iWriter Review

Those looking to make extra money on the side often turn to freelance writing type websites. A company people often find is a website called iWriter. As a writer for this website you can accept articles to write from a requester and get paid for each and every article that you write. You can make as much money as you want because you are allowed to write as much as you want. With that said, you are not committed to write a certain number of articles to remain active. You can basically work when you want. You do not have to be a professional writer to make money writing for iWriter. Anybody can sign up and start writing articles right away. There have been claims by many that they make up to $300 per week! I will shed some light on iWriter and share with you my personal experience writing for them. 

What exactly is iWriter?

The iWriter website is a content website where a requester can hire writers to have articles written for them. It is one of the least expensive content websites to get articles from and has been around for many years. Throughout the years I have written many articles for iWriter and have also been an article requester.

In this review I will mainly focus on the writer side. I will let you know about the positives of writing for iWriter and share with you any possible negatives that you may experience while writing for this company. When you are through reading everything I have to say about iWriter you can decide if iWriter is a good place for you to write and earn extra money or if it would be best for you to pass this opportunity up.

Signing up for iWriter

I signed up with iWriter in 2012 (5 years ago.) From what I can remember signing up with iWriter was a fairly easy process. I do not remember having to write an intro article that they would base my level of writing skills on. Many other similar type websites do this so that they can get a feel of your writing skills. I am almost 100 percent sure about not having to write an intro article, but if I am wrong about this or things have changed I encourage you to let me know.

I was recently reading on the iWriter website about a grammar quiz that a person must take when signing up. In all honesty, I do not remember taking this quiz, but maybe I did and just don't remember. The test consists of 15 questions, and you must get 14 of the questions correct. If you fail the test, there is no second chance given. It would be best to take the test when you can concentrate and are not distracted by other things.

You do not want to see the above pic so make sure that you do not have any distractions when you take the test! You will instead want to see that you passed like the pic below!

When signing up you will have to give your personal information such as your name, address, etc. You will also have to give them your PayPal address so that they can pay you for the work that you do. Once registered with iWriter you are immediately able to start writing articles.

Start Writing Articles

Once you are registered and are logged into your account you will see a link on the top of the dashboard that says "Write Content." This is where you want to go to start looking for articles to write. You will notice that some articles are not available to you as you are a newbie on the site. Those articles are reserved for the experienced writers of iWriter. Those writers have proven that they can deliver high quality articles by their past work on iWriter, and that is where you eventually want to be to earn higher payouts for your work.

As a newbie on the site you are a standard writer and can only accept standard writing jobs. On the iWriter homepage dashboard you can see your writer ratings and your rank. Being new on the site you will not have any ratings, but you eventually will as you start writing articles. The people that you will write articles for will rate your articles from one to five stars. They may also write a comment next to their ratings if they wish.

Your rank is basically your writing level at iWriter, and this is determined by the ratings that you receive. There are four ranks of writers on iWriter, and I will show you how you can progress through these levels by writing quality content for those that request articles.

STANDARD WRITER

As I already mentioned this is the level that all newbies start at.

PREMIUM WRITER

To become a premium writer you must write 25 articles and have 25 ratings. If a few people do not leave ratings you may have to write a few more articles than 25 because you need 25 ratings. I would not worry about this as mostly all of the people that request articles leave ratings. You must also have a minimum 4.1 star rating.  

ELITE WRITER

To become an elite writer you must have 30 articles written and have 30 ratings. Again, you may have to write a few more articles if some people do not leave you ratings. You must also have a minimum 4.6 star rating. 

ELITE PLUS WRITER

This is the top rank for writers and requires 40 articles written with 40 ratings. You must maintain a 4.85 star rating to be in this top rank.

Your rank is very important as higher ranking writers have more opportunities. As an elite plus writer, you will be able to accept any article on the site. At the lowest level, standard writer, you are limited to only write standard articles. Again though, everybody starts here, and your first goal should be to move up to the premium writer rank. This will open up more opportunities for you and offer you more pay for your work. The higher your rank is the more you will get paid for your articles, and there is a huge difference in pay. We will talk more about that later.

The iWriter Fast Track Program

It can be a time consuming task to reach the higher rankings of iWriter. Of course we all want to have a higher ranking on iWriter so that we can have more writing opportunities and can earn the highest pay for our work. The staff at iWriter makes it possible to bypass having to write a certain number of articles to get to a certain rank by applying for the iWriter Fast Track Program. Talented and proven writers may see this as a way to immediately earn top pay for their work. They may feel insulted earning minimum pay for their work at the standard level, premium level or even the elite level. They may want to start out as an elite plus writer. 

To do this a writer will have to apply for the iWriter Fast Track Program. They will be accepted and be required to write three articles based on the keywords that are given to them by iWriter. The iWriter staff will rate these three articles and based on the average rating a writer receives he or she can possibly immediately be promoted to either a premium writer, elite writer or elite plus writer. Please know that just because you have joined the fast track program does not guarantee anything. If you receive three 4 star ratings, you will still be a standard writer. Your average rating needs to be at least 4.1 to be a premium writer. If you average a 4.5 you will be promoted to elite writer status, and if you average a 4.85 you will be promoted to the elite plus rank.

To enjoy the advantage of possibly being immediately promoted with the iWriter Fast Track Program a writer will have to pay a fee. The cost for this is $197. I don't know why they didn't just make it an even $200. Maybe it sounds much cheaper to some people when the price is still in the 100s. To me this is a pretty hefty fee to pay for something like this and is not worth it at all. I never joined this program when I started writing for iWriter, but then again I don't think that it existed at the time. I believe it came out months later after I joined the site. Even so I would never pay that amount of money for something like this. I would advise anybody to just start out writing the standard articles and move your way up the ranks.

What Kind Of Subjects Will I Write About With iWriter?

You will find many different types of subjects to write about on iWriter. Glimpsing at the site right now I see that there are articles that need to be written about insects, above ground pools, photography, travel, air conditioning, furnace cleaning, business, stocks and many other subjects. You will find a little bit of everything on iWriter. Some subjects you may know a lot about and may not need to do very much research on the subject. These are the articles that I like as I can write the article very quickly. There are also articles that may be about a subject that you do not know much about. These articles may take you a bit longer to write as you may have to do some research. Of course you are never obligated to take any writing assignment that you don't want.

More About Writing Articles

When viewing the open articles you will see the project title with the requester name. In that same section you will see their approval rating. It will show you how many articles that they have accepted in the past and also show you how many articles they have rejected. This is very important to pay attention to as it will give you an idea of how picky a requester is.

I would never accept to write an article for a requester with a 50 percent approval rating. Why would I waste my time writing an article for a person that rejects half of the articles that are submitted to them? That tells me that there is a 50 percent chance of my article getting rejected. The better your article is the better chance there is that it will not get rejected, but keep in mind that you can write a near perfect article, and the requester can still reject it for any reason. The minimum acceptance rating for me to accept a writing job is 80 percent. Believe it or not I have seen many requesters with ten percent or so acceptance ratings. They will have something like nine articles accepted and 90 rejected. Why would anybody waste their time writing for somebody like that?

The pic below shows an example of article requesters that I would stay away from!

Their approval ratings are very low. There is a requester that even has zero articles accepted and 23 rejected!

You always want to write for a requester with higher approval ratings. This does not mean that you can send them a garbage article because they will reject it. Just because they have a high approval rating does not mean that you can take advantage of them and send them crap. Write them a well formatted article with proper grammar, and chances are that they will accept your article, and you will get paid.

Also next to the project title you will find the amount of words that are required in the article, the amount of money you will get paid for the article and the time that you will have to complete the article once you accept it. Unlike some other similar websites, you are given a countdown to complete the article. We are not talking about days here. You will have hours to complete the article, and the amount of time that you are given depends on the amount of words that are needed. For a short article of 150 words you may be given one hour. A 500 word article may give you three hours to complete. It is never a good idea to accept an assignment unless you can immediately start working on it. If you don't finish the article on time, the assignment will immediately become available to other writers.

How Much Does iWriter Pay?

I have already talked about the ranks of the writers on the site. Every rank pays writers a different amount. As a standard writer you will earn the minimum that a writer can earn on the site. Here is the pay for standard writers:

150 word article - $1.01

300 word article - $1.62

500 word article - $2.43

700 word article - $4.05

1000 word article - $6.08

As you can see the pay is not very much for standard writers. With that said, you must put in your work to move up your ranking status so that you can earn much more for your writing. As I am writing this article I am glimpsing at the assignments that are currently available for premium writers, elite writers and elite plus writers. This is the pay offered for those assignments. Keep in mind that sometimes the pay will vary on writing jobs even though they are the same amount of words. Also keep in mind that this is just some of the articles that I have chosen to list here as there are hundreds in each category below.

Premium Writer Assignments

500 word article - $4.50

500 word article - $8.10

1000 word article - $8.51

2000 word article - $24.30

4000 word article - $52.65 

Elite Writer Assignments

500 word article - $12.15

700 word article - $20.25

1000 word article - $14.99

1000 word article - $24.30

2000 word article - $40.50

3000 word article - $48.60

4000 word article - $64.80

Elite Plus Assignments

500 word article - $28.35

700 word article - $35.44

1000 word article - $52.45

It is obvious that you are going to want to get out of the standard writer rank if you want to earn good money for your writing. The pay for your work will significantly improve as you move up to the higher ranks. I have never been an elite plus writer and am usually at the premium writer rank. I have made the elite writer rank a few times and taken on some of those writing assignments, but I eventually received a few ratings that lowered me back down to the premium rank. I would say that I am at the premium writer level 75 percent of the time and at the elite writer level 25 percent of the time.

Keep in mind that your rank can always change as you receive ratings for your newly written assignments. Just because you make the rank of a premium writer does not mean that you can take it easy and write junk. If you do you will eventually be back in the standard writer rank. You must maintain your writing level by continuing to deliver quality work. 

Writing quality content can also earn you tips. A requester can send you a tip on top of your pay if they choose to do so. In my experience it happens once in a while and is always welcomed. A requester can also add you to his or her favorite writer list. When they add you to this list they can send you special requested assignments. You will earn a premium in pay for writing these assignments.

You must have a PayPal account in order to be paid for your work. If you do not have a Paypal account you will need to open one up. It is very easy to do, and if you want more information on opening up a Paypal account you can find it here. With iWriter, you can choose when you want to get paid. For example, you can choose to get paid once a week on a particular day. You can also choose to get paid once a month on a particular day. It is up to you how of how you want to get paid.

My Overall Personal Experience with iWriter

The thing that I love about iWriter is that it basically gives anybody with an ambition for writing a chance to earn money. No experience is needed! Of course as a writer flourishes and improves their writing skills more opportunities will open up for them, and their pay will significantly increase. For this reason I would recommend anybody to join iWriter.

There are some squabbles that I have with iWriter though. I would never want the folks at iWriter to take my comments personally. These are just my opinions. My biggest complaint about iWriter is the amount of power that a requester has to reject your article and leave you a bad rating. You can write a superb article only to have it rejected for no good reason at all.

I will share one personal experience that really ticked me off many years ago. A requester wanted a 2000 word article written for them. I put my heart and soul into this article and submitted it only to have it rejected and given a one star rating. This person's comment on that rating was "I am rejecting this because I needed it at a certain time frame and this came much too late, as I enlisted the help of a college student at a nearby university who is majoring in publishing and editing." Thanks for nothing! This person had just wasted hours of my time! I must state that I delivered this article two hours after I accepted it so I believe that his comment was a bunch of nonsense. My instinct told me that he copied my article and used it while rejecting it. He basically received a free article from me!

With what I just mentioned you may be wondering if a requester can steal your article, reject it and not pay you for your work. The folks at iWriter make it as tough as possible to do so, but I will tell you that it is possible. When a requester views your submitted article they cannot copy it and paste it. Those functions are disabled. This will stop most people from stealing your article. Remember though that there is a small percentage of people that will go through a big hassle to steal your work. If they really want to they can just retype word by word everything that you have written in your article and then reject it. It doesn't make any sense to me to do this, but I just want to let you know that it is possible to do. Most people would not go through all of this hassle and would rather pay the writer his or her dues. There is always that very small percentage of people that will steal from you, but it is very rare and you shouldn't even worry about it.

Another thing that is really annoying is that sometime when looking for an article to write you will see special instructions that say "This article is for my favorite writer. If you pick this article I will reject it and give you a one star rating." It will also say "My writer knows the topic."

Talk about a cheapskate! This requester can easily send this article to his or her favorite writers and not list the article on the general board. Why do they do this? I am not sure if they are ignorant about how things work, but I think that they just don't want to pay a little extra bonus money by sending their article request to their list of favorite writers. They want to put it out on the general board so that they can pay the minimum amount of money possible. If I was the writer that a requester like this was concentrating on, I would never accept the article and make them send me a special request. You will surely never receive a tip from a requester like this!

If you decide to give iWriter a try, you will eventually run into a requester that will reject your article. I don't care how good of a writer you are. They may leave you a low star rating of one, two or three which affects your overall rating. This of course could possibly have an affect on your rank which will determine the articles that you are able to accept and write. If something like this happens to you, the best advise that I can give a new writer on iWriter is to not let something like this annoy you too much. If you do your best and deliver high quality articles, a few knuckleheads are not really going to affect your rank. Most of the requesters on iWriter are honest people that are going to give you a rating that is truly based on the work you give them. 

So are you ready to start writing for iWriter? I will tell you that the positives of iWriter clearly outweigh the negatives. I actually took two years off of writing for them due to other projects in my life and just recently started writing for them again. I do not have the time anymore to write numerous articles on iWriter, but I do try to get in at least five articles a week. If you have the time and the ambition to write articles and get paid for them, I would definitely recommend iWriter to you.

Grade: B-