Depressing Rates for Filipino Freelance Writers

Before you start thinking I'm out to contribute to the abundant number of hubs/lenses/blogs that give advice on freelance writing, I'm not. This is a rant piece :).

I've been writing on Odesk, a popular freelance site, for around 3 or 4  months now. Being a college graduate who jumped directly to law school after and who is still financially supported by his parents; I was initially extremely happy with the average dollar pay rates I saw there. Now that I think about it I was probably just blinded by the dollar rate pay.

I didn't know better and was just happy to be finally earning something. At one point I even contemplated doing more work so that I would be able to break away from my parents financial support. Now I find it funny that 3 years in law school actually dulled my math skills to the point that I could'nt even properly calculate my monthly income from freelancing.

I'm not claiming to be an expert writer, in fact I never even imagined that I would actually earn from writing. I've always considered my writing to be average but my grammar and research skills are at least decent (I hope... I might be blinded by my own ego though) enough to be payed more than what they're paying on these sites.

Filipino freelance writers are paid depressingly low rates. Actually its not just Filipino writers but all non-English native speakers who do freelance work. I believe my first writing job payed $.25 or $.5 per 100 words when I joined Odesk. It was really low but I was new to the site and needed feedback so I took it. After a week of writing part time I ended the contract because I just couldn't justify wasting so much time for such low rates.

Until now freelance bidding sites still offer these low rates and it's just heartbreaking how a lot of my countrymen will jump at these. Just goes to show how bad my country's economy has become. What is even worse is that I commonly see project posts who ask for writers who are willing to work for $.5 for a 500 word article, sometimes the rate is even less and they make the job offers attractive by ordering in bulk.

It's just appalling how some employers will exploit a country's economic problems this way. They know that finding a job in my country is difficult so a lot of Filipinos have started joining freelance sites to make ends meet. Employers offer lower rates knowing that there are always more writers available; the law of supply and demand operating with ruthless efficiency.

Nothing. I'm still at Odesk and I still take extremely low paying jobs.

Now though I wont take any job that pays less than $1 per 100 words, yes I know its nothing to be proud of, but some money is better than none. I'm also currently trying to focus on becoming a BMR Writer. Build My Rank Posts are very easy to do and as long as I find decent paying employers who need them, these normally keep me happy.

I've also decided to focus more on this hubpage account to see if I can actually earn money here (ok so I did do something). I've read a lot of hubs that talk about how passive income can be a good way to earn if your willing to work at it. I hope to someday be one of the many satisfied hubbers who are able to just sit back and drink coffee while waiting for their checks. I don't expect to earn solely from this of course but the extra income would be really nice.

I just wanted to update this and tell people who run into this article that I've already stopped writing BMR posts. Naturally because the site's already down.

I've also stopped freelancing and have decided to pour all my time to creating passive income.

One of my newest experiments is the Earn Money Online Philippines Blog. It's a blog I started about online jobs and earning passive income. I'm mainly trying to target Filipino freelancers as a market but the content will still be useful to even those who aren't from my country.