Over the past year I’ve written over 200 articles for TB. I write for similar sites but prefer textbroker for “instant” money and simple assignments.

1. Regarding pay schedule: TB pays every Friday through PayPal. Request needs to be submitted by midnight Thursday. Must have at least $10 in account.

2. Regarding content: The writer chooses a title. If you don’t want to research on a given topic, don’t take that title. If you receive a direct order including an article or two you’d rather not write, ask the client to remove the titles or simply click the Do not want to write this article tab.

3. Regarding rating: Your 4 most recent articles are accessed with the average listed as your rating. An occasional 3 isn’t going to adversely impact your rating. If it does, it will change as soon as you submit better articles. As a former English teacher, I find critiques to be fair and consistent.

4. Regarding pay rate: You can negotiate price for direct order clients. More importantly, TB now offers writing teams. Over 160 clients have writing teams. Some teams require writing samples, other’s request simple applications. Team members have exclusive access to the client’s titles. When you apply for the team, you know the amount paid per word. Don’t apply for teams paying the lowest rate of 1.37. For example, I belong to an interior design team. The pay is 2.6 cents a word and articles are 400-500 words. I know I’ll get about $13 per article. It’s fairly easy to write two articles in an hour. Even if I only write one an hour, I don’t object to the pay because I have no expense involved, don’t have to leave home and I enjoy the content. In addition, clients pay bonus for quick turnaround time or will increase rates.

5. Regarding research: Many titles require nothing more than the ability to express information in an organized manner. SEO is a factor for most writing websites. If I do need to do research, I restrict titles to items of interest. I’ve learned about places I’d like to visit and discovered interesting information due to the light research required. If I find it is taking too long, I cancel the title and it goes back to the board.

6. Regarding convenience: With TB I can easily earn $250 a week working less than 20 hours. I can go on vacation and ignore TB as long as I’d like. Compared to Helium, it’s much easier. Helium requires writers to rate the work of peers. The ratings are subjective to say the least. If you don’t have at least one rating star, you cannot collect pay for writing. Helium’s new policy also claims rights to your articles for a year. You cannot use anything you write for Helium on any other site for a year.
Constant Content is never a sure thing. Clients chose articles according to their preference. Ten people can write to the same title and the client chooses one article. If your article isn’t chosen, you don’t get paid. The article stays in your inventory.
It appears those complaining about ratings probably need to improve skills. Many writers with a 2 rating can stay busy at TB because some clients request articles written at that pay rate and level of expertise.
I’m not saying the pay is great. I’m just saying all these site have pros and cons. Based on my experience, TB is very straightforward. You know exactly what to expect. You write to titles YOU chose at a given rate and get paid weekly.
I don’t take the time to revise enough to keep a 5 rating on TB. Hardly any clients request that level. I have a 4 rating, I write many articles with little or no research and I ain’t no genius–but I can write a complete sentence in the appropriate tone and format for a given audience.
My comments are based on my current experience. I responded because I find many comments I read about TB to be false.
PJ Yusten
(EJ Young pen name)

1- TB pays weekly now. Every Friday.

2- They have opened it up internationally. I’m not sure how or what countries, etc, but it’s worth checking out for the international writers now.

They did this to a high number of their four star writers a few days before Christmas 2011, and my roommate and l were two of them. We had both written for them for almost three years, and were four star writers almost since the beginning. We both had steady direct order clients and an overwhelmingly positive response from the open order clients about our work from day one. Then we got a batch of ratings back. l got 102, she got 90-some, and the editors gave all our articles four star ratings until the very end, then rated the last four of our articles with three stars, resulting in demotion which is really firing us, because they have not had three star work for months.

A writer’s rating at Textbroker depends on the average rating of his or her most recent 5 articles, however it only takes 3 out of the 5 to lower the average. So in my case, l wrote 98 perfect articles, but they picked apart the last four for petty mistakes that had no bearing on the quality of the article whatsoever and for this reason l’m essentially fired after three years of an outstanding record. Insanity. And please don’t anyone say there’s more to the story than that b/c there IS NOT.

They PRIDE themselves on this rating system. When l asked about the rationale behind allowing three or four articles to wipe out a person’s entire history with textbroker l was told outright by a staff member that “there is no such thing as a track record at Textbroker”, and that they will “not take a writer’s body of work into consideration because what matters is your most recent 3/5 articles.” How on EARTH is that a fair and balanced rating system? No one gets fired for having one bad day, but at textbroker you will. It’s also a crazy rating system when you think of it the other way around: A person writes 97 articles that have minor mistakes so they are all rated three stars, but on the tail end he manages to turn out three articles without mistakes, he is suddenly a four star writer and can access four star articles. Huh? Is HE more qualified than the person who turned out 97 error-free articles and had one bad day where he wrote three that were less than perfect???? l think if the clients were asked, they would prefer to have the writer who had 97 good articles and 3 that were less than perfect than the writer whose statistics were the other way around. That system does not benefit the client, the writer or the company. There’s so many more places that pay higher and treat you better. l would have voluntarily left TB a long time ago but l have direct order clients who count on me and l feel like l owe them something. Thank goodness their unreasonable rating system and narrow-minded approach to the whole thing can’t interfere with the direct orders. They are a legitimate company and they do pay their writers, but don’t ever count on them as your only source of income!

And how much have I made at this pathetic site? $17 for five articles. Pathetic payrate doesn’t even begin to describe it.

If you want to be paid as a professional writer, and at acceptable rates, give Textbroker a wide berth. They’re making tons of money off their writers, while paying them peanuts. Scumbags.