, too, tried the Elance thing. Just once or twice. My bids never won and I got kind of frustrated, until I realized that I was never going to work for $2 for 20 blogs. I can’t believe the people who write for those places and think they’re going to get rich. I’ll never be rich, but I’ll never be awake 20 hours a day writing 500 word pieces for a couple bucks.
Bravo! Well said, Liz. I was talking with an attorney this morning and he said he could buy two PCs for the price of a Mac. I said there was good reason for that—you get what you pay for.
Or as I like to say: “You want it bad? You get it bad.”
Thanks, Bill and Sandy, for reading and commenting on my blog. I thought it would strike a chord with other CPWA members!
I should add that I also recently read a really good blog post by an Examiner.com writer I happen to know. Not everything those content mills put out is bad, but the quality is extremely uneven.
Brilliant. Spot on.
(But I expected the image caption to be “mills gouging writer.”)
L.
Reading this, I keep thinking, “You get what you pay for.” I’ve stayed away from Elance and other sites because of the very reasons Liz writes eloquently here. There’s actually a new agency in Colorado that just formed by ex-members of Crispin Porter that plan to crowd source all ideas and creative, offering low cash prizes. All I can say is specialize, specialize, specialize.
I speak for experience that you won’t get rich writing for Examiner. I think I’ve made $6 so far. I bought a notepad for around $2 for interviews and thought how am I’m going to pay for that! Fortunately, I’m not doing the Examiner for the money. They do a really nice job educating you on how to do and there are lots of resources. Maybe it can be a source of income at some point but one would have to have a serious audience, sponsors, etc.
Nice post, Liz!
Thanks, Mike. I added the “qualification” at the end specifically because of the high quality of your article about the Freelance Exchange. Speaking of crowdsourcing, have you heard about GeniusRocket? I contributed a few ideas to a request for taglines. By the time I stopped checking back, they had more than 4,000 entries. How you gonna be the lucky one in that crowd? Of course, most of the entries were awful. At the end, I think the client gets all 4,000+ entries to keep. For some paltry sum, like $200.00. But then they have to sort through all the dreck to find that one good one (or one they think is good). Nobody at GeniusRocket vets the entries. Just “Here, have fun!” and they take the check.
Liz, thank you so much for standing your ground on an important issue for freelance writers. I put this link for your blog comment on my LinkedIn page as an update, so my clients and peers can see it. It’s crucial to continue to communicate the value of hiring a good writer, and to pay fairly for those services.
If I received a percentage of the growth generated by companies I’ve written for, as a result of my prose, I’d have my dream home off some island somewhere…..well, my mortgage would be paid for anyway. We should require fair compensation for the talent we bring to the table.
Thanks for your comment and link, Cindy. I know it’s hard for struggling company owners to pony up the money to pay a good writer top hourly fees, but a good writer does more than write — s/he thinks. And that’s what’s required for creating communications that work to position a company effectively versus competitors, polish up its image, and sell its products or services. The cheap content writers don’t have to do any thinking — just produce x-hundred words to dump onto a website to serve as fillers between ads. Different animals entirely. If only everyone knew that. Good luck getting your dream home!
Cindy,
How do I find your LinkedIn page?
Liz