I can't find writing work

I know you already said this, but you can advertise your services on this very forum! I really wouldn't suggest waiting; IM'ers are ALWAYS looking for quality content. You can't go wrong there.

I believe the listing fee is something like $5, so that should be alright.

I wish you every success.

Fee is $20 for the "warrior for hire' section- but yes, there are a lot of buyers there, if you provide a quality service. Helps if you have an IM background so you understand what your clients are looking for.
--Jeremy

you've probably already taken the first important step by getting those clients away from fiverr.

I know what you mean about elance etc tho. I'm primarily a graphic designer with 15 years experience, yet I can't get one job on elance even with really low rates. Every time I check to see who finally gets the job it's someone from India charging pennies to do several days work.

Keep the faith, Ryan! I am sure that, by now, you know you are in a tough niche. The flip side is...when it rains, it pours! Once you start getting recommendations, you will have as much work as you can do.

So many people have quit when they were so close to achieving their goals! Keep at it!

Do you really write 500 word articles for $2? :O

Niche out. Specialize and then seek out the market. You can charge more for your work. You just need to find your audience.

Hi Ryan. Funnily enough you're on my shortlist of people on Fiverr to try soon, expecially because you're in the UK. I promise next time I need a writing gig I'll put it your way! One thing that's offputting right now is the 20-day lead time - though with 45 orders in the queue I can see why. If you could get it to within a week maybe that would help, at that site at least? But getting writing work that pays better is definitely hard, as there's so much competition. And alas Fiverr and the like have rather debased the prestige of writing. (I speak here as a magazine writer and editor.)

Just a suggestion that might put me off if I was to buy writing services through Fiverr: That's a lot. I'm not saying it should be done overnight, but 3 weeks is too much in many cases. And when you think that people looking for $5 articles are the ones that are in a frenzy after finding out about IM, or just people that are after the fast buck, then you can see why you might not get so many clients as you'd wish for.

Edit: Seems that Homburg beat me to it ...

there is a WSO called

Elite Content Cash

which lists a whole bunch of places where you can get premium writing jobs, I have it and it is an excellent resource

I was about to order your Fiverr gig and noticed that you already have 45 orders in queue. Wow! I think it's time to raise the price.

Like everyone else is saying, advertise here or on other writing or IM sites. People look for them all the time, I have a lot before!

The Fiverr trap strikes again. This whole thing is mental. I don't mean crazy mental, I mean people earn what they think they're worth. For the life of me I don't know why anyone would market themselves on fiverr in the first place unless they absolutely sucked as writers and were looking to improve before aiming at more upscale markets.

When I was freelancing regularly I got a lot of decent work from Craigs List. Most of the people looking for writers there don't want to pay much but there are some who recognize the value of good writing and are willing to pay for it. Funny how I found those people.

Actually, it's not funny. I found them because I know the value of my work and won't touch my keyboard for anything less. To do this effectively you need a professional Website, a resume and a polished portfolio.

Here's something else you might consider. Check out the offline marketing board here. There are lots of people there contacting brick and mortar people and offering various services like Web design, SEO and other stuff. See if you can hook up with one or more of them as the "resident" writer. There are plenty of people with offline businesses that have no idea people are willing to write for candy bars. They actually expect to pay decent money. These are the clients you need to be seeking.

Another thing. Someone posted this a month or so ago. He was getting more work than he could handle by teaming up with busy Web designers as again, the "resident" content writer. This allows the designer to offer both design and content. Smart marketing that benefits both the designer and of course, the writer. There are probably millions of Web designers in the English speaking world. Do a search and then contact them with a proposal that they'd be silly to not accept.

Go for it and by all means DO NOT accept peanuts any more. Good luck.

Why don't you make it one article per gig, to save time and make more money?

It seems like freelance bidding sites are a thing of the past. Am I right? It seems these days people are getting more jobs from sites like Fiverr or from free classifieds. (Or, by way of inexpensive advertising on forums.)

register on Elance, add all of your credentials and tell people how good you are in your profile. It's the biggest online job platform and I have personally made a lot of money on it. I started off as a writer and now I dominate in SEO. Definitely worth a shot.

I know some people looking to hire a good writer who will keep you quite busy, I suspect. Let me see what I can do. I'll let them know about you!

You could try out sites such as www.iwriter.com and www.thecontentauthority.com. It won't really give you more than pennies, but that is pretty much what you are earning right now writing for Fiverr so I figured that you can always sell content on these two sites as well in case you are in desperate need of work.

i'm trying to build up my article business as well, born and raised in California. The rates for overseas competitors is a battle. .01/.02 per word is unreal. I try to charge .05/word but its tough. looking for ways to expand and this thread is a great resource. thanks

I would say, in order to get paid more than $5 per article, the first thing you need to do is to change your position from a "cheap writer" to a "professional writer"

I write articles full of grammatical errors and I was able to charge at least $7 per article. I believe you can do much much better with your writing talent.

The secret ingredient to charge higher is to position yourself, to differentiate yourself.
You should get away from Fiverr and start to build your profile in real freelance site like freelancer.com. Why? Because they have ratings system! The higher your rating, the more likely you can charge higher for your service. In fiverr, the higher ratings you have will bring you more orders only, the pay is fixed at $4 only. It is not worth doing this in the long term since you have the writing skills.

There's a few ways to charge higher rate for your work in freelance site:
1) Get higher ratings in the freelance site
2) Have your own blog/website to showcase your past writings,
3) Gather great testimonials from your customers
4) Get other recognition for your writing skills:
for example the freelancer.com has exams! Get a good level for it, and clients will
know your standards and you are a serious writer.
another example is to submit your articles to ezinearticles.com and at least get the
platinum level author, in other words you leverage on the ratings system of other site.

Above are some of the ways you can use to position yourself from other cheap writers. I mean, if they are not good, then they probably won't be able to achieve all that which I've mentioned. To win project is not hard, the hardest part which is also your ultimate goal is to eliminate the chance for your clients to use other writers service. When your client is so comfortable with your service, depends on you very much for content creation, it is very unlikely for them to substitute you in the future. When you get more projects with higher pay and you can't afford to do all of them, just go on and give up the existing clients which pay lower rate. If you are the real deal, you can write really well, and they have been dependent on you so much, the chances are they will pay you the new rate you desire.

I'm speaking from experience (I do not do freelance writing anymore though).
The secret ingredient to get higher paid does not lie solely in writing skills, it also lies in the way how you position yourself and how you sell yourself. I hope this will really help you.

Yea you should definitely go offline because the majority of people like business owners do not know about the websites where they can get content written for very cheap... and frankly they don't care to know, they have so much other stuff going on in their lives... you could be of massive help to local business owners

seriously, get this WSO

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...-170-sold.html

it contains more than enough resources where you can earn good money for great writing

I am not promoting it, I only bought it and use it.

Have a search here on Allofcraigslist.com Just type in quotes "Article Writer Needed" and check the results and see if you find somebody looking for your services.

ShayRockhold posted a really good thread the other day that I could relate to when I used to be a struggling writer. Consider writing for yourself...


Writers - How I Earn $3 Per Word (or more)

I may be able to use your service. Please check our website at www.chipfixx.ca and if you think you can create something for us, I'd like to hear from you. You can email me at maybellene1 @ gmail dot com.

Thanks

I am a full-time freelance writer, and I can definitely relate to your situation and frustration, as I started in your position. My advice is to try ODesk and forget Freelancer. If you are in the U.S., I would recommend that you try Textbroker or the Content Authority, as both are easy to write for, have almost limitless assignments, and offer decent per word rates - especially for writers new to the business. Please remember that the following is only my personal experience with the two sites. I am not affiliated with either site other than bidding on work.

Its been my experience that the clients on Freelancer don't care about quality, they just want hundreds of articles as cheap and as fast as possible. Even with my qualifications and great ODesk feedback, I can't get work on Freelancer because I refuse to write the typical Freelancer order, 150 or so articles for $30. I bid on probably 30 jobs, won two and of the two I won, the first one was fine, but the second turned out to be a scam (freelancer notified me that it was a scam, I hadn't started working on it yet) but because I had accepted the job, they took the fee despite the fact they closed the job thread.

I remember one job I bid on still. One bidder's response was, "I are writing good articles English perfect. Me Pm you start work yesterday," or something equally idiotic. That bidder won the job for $30 (its the lowest anyone can bid on a job) as compared to me with years of experience, actively in school for a Journalism degree, a perfect feedback score on ODesk, and having multiple certifications in the article topics the client was requesting, not to mention the multiple other candidates bidding on the job with even better qualifications than I had. Needless to say, I gave up on Freelancer.

That said, my experience with Odesk has been wonderful. I started writing full-time in 2008 and today I am lucky enough to live off of my private clients - two of whom have followed me from ODesk. They are still my clients - and I rarely ever bid for work anymore. There has always been enough work paying what I want that I've never had to bid my life away to get a job. ODesk clients tend to want quality over quantity and will pay more for it. Of course you'll still find clients who want 1/100th a penny per word articles on Odesk, but clients willing to pay what you're worth are much more abundant.

I also find that ODesk offers a better interface, and because they have the hourly timer, you get a payment guarantee for any hours logged and dispute resolution whether a deposit is paid or not. This is in high contrast to Freelancer, which only enforces their "payment guarantee" if a deposit has been made. This means if you contract for a job and no deposit was made, if you deliver the work and the client doesn't pay you, oh well! No dispute resolution either.

Others may have experienced something different, and you may as well because when it comes to freelancing, especially on bidding sites, there are no guarantees. On any bidding site, ODesk, Freelancer, Guru, VWorker (formerly Rent-a-Coder) or any other site out there I haven't mentioned, if you don't have feedback, expect clients to be weary of you. Just like it is here, they don't know you and can't vouch for your work, so they are less willing to pay higher prices. If, however, you hang in there and do a good job with the clients you do get, I can promise you it'll get better. Fill out your profile, take the FREE skills tests (freelancer charges for theirs), upload some samples or add a URL to the portfolio section, and get some work.

Hope this helps! Good luck

I have heard and thought about Fiverr of course, but I haven't looked into it closely. Looking at the OP's page kind of crystallized some things for me, chief among them being that he's got to be doing it wrong. That's a butt ton of work for starvation wages.

In fact, if I did my math correctly, in order to make only 40K/yr. USD and work a normal work week/day, you'd have to complete just over 38 gigs a day, or just under five per hour. I'd be interested in seeing what gigs offer any kind of real quality/value at all that can be completed over and over again in 12 minutes or less. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'd really like to see what and how.

How hard do you market yourself everyday? Are you doing any advertising or are you just using free marketing in your business. Do you spend 2 hours a day or 10 on marketing your services?