5 Worst Places to Find Freelance Writing Jobs

Freelance writing jobs are gold mines. However many freelance writers start their writing career on a wrong foot!

I have already written about 10 silly freelance writing mistakes and I hope you are not committing them.

How can you write 500-word papers for $1.5?

How long do you think it will take you to get rich?

If your mathematics serves you right, it will take you infinity or insanity to grow rich.

You will either overwork your ass off then become mad or you will never grow rich, at least in this lifetime – unless you are planning to live for 500 years with no rent and bills.

The following are the main writing websites that you should never work for:

 

1. Content Mills

My Story about content mills

Recently, a self-made freelancing expert advised me to register with one content mill to start making money online as a writer and grow rich.

I had nightmares the same night when I remembered how a client disappeared with my hard-earned cash in one of the content mills.

Maybe, you also have a similar story about content mills. If not, let’s learn about them

What are content mills?

Content mills are companies which produce large volumes of low-quality content on a daily basis by exploiting money-hungry and unsuspecting writers.

Content mills will always produce substandard, low-quality papers because writers are not properly paid and they are always racing against time to complete many papers in order to gain anything substantial.

Many writers register with content mills with high hopes that they will help them get enough money and advance their writing career. However, the truth remains that content mills are a rip-off, they benefit at the expense of writers and clients.

 

The main reason why content mills suck is that they just write anything and exploit writers and yet they have their way.

 

Writers must come out and unite against content mills if at all the publishing industry should be sanitized.

As a writer, you must avoid content mills. Can you imagine what a high paying client will think when they find out that you are the author of a crappy content?

If care for your reputation is not enough to scare you out of content mills, their pay should more than scare you.

Content mills merely pay you peanuts and their editors are capricious.

2. Craigslist

It is annoying to hear many professional writers recommend Craigslist as a starting point for freelance writers.

Although Craigslist is an organized directory, it is a very dark place to find reliable freelance writing jobs.

Firstly, clients are faceless and nameless. You may deliver high-quality work, get no payment and cry your eyes out. Nobody will care.  It is dangerous to work with faceless clients who cannot be verified.

Secondly, the listing contains all manner of ads. It is not unusual to see things like these:

Looking for a female assistant

Looking for the best writer

Payment available for writers

Even the way the ads are worded portrays Craigslist as a no go zone for serious freelance writers. While some people have successfully secured high paying gigs on Craigslist, it should not be your first stop.

Carol Tice has a proven way of stopping you from visiting Craigslist. She calls it the “no-Craigslist challenge”.

All you have to do is to take a one month challenge and promise yourself never to visit Craigslist for one month.

During the same period of time, you are required to look for clients in reputable places using the methods discussed later in this article.

 

3. Revenue Sharing Sites

Revenue sharing sites are the worst and most unpredictable places to work. Writers don’t even know how much they will be paid and after that time.

At any rate, they will pay you peanuts which will not help any writer to pay the bills.

Payment depends on how many ads clicks the writer’s content generates.

Unless you are a magician, who I bet you aren’t, you should avoid wasting your content on revenue sharing websites.

You shall never grow rich overnight by working for revenue sharing sites. Forget it.

Revenue sharing sites will imprison you as a writer and stop paying you if you chicken out.

 

4. Bid Sites

Have you ever heard of Elance.com, Freelancer.com, ODesk.com and such like bidding websites?

If you want to build your career as a writer, make sure you avoid websites like plague.

In all bidding websites, writers compete to earn less.

Yes, that is it!

If that does not scare you, then you have a heart of stone.

More often than not, the lowest bidder gets the job.

Although you may get a high paying job once in a blue moon, the income generated is not sustainable and you are not going to buy a helicopter out of the money you get from bidding sites.

All communication between the writer and the client is monitored; you cannot try anything fishy like giving the client your email or any other contact.

You shall waste a whole day, bidding yourself off, promising to deliver the best content and yet somebody will come in the evening, place an awful bid and secure the project at a tenth the original bid.

Some hungry writers, especially from third world countries, will always place a lower bid just after yours; to compete with them, you are forced to place an even lower bid. The process continues “n times” until the price of the writing project diminishes to nothing.

 

5. Five Bucks Per Gig Sites Like Fivver

Some notorious sites like Fivver give you the opportunity to post a $5 gig.

Gigs may include any freelance projects like logo design, web traffic, SEO content, article writing, social media likes and many more.

Once a client purchases your services, the site takes $1 and you remain with $4 which they accumulate and send to your account via PayPal or some other ways.

Either way, the writer ends up with $3 or less net income per gig until such a time they are promoted to include extras in their services.

Do you think this is a profitable way of making money? Hell NO.

The buyers are demanding and very rude since they have the ability to rate your work and influence how other potential clients see you.

Let me tell you one thing.

The writer should dictate the price and not the other way round.

Just think of all services. Who determines the price of their commodity?

You guessed it right. It is the owner of the commodity. The owner of the commodity knows the real value of their goods and services.

How Freelance Writers Get Good Clients

I have already discouraged all writers from all places which exploit them.

Your main question remains: How do you get the best freelance writing clients?

The solution is simple. Just look for clients yourself without going through an intermediary.

Start Your Freelance Writer’s Website

Start your own website and let the whole world know that you are a professional freelance writer.

All you need to do is to:

Look for a good domain name here

Buy web hosting for your website here.

Start building your website

Promote your website like crazy using these SEO tools

Get clients, write for them and grow rich

Leverage these SEO strategies

There are thousands of clients out there looking for professional freelance writers.

Let’s think of it this way.

Which business does not involve writing?

All businesses need writers.

Your work is to remind the owners that they need a blog, freelance content writers and then they will make good profits

I am not promising you that it is simple.

However, if a writer can work for content mills, bidding sites and other weird sites and wait patiently to be paid, how is it hard to put effort and make your business work.

All successful writers have their websites.

For example:

Carol Tice is the founder of Makealivingwriting.com. She has further provided 14 Writers’ True Stories on “The Reality of Writing for Content Mills” and how the writers were exploited working for content mills. Click to check out their testimonies here.

Jorden Roper is the founder of Writingrevolt.com. She has provided a video on 5 reasons freelance writers should avoid content mills and bidding sites 

There are thousands of writers who warn against content mills.

Clever people learn from the mistakes of other people, stupid people learn from their own mistakes to the extent of repeating obvious mistakes.

Be wise

 

Social Media Sites

The best place to start is on your social media sites.

Click to Learn how to make clients look for you using Linked In

Specify your skills and tell all your contacts that you can write high quality content for them.

Use your friends, relatives, and even enemies to spread the word around that you are awesome.

Encourage them to refer clients to you.

 

Dangers of These Freelance Writing Sites

The solution is simple.

Stop wasting your time writing for low paying sites because in such websites:

You get low pay and only the lowest bidder gets the Job

You have no control over your writing career

You are at the mercy of the site owners

You are manipulated and forced to follow their terms and conditions

Your value as a freelance writer decreases

You gain no experience

You get low paying clients only

You can NEVER grow rich

 

What You Should Do About Freelance Writing

Enrol for the free or paid courses and build your freelance writing business in less than 5 months.

Become an international champion who moves from zero to hero

Start your own freelance writing website and get direct clients

Thank me later for this advice; it is worthy million dollars if read by the right mind.

Once you learn and start your freelance writing business:

You will determine the prices for all your writing

You will control your writing career

You will have your own business and clients

You will grow as an authority in your niche

Your value as a freelance writer will increase

You will grow your experience and earn more

You will grow RICH

You will come to believe that what I have been saying is true.

 

Let’s talk

What do you think?

Should writers work for content mills, revenue sharing sites and bidding sites?

What is your experience with exploitative writing sites?

How do you find clients?

Speak your mind in the comments section below.