What astonished me at first about online job markets is the incredibly low price people are willing to pay for articles. “1$ per 500 words!” is not a rarity among such offers, with more generous ones offering a dollar for every hundred words. I remember always being appalled at such seemingly rip-off prices, especially when compared to prices for website design. Why are these offers so low? Who agrees to such conditions?
I thought, maybe these people have pre-written sets of articles they pick up and use for different clients. But then, what if the question asks for original content? How easy is it to write on a variety of topics, hoping to hit the desired theme with them?
Why are these people thinking a writer’s job is worthy of only so little? Do they think it is something easy and instantaneous?
What was sadder still is that there are writers willing to settle for such meager pay! Lowering the market prices further, this barely leaves any chances for those writers seeking a higher appreciation for the work they do.
This was until I sat down and made some calculations.
After the line above, it took me about 15 minutes to write this article. Taking a more generous offer of 1$ per 100 words, I will be earning approximately 8 dollars an hour, if we imagine this to be exactly 200 words. Taking a normal 8-hour day, that’s 64$ a day. 26 days a month, this will equal 1664$. Sounds like a viable method of earning to me!
I was sorely mistaken. Although a dollar for every 500 will still seem a rather steep price to me, I will now be more careful when thinking about numbers and that sort of output. I still think good writers deserve to get more for their work, but now I see that article writing is not a losing business for the writers as I thought.
