Textbroker is a content-writing marketplace where webmasters can tap into a network of professional writers. The company was founded in 2005 in Mainz, Germany, and has since expanded to an impressive international presence with sites catering to several popular languages.
The company delivers what it promises: it’s a place to buy written content. There are more than 80,000 writers in the Textbroker network, and unlike a virtual assistant or freelance site, you don’t have to do any decision-making in terms of who to hire. Just submit your job and it gets done.
Table of Contents
Plans and Pricing
The articles are priced based on the length of the piece and the quality desired. The rates start at $0.012 per word and the quality at that price is optimistically described as “legible.”
If you want content that is readable and valuable to actual human visitors and not just search engine spiders, you’ll have to pay a bit more.
The next tier, labeled “average,” is $0.016 per word. That equates out to $8 for a 500 word article. However, “excellent” content can be had for just $0.022 per word, or $11 for that same 500-word article.
The most dramatic jump is between “excellent” and “professional,” which costs 3x as much! I think this is Textbroker’s way of steering demand toward the lower tier.
After you spend some time in the Textbroker marketplace, you may begin to develop relationships with your favorite writers and want to use them over and over again. The DirectOrder and TeamOrder features allow you to do this.
In this case, you set your own price per word (subject to a $0.0195 minimum) and get to work with those writers who have proven themselves to you. The company tacks on a $0.30 fee for facilitating this transaction.
Turnaround time is usually 24 hours or less.
Quality Control
So what about the writers? Are they any good?
The company utilizes a short test writing assignment that every writer must complete before they can start working. The Textbroker editors assign the writer a rating, based on their demonstrated skill and writing style.
That rating determines which writing jobs they’ll be eligible to work on, so no “legible” writers get assigned the “excellent” work.
I had the opportunity to test out Textbroker’s services in 2011, and I found the quality pretty good. In total I tested four different articles, including this Virtual Assistant Assistant blog post on President Obama’s jobs proposal.
Looking back it’s difficult to judge the true “out-of-the-box” quality, because I’ve never been able to publish anything without editing it myself. Well I guess that is in indicator of the quality – that it wasn’t up to my standards to be published as is.
But I still think there’s value in copywriting services because it’s still faster to tweak an existing article than to try and create one completely from scratch yourself.
Related: My Outsourced Content Writing Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
TextBroker Alternatives
I’ve also purchased copywriting from Fiverr, HireWriters, and more recently, Copywriter Today.
| Copywriter Today | Fiverr | HireWriters | Textbroker | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | not yet rated | |||
| Established | 2014 | 2010 | 2012 | 2005 |
| Minimum Cost (500 words) | $265 per month | $5 | $5 | $7.50 |
| Type of Service | Subscription | A la carte articles | Pre-screened writers; varying quality | Pre-screened writers; varying quality |
| Best for | Agencies, ongoing content needs | One off, quick work | Inexpensive filler content | Connecting with reliable writers |
| Notes | First article free | Check Fiverr Pro for better quality | 25% bonus on first deposit | Pricing is per-word |
| Learn more | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More |
Your Turn
Have you worked with Textbroker? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below.
I tried to order content off of Textbroker and found it to be a bit of a pain. I did like the price points and the turnaround time, but the idea of having to be the one that orders, collects, edits, and deals with a large collection of different writers to get a bulk project done didn’t appeal to me. I’ve been using buykeywordarticles.com recently and they seem to have a pretty smooth bulk ordering process. They are a little old fashioned (current software is not very robust), but that’s kind of what I like about it. I’ve never used Fiverr and HireWriters so I’d be interested to see what you thought about them.