Show HN: A Marketplace of Content Writers for Startups
publoft.com
publoft.com
Your site repeatedly crashed my phone browser. I had to check it out on a tablet to see it at all.
I don't see any means for writers to sign up.
I don't see prices.
As others have noted, your site has grammatical errors and misspelled words. Given that your product is writing, this is just deal breaking.
I work for a different service that I really like. I am skeptical of your business model here. In a nutshell, it seems rather canned and inflexible.
It also looks very controlling. I realize you are framing that as a feature, not a bug. It looks like a bad model to me. It also looks like a black box.
It also comes across as egomaniacal and braggarty. This just makes me feel like you are full of hot air.
(Signing Up) Writers can sign up at - www.publoft.com/marketplace
(Prices) We've been back and forth about making them public or not. Right now we're testing the "not". It ranges from $300-$600 per month.
(grammar)- I will go back and double check. Im sure they are right. As a one-man show, I can only catch so much, but this is inexcusable.
(Skeptical)....Curious how does it look controlling to you? It isn't supposed to come off like that. Actually the opposite, so i'm curious.
Thank you for the feedback. I really do appreciate it and value it. Hopefully, I cleared some of your questions up.
I am on my phone, so from memory here:
You don't do revisions.
You sound like you want to talk for your clients, but not with your clients. That does not work.
You dictate length and frequency of blogs without any real justification.
I am used to working for a service where the client decides price point, length of articles and a whole lot more. I cater to their needs. I don't dictate anything.
I will try to look it over when I am again on a tablet and see if there is anything I am forgetting.
* https://medium.com/thepub/publoft-has-upfront-pricing-heres-...
Thank you for your question. Let me know if you have any more questions.
In my experience, agencies of this sort are almost always low-grade content mills that pay writers next to nothing.
I've seen about 20 cents per word, making a 2k word longform around $400. Is that somewhat realistic?
https://www.textbroker.com/clients-prices-conditions
I work for them. My opinion of them is very positive.
Clients who know what they want will put articles in the general author pool and then invite authors they like to a team. So they pay less as a screening mechanism, then pay a bit more for quality work. It is generally way less than 20 cents a word.
Seems to be the default behaviour for people offering content services. Why I don't know, because all it does is make me not bother asking?
(I'm a freelancer in the same space as this service):
Much like development, cost depends on the scope and complexity of the project. It can't be measured as a multiple of a single metric that can easily be displayed on a price grid.
Another reason to be coy about pricing is so that they can charge different rates to clients. Most content creators wouldn't charge Google the same as they'd charge bootstrapped new tech startup.
It's also possible they simply aren't interested in dealing with excessively price-conscious clients. The "if there are no prices, it's too expensive" approach isn't accidental. It's done on purpose to avoid having to deal with the lower end of the market. It sends a strong signal to the wrong sort of client.
I do something similar in freelancing work: I'm not interested in working for people who want me to write blog posts for $40 a pop, so I price myself way too high for this sector of the market. I also don't display prices because I don't have to — referrals and reputation are sufficient.
Then IMHO they should say that on the site and give some examples with ranges.
Better yet, add a price estimation tool. Something like this, for example:
> if there are no prices, it's too expensive
Could be my personal bias, but since it was a show HN it didn't seem to come over as that type of high end play.
"If I have to ask, I can't afford it"
On a first look someone who has not run content-marketing before will say: „WOW...great...no work for me“.
My experience in having run content-marketing campaigns for various products is that you really have to define what you want to achieve with the content. Otherwise it is a waste of time (huge factor) and obviously money which you would have better spend running ads.
Do you want to purely do SEO content to drive traffic to your site? Possible with an outsourced service.
„You don't need a rocket scientist to plan out your content.“ Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Do you want to build an audience around your company/brand? First: this is a gigantic time/resource commitment which MIGHT pay off longterm in a big way. From my experience this is very hard to do right using someone external who is not in someway affiliated with the company itself.
Also in my past experiences, there needs to be retrospective of what worked and what did not. Provision to include analysis to arrive at data driven decisions will add a lot of value to your service.