You’ve probably heard that you can make tons of money writing content online. Well, companies like iWriter support that claim, but you probably know better than to take their word for it before going through a couple of iWriter reviews.
So before you do anything, you may want to read our complete iWriter review. What we dug up may shock you, so you may want to pay attention. You’ve been warned!
What is iWriter?
iWriter is an article and content writing service that claims to pay writers to write custom articles, eBooks, blog posts and other written content for clients or customers. iWriter was founded by internet marketer Brad Callen in 2011 and the company is headquartered in St Petersburg, Florida, US.
How Does iWriter Work?
iWriter brings together clients who need articles written and writers who can produce the content based on a set of instructions. So a client will create a project specifying how they would want the job done. Once the article appears on the job board, a writer will pick it up, write and submit it based on the instructions and timeline set by the client.
As a writer, once you pick a task, a countdown timer starts. You have 2 hours to complete any article under 400 words, 3 hours for a 500-word article and 5 hours for any article above 500 words.
Again, you can receive a special request from a client. That means the gig is only available to you, and no other writer can see it. You have the option of taking it on or rejecting the request. But with special requests you are free to discuss the deadline with the client.
In any case, the client still has the option of either accepting what you wrote, rejecting it or sending it back for revision. If they accept it, the pay reflects immediately in your balance awaiting payday. You can then rate the client based on your experience with them and they’ll also do the same.
iWriter Writer Payment Rates
iWriter has four writing tiers; Standard, Premium, Elite and Elite Plus. Here’s how much each tier pays.
- Standard – $2.43/500 words
- Premium – $4.46/500 words
- Elite – $8.10/500 words
- Elite Plus – $25.35/500 words
They use a star-based rating system. To get to Premium you’ll need an average 4.1 out of 5 stars after 15 reviews. If you have an average 4.46 stars after 25 reviews you get promoted to Elite level, and 4.8 stars after 40 reviews to reach Elite Plus level.
If you don’t like the idea of clients and another company setting how much you make for writing, you may want to consider writing for yourself by creating your own blog and making how much you think you’re worth. Wealthy Affiliate can help you do this and it’s totally FREE to start.
How Much Money Can I Make With iWriter?
How much you make depends on the tier you belong to, and how many articles you can complete. They claim the’re no limit to how much you can earn. You start off as a standard writer earning roughly 0.5 cents per word. Rising up the ranks depends on how clients rate your work. The better the rating per single article, the higher your chances of getting promoted and making more money.
In addition, iWriter runs a Fast-Track program whereby if you think your skills warrant a better payday, you can pay a non-refundable fee of $147 and request them to manually review your first five submissions. If you impress them that many times, they might upgrade you straight away. But that’s no guarantee that you’ll get an upgrade, it’s up to them to judge whether your writing skills deserve a better pay.
That said, perhaps a better way of making money writing articles for clients is by being independent and earning what you deserve. Wealthy Affiliate can teach you how to build your own website for free. You get to be your own boss and decide how much your writing will pay you by partnering with companies that pay you to write about them. Furthermore, you learn how to write articles that will bring you or your clients tons of FREE traffic from Google. Best part is, it’s Free to get started.
How & When Does iWriter Pay Writers?
At the time of this review, iWriter pays writers via PayPal every Tuesday. But you’ll need to have earned at least $20 to qualify for a payment.
iWriter Sign Up Process
To get started with iWriter you need to enter an email and a password. They’ll ask for your full names, gender, country and age. You’ll then do a 20-minute, 15 question grammar test. If you get 13 of the 15 questions correct, congratulations! You’re set to start writing after you confirm your email and add a PayPal address that matches your name. This process may or may not change by the time you read this review.
iWriter Tips, Hacks & Tricks
Here are a few tips and hacks you may want to use to improve your chances of making money at iWriter.
Be Flexible
If you’re going to make anything decent with this company, you’d better be ready to work odd hours. You literally can’t afford to work any time you want given that there are over 38,000 active writers at the time of this review.
Learn How To Write SEO-Friendly Articles
If you’re good at writing SEO-friendly articles, landing long-term clients becomes easy. In fact, the best paying gigs require writers to know how to write articles optimized for the search engine. One of the best ways to learn how to do this effectively is joining Wealthy Affiliate. You can start for Free and you will learn how to write SEO articles. You can use these skills to improve your chances of succeeding in content mills. Or if you’re smart you’ll use them for yourself to build your own sites that make you even more money!
Get The “Write” Tools
If you’re going to write for a content mill like iWriter, you’ll need to make your work stand out from the crowd. Tools like Grammarly and TurnItIn come in handy while proofing your work against embarrassing grammar and spelling errors. Jaaxy and SERanking will also assist you write SEO-friendly articles by helping you know what keywords to use for better traffic for your clients.
These tools are FREE to try and they’ll definitely improve the quality of articles you write, on your way to a better payday.
iWriter Complaints
So far so good, right? Wrong! I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but we gotta tell it like it is. So here are a few complaints about iWriter that may help you decide whether the opportunity is worthwhile or a waste of time.
You can get banned for silly reasons
It seems writing for this company is a high risk endeavor. You’re never really sure what tomorrow will bring. We found quite a number of people saying they woke up to a banned account, and all customer service does is send you an automated email implying you broke the rules. Don’t bother doing a follow-up, word is they’ll simply ignore you.
Payment Issues
Sometimes iWriter may fail to honor their end of the deal on payday, that’s according to some writers. Well, that doesn’t mean you won’t get your money, but you’ll have to wait for the next payday. I wonder whether your bills can wait that long.
It’s tough getting promoted
One bad rating might mean you’re stuck at earning pennies for a few extra months. Again, writers say their method of promotion is unfair, since you are at the mercy of clients, and one bad rating may affect your progress. Others feel the ranking system calls for near-perfection for all jobs submitted, not forgetting the client feedback.
iWriter Alternatives
Clearly this company has its fair share of good and evil. So if you choose to look the other way, that’s totally fine. There are tons of content mills out there, but remember no company is perfect.
Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on content mills to earn a living writing articles online. You can join Wealthy Affiliate and learn how to build your own website writing articles for clients on your own. Furthermore, its FREE to get started. So if content mills rub you the wrong way, it may be time to venture off and do your own thing where you have more control.
Is iWriter Worth it or A Scam?
iWriter is not a scam. They do pay writers at the end of the day. But it can be tough starting off no matter how good a writer you think you are. Besides the payment issues and getting banned for silly reasons, I wouldn’t call this company a scam. You just have to follow the rules and pray that the clients are kind and generous with their ratings.
That said, there are better, more secure ways of making money writing articles online. Again, I know I would be much more comfortable being an independent writer, running my own shit. If you feel the same way, you can join Wealthy Affiliate and learn how to write quality content that drives traffic to your client’s websites. But it may be better if you decide to write for yourself where you don’t need clients. This can make more money than you would writing for content mills.
This is the path I have taken and I make six figures writing content for my own blog and partnering with people that pay me what I’m really worth. There are certain tools and training that help me do this. You can also use them while writing for either yourself or your clients. Either way, here are tools you may want to check out.
Wealthy Affiliate – Is a community that teaches you the skills to make your own website that pays you what you’re truly worth. And they provide you all the tools and training to make this happen. Best of all, you can try it for FREE.
Jaaxy – A keyword research tool that helps you get the right keywords to use while writing content for yourself or your clients. You can try it for free!
SERanking – This tool can help you do competitive analysis for yourself or clients. You can enter a website of a competitor and see what keywords they’re ranking for and the content they wrote. This tool does other great things to help you get more traffic if you have your own site. All in all, this is another great tool every writer should have and it’s free to try!
Well, that’s my iWriter review. Do you have an opinion or thought you would wish to share? Feel free to hit us up on the comments section below! If you still have questions about iWriter, you can find answers on their FAQs page.
Until next time
Eddy “with a Y”
iWriter Review
iWriter sounds like a great little side hustle in theory. But maybe not in how it’s being executed. Users being banned for silly reasons, with no notice, and no explanation is a pretty big fail. I read this thinking I could do this alongside Wealthy Affiliate, having not long ago signed up with Wealthy Affiliate, but reading some of the cons, I think I’ll happily stick to what I’m already doing.
Yeah some of the complaints are definitely scary. I’ve had success hiring people from this site. And I ended up using folks here for a while. So it’s not all bad. But you have to be mindful of the good and bad.
Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to write this in-depth review of iWriter as a platform to make money online. I’ve both written articles and hired writers though never on iWriter.
I had my rating drop because of a bad review once. It was annoying to get it back up again and with the lower pay rate, I had to squeeze in more articles to make decent money from it.
I agree that affiliate marketing is a much better source of income but might take a little longer to generate good money than with writing. At one point I was doing both writing and building my own sites.
Thanks for sharing and I hope this info helps others learn more about making money online.
You’re very welcome Marlinda. It’s great to hear the perspective of someone that has written on content mills and now doing affiliate marketing. I tend to agree that long term affiliate marketing is a better prospect.
Iwriter is not a good way to get started. From my experience it takes a professional writer to be able to keep up with the amount of content that they want you to write now. I know however, that you will make more money as you go along. So if you feel really confident about yourself and writing, go for it!
Yeah I tend to think there are better ways to make more money writing. But iwriter might be a good starting point. Although some of the complaints sound a bit scary.
iwriter is not a good way to get started for perhaps someone who is needing to make money and not spend a lot of time. From my experience it takes a professional writer Mentality to be able to use your time as opposed to using it for something such as the wealthy affiliate when you’re on your own time and on your own terms. It makes it sort of difficult. However if it’s something that you need to do and you can invest time at first making very little perhaps even a little little bit below minimum wage that’s fine.
This honestly sounds like a great tool for freelance writers to use to get their foot in the freelance writing door. Yes, the payments may be small starting out, less than a penny a word, but getting to the elite level rivals of what some smaller magazines and websites pay freelancers, which is a little over five cents a word. Freelancers can also use this as a resume builder to gain credibility to their craft. While I want to make a living on my own writing, one of my blogs of which talks about this in great detail, freelancing would be a great way to get on my feet while working on my personal writing goals.
I tend to agree with you Todd. It can be used as a great starting point. But eventually you should move up to bigger and better things which is why I prefer blogging myself. But to each their own. Thanks for chiming in.
Thanks for sharing this with us, it seems it isn’t a scam, however, I will not try it. The payment issues, combined with the silly bans that they give to people is a no for me.
There are better alternatives indeed, I often use Fiverr as well, I get good money from that.
Anyway, I think this can help a lot of people, so thanks a lot for this!
You’re very welcome. Fiverr is definitely another option to consider as well or writing for yourself on your own blog.