Nothing inspires confidence like free clipart paired with promises of rock bottom pricing
URL: http://www.iwriter.com
NATURE OF WORK AND PAYMENT
Iwriter is basically a Textbroker clone. It's a brokerage where people needing written content (mostly people trying to game Google search rankings to sell ads and flip websites) post jobs for the site's aspiring writers (that's you.)
Articles requested are generally 300 to 700 words in length and span a wide range of topics, whatever these little SEO hustlers think will draw page views and ad revenue at the moment.
Payment can be set for every Tuesday, biweekly on Wednesday, or monthly on either the 5th or 25th. Payment seems to only be available via Paypal.
SITE HISTORY / LEGITIMACY
I can't find a founding date (even a ballpark date) for Iwriter, or any contact or business information on the web other than the site itself. While Googling around I indirectly found the site is owned/founded by Brad Callen, who apparently also sells marketing materials, runs some sort of SEO software company, and has a Facebook and Twitter. That's about all I can tell you.
I was unable to find any egregious reports of Iwriter not paying or missing pay schedules.
INTERNATIONAL ACCESS
Iwriter appears to accept writers from all over the world, but you'll need to be able to have a Paypal account to receive payment.
STARTING OUT
Pay varies by "tier." You start out at Standard tier, which pays about half a cent per word. You grind up your reputation by way of ratings given to you by the people you sell the articles to. Eventually you reach the Premium tier (after a minimum of 30 assignments), which pays very slightly more than a cent per word, and finally the Elite tier, which pays about 1.5 cents per word (iWriter does not actually measure your pay in cents per word, but assigns an overall price for word count then takes 19% off as a fee, leaving you with 81%. That total works out to roughly the price-per-word counts I've outlined here.)
Earlier this year, Iwriter was offering something called the Fast Track Program which allowed writers to skip straight to the Elite rank with a payment of $148 and submission of three unpaid articles for "review purposes." I can find no mention whatsoever of this program on their website as of Oct. 2013, so either it is something they only market to writers via private emails, or they've quietly backed off of it at this point due to negative response.
PROBLEMS WITH IWRITER
The chief problem with Iwriter is that their rate of pay is well below standard even for minimally skilled/experienced writers. You start at a rough rate of about 0.4 cents per word for at least your first 30 articles, and even at the top rank are still short of 2 cents per word, which is generally considered the unofficial "minimum wage" for a competent but inexperienced writer.
Something you do need to watch out for is that the site plays rather fast and loose with writer privacy, particularly as compared to Textbroker. Writer profile pages are viewable to anyone not logged in (and indexed by Google); they show your real name, username and any other personal info you've chosen to enter. Your feedback history from requesters is also publically viewable on these pages; you can see the article title (but not the actual article), the requester's ranking of you and comments about the article, and any response comments you sent to them. This is almost shocking compared to Textbroker, which keeps all this stuff behind closed doors; requesters there can't even see your real name after buying articles from you unless you choose to put it in your profile!
I'm also iffy on the idea of your reputation entirely being in the hands of the clients you write for. At Textbroker, they have a staff of trained editors whose rating of your work is the sole determinant of your ranking; clients can leave optional ratings, but I think they have little to no bearing on anything. While the Textbroker editors can be Nazis about AP Style and comma placement style rules (even when the client clearly didn't care about those things at all), you are also getting an objective assessment based on clear criteria by a detached professional. Client ratings are completely capricious and lord knows what they'll do or what little trivial issue they might totally blow their top over.
Glowing recommendations of Iwriter around the web as a "top writing site" should also be viewed with skepticism, as they have an affiliate referral program. Check embedded links in these types of articles for an affiliate ID.
FINAL VERDICT: WASTE OF TIME
It all comes down to Iwriters rate of pay, which is among the lowest around. Simply put, you could be taking similar jobs at Textbroker or a handful of other content mills and making a lot more money for the same time and effort expenditure. If you live in a country with a very low cost of living (like where 20 bucks = almost a month of food) and you don't really have other options available, Iwriter might be worth it, but not if you live in the "developed" world with all the other options available. I think even the crappy low-end writing jobs on Mechanical Turk pay 0.5 cents per word, which is slightly more than you start out at here.
I wrote a couple of "articles" there. I'll never be paid the 3 bucks they owe me because I'll never reach the minimum payout. Their interface is among the worst I've ever seen anywhere. The text box takes no HTML, and the word count is inaccurate. It was off count in both orders. Though it will say you have the correct number of words, the count is different when you submit. In one of those articles it was off 30 words, so I had to add those. The final word count before submitting was 30 words over what the order was supposed to be, but it was accepted with the added words. I only took 300 words orders that could be finished in a matter of 20 minutes, but the extra fooling around with the word counter made it not worthwhile, if it would have been worthwhile in the first place.
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