GetACopyWriter Review

I'm not going to do the full review spiel with this one because it's very much not recommended to anyone.

GetACopyWriter is an Australia-based content mill that dresses up as a "copywriting agency" to try to trick clients. You'll see them pop up on Problogger soliciting from time to time. You'll want to avoid them; it's not so much due to the pay (even though that's unacceptably low) as it is for their bad business practices and penchant for attracting problem child clients.

First of all, what they're doing is mostly content marketing, not copywriting. The fact that they don't seem to know what they're selling should be the first big red flag.

Let's talk about what they're advertising. Their page claims that "Our copywriters have worked with the top brands & have hundreds of happy customers." A quick look at their prices should let anyone experienced with the content game know that can't possibly be true. They take anyone off Problogger that can pass a fairly simple test and is willing to submit some free samples to be approved to their various content categories. No "copywriter who has worked with the top brands" would settle for anywhere near the 2 to 5 cents per word this place pays.

So who falls for this obvious nonsense? Sometimes it's good but naive small businesses or individuals with simple needs and a low budget. More often, it's problem children and abusers who have been chased away from better sources of content thanks to their cheapness and attitude. I noticed a number of cryptobros associated with some real scumbags creeping around here - not surprising, probably too toxic for anyone with a good reputation to touch.

So given all this, it shouldn't be surprising that management is incompetent as well. Among their recurring issues:

• Project briefs often have tight deadlines but fail to include important information, like the client's name or URL of their website.
• Editing is disorganized and doesn't tackle projects in order of client deadlines, they seemingly do stuff at random instead.
• Both of the above lead to deadlines running over, which makes the writer look bad to the client when it's really all the editor's fault.
• Constantly send emails asking people to pick up last-minute projects that one of their other typical 2-to-5-cent writers flaked out of or cocked up, no extra pay offered for this.
• When you take a project, you can see anything that previous writers have submitted to it - some of the work I saw was very obviously from underqualified ESLs.

• One of those mills that insists on edit requests being completed within a matter of hours, and can send them at any time. They work during Australian business hours, which are basically the opposite of those in the US. So if you're outside the country, you might wake up to see that an edit request was sent at midnight for return by 2 AM, and at 3 AM they took you off the project for not doing it. Given their other displays of incompetence and mismanagement I don't think the editors check to see where their writers live before doing this.

• In addition to being unable to prioritize or communicate at even a basic level, the editors and owner are a special blend of patronizing, spiteful and cowardly.

In short, the pay is bad and the business practices are odious. They have a bench of mostly bad writers (backed by terrible editors) and that plus the cut-rate prices attracts mostly cheap and awful clients. The whole thing is toxic. It's a typical churn-and-burn operation, which is why you see them sporadically on Problogger and such looking for more grist for the mill.