| Thank you for this. I'm medically handicapped. For me, it allows me to work whenever I can manage to get my act together and it means when I go through long periods of being unable to work, I haven't been fired. I've just not earned anything recently, but I can go right back to work. I had an account with whatever became Upwork. I never made money on it because you have to pitch for an assignment and compete with others. On Textbroker, I just choose something I think I can write. Done. The other platform also only allowed me to do up to five assignments per month with a free account. To access more, I would need to pay a fee. I was homeless at the time and I worked very erratically. There is no fee to have an author account with Textbroker. There is no minimum I must work or anything like that. The flexibility is critical to my ability to make my life work and having some earned income that has gradually improved over time helped me grow healthier and get back into housing. I know there are other services. But I don't chase my pay and I don't have to negotiate for work or pitch myself and these are huge advantages for me that help make it make sense. Edit: And that's why I say Textbroker is nominally low paid work. Because it cuts out so much of the unpaid hours freelancers typically spend pitching their work, chasing their pay and even working for free when they can't successfully get the pay they were promised. If you count those unpaid hours, actual hourly wage is lower for many other avenues than their nominally higher pay rates suggest. Textbroker pays better than it seems to most people. That's a critical detail and I never know how to really get that point through to people. |
I haven't had a look at either of these platforms (and have in fact only learned about them just now) but I think you just did.