I have been using textbroker.com for some time now, but decided to do a post both reviewing the service, and comparing the quality levels between 2 stars – 5 stars. I couldn’t find any good reviews from a content buying point of view, apart from this one at wolf-howl.com.
I should point out that Textbroker do not know I am doing this review, when I ordered the articles that I will be showing you here they were placed through their system (and paid for with my own money) like any other order.
An order was placed for a 2 star, 3 star, 4 star and 5 star article. Each of them was given the exact same article briefing, and asked to write between 950 – 1050 words:
A weekend in New York City: Things to see and do
Please write an article giving British tourists some suitable options of things to do in New York City if they are visiting for a weekend.
Textbroker quality/pricing system
For anyone who is unaware, I should probably describe how this works first. When you set jobs, you can choose what quality/price you want.
Textbroker.com order process
The system is extremely easy to use – you simply need to register your email address, then you can deposit funds by Paypal. Once this is done you can create new projects, which in turn can contain as many jobs as you like. Each project can only be set to one quality level, so for my experiment here I created 4 projects.
Click to enlarge
Once this is done, writers can then login and accept jobs. They then complete them and add them back to the system for your approval. Typically this will all happen very quickly – 3 of the 4 articles here were back in my account for approval within 12 hours of the job being created.
At this point you can either accept the article, or ask the writer to fix any mistakes or make any changes. I should also say here that I never requested any changes to any of the articles. I wanted a review of their first efforts. I doubt many people will want to waste their own time proofreading and editing content, so I felt that it would give a better reflection to simply review what was returned first time, to allow anyone reading to make better choices of what level from 2-5 stars suited them best.
The results
I have posted all the articles, links below. I have not edited them whatsoever – the layout and styling is exactly as they were given to me by the authors. In order to avoid fragmenting any discussion, I have disabled comments on the articles themselves. Please leave any comments on this main post.
2 star article - cost $10.59. Click here to read.
3 star article – cost $13.45. Click here to read.
4 star article – cost $19.74 . Click here to read.
5 star article – cost $70.50 . Click here to read.
I am struggling to see any value in the 2 star article whatsoever – it is littered with mistakes and is blatantly not written by a native English writer. I would be the first to admit my own writing is not the best, but this one is appalling. In spelling errors alone we have:
- ou’ll
- york
- withouth
- YOu
- endosed
- Conservatoin
- auquatic
- exampe
- ethusiastic
- entrall
- gaurantee
- NewYork
- everthing
And this is before we even start looking at parts which are spelt correctly, but make no sense whatsoever (The most famous street in New York is Broadway. Though it from all the way from Manhattan to the Bronx, is home to the famous Time Square, and Broadway theaters) etc.
The 3 star article is of reasonable quality – I would certainly use this for filler content, or for link building on external sites. For my own sites I would definitely pay the extra money and go 4 star though. Looking at both side by side, its not hard to see where they extra money went. The 4 star seems better value for money.
Unless you are running a content mill, an MFA site, or doing something extremely spammy, I can’t think of any reason why you would want to pay $10 for the 2 star quality – and that view is only magnified when you read the excellent 4 star one, which came in at a mere $9 more.
The level 4 and 5 content is perfect in my opinion. Whether you think the 5 star is worth 3 times the price as the 4 star, well that is more going to come down to your own site and business model than anything else. If I needed 2-3 articles for a site I would certainly consider the 5 star. If I was creating a new site and needed 100 pages of a few thousand words each, it would be an easy choice – 4 star all the way.
The Conclusion
In whole, I think TextBroker.com is an absolutely brilliant service. I will definitely be continuing to use it both on my own sites and with client projects. It is an extremely quick and hassle free way to get your content. I had been using rentacoder.com for content creation, but after a couple of nasty experiences there recently, Textbroker is definitely the top dog for content.
I would like to see a couple of improvements though. Right now Textbroker are forcing you to send content back for revision before you can outright refuse it. If I am paying the 2 star writer $10 to write 1000 words, I simply do not think I should be forced to do his proof reading for him because he cannot be bothered to run a simple spell check on it before submitting.
I think perhaps Textbroker.com need to introduce a 1 star level, and put the non native and low quality writers in it, or failing that, they should remove these writers from the system altogether. This was obviously only a sample order for review purposes, but if I was genuinely wanting to use that on a travel site it would need extensive work to fix it. Even going back and forward with the writer and having them do it, I would be quicker (and it would be free) to simply have written it by myself from the start.
All in, don’t let those downsides put you off – simply avoid the 2 star stuff and the service is perfect. It definitely gets our recommendations. If you want to test it out yourself, why not head over there and give it a go. There is no minimum order, you can try a single $5 article if you like and let me know what you think in the comments.
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Good review of a service I’ve used myself. I have however found that since I started using the service the turnaround time on the open orders has dropped significantly. I was getting orders turned around in 24 hours but my last order too 12 days to be completed.
Another thing to mention is the direct order facitility. If after placing an order you like the style and speed of a particular writer then you can place a direct order with that writer at their published rate. This has been very sucessful where I’ve had a specialist need that I’ve found a writer could write for.
For a UK (Alhtough slightly more expensive) alternative then may I suggest copify.com I’ve not managed to use them yet myself but will be giving them a go over the next week or so.
Thanks for the great review. It was really helpful in deciding if I should use these guys or not. I’m going to do a mini version of this and order a 3 and a 4.
Great article and comparison of the levels of writing quality offered by Textbroker. I, however, find very little difference in quality between the 3 star and 4 star levels . Both levels have several typos, punctuation errors, and grammatical errors, which I would not accept as a buyer. Even the 5 star level has several typos and grammatical errors.
For full diclosure: I recently joined Textbroker as a contributing writer and received their rating, limiting the jobs on which I could write. I questioned their rating procedure and they referred me to this article. As a writer, I would not allow even the 5 star level leave my computer as a finished product. I will admit, however, admit that the 5 star writer did paint better visual pictures and had a larger vocabulary.
And I just ruined all my credibility by missing the duplicate word in the last line. OOPS!!
It’s a shame that Textbroker is only available for USA writers.
According to your review, I write 4-5 star articles and I only charge £5 for every 500 words. Not to mention my turnaround is as fast as a whip.
Have you written any reviews for a UK textbroker-equivalent? I’m curious to see if there is a change in quality/price…
I’ve used Textbroker.com before. To be exact, I used the 4-star writers. I must agree with you that they’re one of the best article writers around. Really value-for-money.
Your comment, “blatantly not written by a native English write” is funny though. I have recommended a friend, who has a Master in Literature, to be one of their authors. However, she was rejected because she’s based in Singapore and Textbroker.com stated that they only accepted US writers.
Well, maybe what they meant was a person living in the US, but not necessarily a native English writer.
Yeah that side of it is not ideal. I tried to sign up as a writer to get a look at their system before reviewing it, but couldn’t get in either.
It would be nice if they let in people from other native countries (ie UK/Canada) and legit expats living in non native countries. Although I appreciate it would be hard to sort between someone emailing in saying they are an American living in a Pakistan, and someone who’s lying.
I write for Textbroker as a level 4 writer. The reason they do not accept writers from outside the US is due to an IRS tax withholding law, which would require Textbroker to withhold 30% of a non-US writer’s earnings. Textbroker originally started in Germany, however (textbroker.de), and still offers services through that site also.
Thanks, wasn’t aware of that.
Other outsourcing sites like rentacoder.com etc seems to able to accept worldwide workers, whilst being USA based.
Jon Cook – I never mentioned the direct orders as I hadn’t used them at that point. I’m doing one 10,000 word job with the writer who done the 4 star New York article above. I haven’t seen it yet, but everything seems like it will work out well.
I am a new TB.com writer starting at a 4-star level. I need to submit a few more 4-star articles for client acceptance and probationary TB.com edit ratings before I can move forward to 5-star and Direct Order status. When browsing and opening client assignments, I’m really frustrated that so many appear to be no more than viral marketeer postings – and there are many. I find it very time consuming to open and read a plethora of assignments in the 2-3-4 star levels that ask for unreasonable research, word count, and turn-around time. When I copy/paste/open their included reference web site I allow them another hit and help move them up the SEO ladder. I hope I’m wrong. Comments? If and when I reach the 5-star level I welcome your directs. Request more contact information at crittercoon {at} gmail.com – Thank you.
admin edit – I’ve edited your email so as not to be picked up by spiders.
Good article. I am thinking I’ll give this service a try and based on your conclusion, I won’t bother with the 2-star articles.
If you don’t want bad quality articles, then don’t create 2 quality jobs. That’s kind of like asking for a punch in the face and then complaining because it hurt.
And besides, I would beg to differ that the 2 star article wasn’t written by a native English speaker. Yes, it’s got tons of typos, but that’s all they really are – typos. I mean, what do you expect paying 2.00 for a 400 word article? Instead of taking the time to complain about it in your review, you could have simply went 45 seconds out of your way to simply auto correct all the words.
Well the writers choose to work for that rate, its the writers fault only when the work comes back as bad. You can’t blame the customer there.
Been a while since I wrote the review so just quickly scanned over the 2 star one again. I am still not convinced that was written by a native English writer. If it was, then I would suggest they look for another job as writing isn’t for them.
Why shouldn’t I complain about it in a review? The whole point of it is to give a fair representation of the service. I still love Textbroker and we use them almost daily, but it simply wouldn’t have been a fair review if I’d left out just how bad that individual piece of content is.
Do you seriously think it should be up to the customer to remove typos from content?
Excelent review overall, I had been been a user of TextBroker for some time. I am content writer (When I am free) and some times also require help with my websites. In terms of a writer, its not that easy. Especailly when you are so specific about a city such as New York in this case, When you hire a writer (International) he could be from Bangaladesh or Pakistan who may not have even been to New York or US for that matter but then for a quick buck they might check out for information on google and might even copy / paste contents. I had asked for something similar when I was on world tour and wanted content writer to do the job for me, sorry to say this but even 5 star at times cannot do what you expect. I had to re-write the whole content from start to finish editing almost everything.
“When you want some quality, you dont get it ” thats the bottom line
Atleast I now have time to write these days
Fascinating review. I have been a level 4 author at text broker since I joined and my husband is a level 5 author. Very inserting to see the varied results. I’m dismayed by the price discrepancy between levels 4 and 5. As an author trying to jump from level 4 to level 5, I am forced to complete articles that are perfect for less than 1/3 the price of a five star author. If I were a client I would opt for level 4 because it is clearly the best value. It’s also disappointing that text broker recommends level 3 for large orders and level 4 for time-sensitive materials, but they don’t recommend level 2 or level 5 specifically. Just goes to show that level 4 are shouldering an unfair portion of the burden. Sorry to rant about these guys. I’m grateful for the work when I need it, but their system has a few flaws.