I’ve been writing for Textbroker recently and could easily see this bringing in $100 per month if I can stick with it. The site if very well laid out and there’s no confusion to what’s going on. You choose assignments, write them up, submit, and, once they’re accepted, get paid a few dollars for your efforts. The pay scale is low but that’s becoming the norm for article writing. The rating system within the site requires you to submit a writing sample before you’re allowed to accept assignment. With the average level of writing you’ll find on sites like EzineArticles.com you can score a “4″ rating, which is the highest for non professional writers. That 4 rating will get you just about 1.5 cents per word. So far, I’ve earned between 4 and 6 dollars per article.
As far as the big picture is concerned, writing for Textbroker or any other site falls squarely into the “trading seconds for cents” category. If you understand the difference between being an employee and a business owner, (as explained so we by Rich Dad in The Cashflow Quadrant), then you understand that this is no way to build a business because there’s no passive or even near passive income to be had. In an ideal scenario for an entrepreneur, you would hire a bunch of people to write these assignments and take a cut from each one. Only that’s what Textbroker is already doing. My motivation is purely short term as I’m in need of cash to replace an old laptop and no other money bucket is going to cover it. So instead of watching Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN, I’m watching Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN 3 on my second monitor while writing assignment on my main screen. Instead of simply passing the time on pure entertainment, I’m earning a small wage via multitasking.
So for the long term, I’ll likely become a client of Textbroker rather than a writer. Articles are much more valuable to me as my own content. Even though the truth is that my articles haven’t all earned me $4-6 dollars, the money they have earned me has been passive once they are published. I’ll take a passive dime over a hard earned quarter as long as the dimes are part of an income stream and not a single drop in the bucket.