There is anew website called bluegig.com coming soon which promises to have quality services. Its not a bidding war.

Their blog I think is on blogger, something like bluegigmarket. Its launching in April.

I also used to work at PPH earlier this year and had almost the exact same opinion. I was curious to see how they continued to progress, but as I predicted they have continued their high turnover of staff… Xenios and Simos had a good idea, just very poorly executed sadly. I genuinely expect this company to fail… big time!

Having won the brief (I think only 2 people bidded) the real details emerged. The guy was a website developer and was building a gaming website for someone so wanted reviews on five computer games (2 of which I had never played and did not own the console on which the games were exclusive to) so the brief became £30 for 3 articles. The kicker was that I was not allowed to attribute ownership to the articles. It annoyed me that the brief did not specify ghostwriting, as I probably would not have bid for it in that case.

In the end, I churned out 5000 words worth of writing which I wasn’t even allowed to say was written by myself.

I guess my main gripe is the lackadaisical manner in which briefs can be posted up but the restrictions are completely on the writers, in terms of the bid content, etc. If the brief submission was subjected to stricter guidelines, with certain stipulations being made mandatory, then the quality of work would possibly grow.

Like anything else, there’s no shortcut around getting a professional in. It’s just taking a while for this to sink in. But with the advent of content as king, it’s coming. And with more hard copy publications going out of business, there are plenty of writers adapting their skills for the online market.

I’m noticing a different model for written content in the internet marketing fraternity – decently written articles for sale by the writer at pretty low prices, but the money comes from selling sets to more than one customer (on the assumption that Google doesn’t – yet – penalise syndication). Then users of the content can also use software to rewrite (or spin) the articles so they read differently for republication with different sites.

There’s still corner-cutting going on – but now there are options to create (and fund) reasonably high quality writing work in the first place…

PeoplePerHour devalues writing – there’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think clients who are serious about their businesses use it. I mean, if you put time, money and effort into the source of your income, are you going to cut corners? Okay, some people who aren’t familiar with copywriting might; you know, the old idea of “I can write a letter, I just don’t have the time to write my site.”. But most legitimate and serious entrepreneurs and generally smart people will go elsewhere.

PeoplePerHour’s days are numbered – the low cost and low quality model just isn’t sustainable. Especially as most of the work advertised is for website copywriting, and Google’s algorithm is evolving to wipe out junk sites.

I even contacted PPH to ask why their site devalued writing so much- they claimed it was the market not them. So I pointed out their own ad asking for writers at less than minimum wage…

http://mumazing.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/people-per-hour-worth-a-look-or-another-way-to-devalue-writing/

It’s garbage. Lots of ‘editorial’ work from India – these firms double up as translation bureaus, do a quick ‘Google translate’, then get someone English to try to make it read well in English – trouble is , a)the translation is inaccurate, and b)its an NHS patient’s medical records- surprised no one has died yet!