Textbroker Review 2020 – Update
My original Textbroker review analyzed Textbroker more from the client’s perspective.
Now I created an updated review where I analyze Textbroker more from the writers perspective.
If you want to make money online as a writer, I highly recommend taking a look at my video below because I walk you through the process how you can make it.
I am myself making a big money online as a writer by following this 4-step process. I have also helped 1,000’s of other people to do the same.
If I can do it, you can do it! 🙂
Is Textbroker a scam or a reliable website for earning money or outsourcing your content writing? If you are looking for an honest review, you have come to the right place.
Textbroker has a reputation as a high-quality content provider but my experience has been a little bit different. I will explain further why. You’ll also get the idea of how much you could potentially earn on their website as a writer.
I hope you enjoy my review. If you have still any questions after reading it, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below and I’ll reply you personally.
Textbroker Review
Name: Textbroker
Founded: In 2008 in Germany by Jan Becker-Fochler. Currently Headquarters in Las Vegas and New York.
Field: Content Outsourcing / Freelance Writing
Short Review: Based on my and other people’s experiences Textbroker is a safe and a reliable website. Their company has been around already for almost 10 years and it has a good reputation. Prices for content are relatively high and in my opinion, the quality doesn’t always match the price.
If you want to outsource your content writing, I would rather recommend HireWriters or iWriter.
On the other hand, if your goal is to make more money with your blog/website or start earning money from 0, I recommend taking a look at this step-by-step training. It has helped me to earn a living online even without any former experience.
What Is Textbroker?
Textbroker is a website that allows you to
- Earn money as a freelance writer
- Outsource your content writing
- Resell content to your clients. (This means that your client buys you the content and you buy it from Textbroker.)
I have used this website for buying articles to my website but you can also earn money as a freelance writer.
In this review, I’ll explain what kind of results I received by buying content on Textbroker and I’ll explain whether it was worth it or not. I’ll also show how much you could earn as a writer.
If you prefer getting the information in the video form, I recommend watching the following video that I just uploaded on YouTube. I’ll show you there also how it looks inside Textbroker’s member area and what kind of results I got.
How Does Textbroker Work for Clients?
I signed up on Textbroker as a client because I want to get more content for my website.
More content => More Rankings on Google => More Traffic => More Passive Income
The process of ordering articles on their website is pretty simple. As I showed in the video, you just click “Create New Order!” and then describe for your writer what kind of text do you need. You can also define how fast the writer needs to deliver the content. You will pay according to writer’s level that you choose.
There are 4 levels: 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-star writers. 5-star writers are extremely expensive and I haven’t used them myself. Most orders from clients are for 3-star writers.
You can also order multiple articles at the same time or submit a whole project. The choice is yours and the platform is quite flexible in that sense.
My Results of Buying Articles on Textbroker
I took a little test and bought 4 articles for around $90 in total. Then I posted those articles on my website (after proofreading and editing) and I followed how much traffic they get. I ordered and published those articles 2-3 months ago.
My main source of traffic is Google search and I wanted to get ranked with those texts on Google as well. However, none of them didn’t rank well. They are all +1,500-word comprehensive reviews that should normally get ranked and drive traffic.
During the last 90 days I have received only around 20-25 visitors from Google with those articles. It means that I have paid $3,6-$4,5 per each visitor + my own work that I needed to put in to order, proofread, edit and publish those texts.
We can clearly see that it hasn’t been worth it so far. The situation can change in the long run if the rankings move up. That usually happens when my site keeps on getting more authority on Google. Still, first results haven’t been very promising. I have probably driven much more traffic with those articles if I had written them all by myself.
How to Make Money on Textbroker as a Writer?
First of all, you need to be a native speaker to get approved as a writer. For example, I can’t work for them as a writer for English texts because my native language is Finnish. They have also clients in other languages than English which means that you can get some projects in German, French, Spanish or some other languages if that’s your native language.
So, if you are a native speaker, you can sign up and create a profile. Then you are ready to start working for them.
In the beginning, your earnings will be quite low because your star rating isn’t very high. Based on other people’s experiences your earnings will be around $4-5 per hour. Of course, depending on how fast you can write new content.
You can check out your potential earnings on Textbroker website with their calculator.
How many words could you write per day? World-famous writer Jack London writes 1,500-2,000 words per day and Stephen King writes minimum 2,000 words per day. My record is a little bit over 5,000 words per day.
I would say that if you are an experienced writer and you work diligently 8 hours without distractions, you can make 3,000 words in a day. However, it depends also on how much research you need to do. Some articles are faster than others.
If you have a 3-star rating, you would earn $35 for writing 3,500 words. We can quickly calculate that it’s way below the minimum salary in the U.S. In order to beat the minimum salary, you need to become a 5-star writer. Then your hourly rate will be quite good. However, most clients don’t want to buy 5-star articles because they are expensive so you won’t have many texts available.
Textbroker Pricing – Quite Expensive
The following picture shows how much does it cost to buy articles on Textbroker.
Then if you want to order content directly from their writers or take a team order, the price starts at 2,4 cents/word.
If you are a writer, you might be thinking, “Hey! If they really pay so well, why wouldn’t I work as a writer for them?” But you need to notice that they don’t pay so well for writers. Textbroker takes a big fee in between. Writer earns only:
- 2-star writer: 0,7 cents per word
- 3-star writer: 1,0 cent per word
- 4-star writer: 1,4 cents per word
- 5-star writer: 5,0 cents per word
You can see that the Textbroker fee is quite high (47% for 2-star writers). It would be more profitable to contact with small business owners directly.
Textbroker Reviews & Complaints
I wanted to have a look what kind of experiences other users have with Textbroker. Many writers like its flexibility. You can work whenever you want, study interesting subjects and get paid for writing about them.
On the other hand, they admitted that you can’t really earn good money on Textbroker unless you are a 5-star writer. I think that the only way to make a living through Textbroker is to be a U.S. citizen but live in a cheap country like Mexico or in Southeast Asia where your costs are low. Otherwise, their website works as a hobby/extra income for you.
Members were happy with Textbroker support because it replies all requests within 24 hours. My experience is also positive because they have answered all my requests quickly in a friendly way.
Some writers complained about complicated clients. Even though they are ordering content from 2- or 3-star writers, the requirements are very specific and tough. From client’s perspective, I really understand why it is so. The price for 2-3-star writers is so high that the content should have already a good quality.
Achieving a 5-star rating can also be challenging if your client doesn’t like your text. Somebody gives you a low rating (2 stars) for your article and your overall rating drops immediately.
Textbroker vs iWriter vs HireWriters
I have used all these three services (and a few others) for buying content to my websites. The prices on iWriter and HireWriters are pretty similar but Textbroker is like 3-4 times more expensive.
In my experience, HireWriters has the best price/quality ratio. However, I also enjoy iWriter because you can fire the writer immediately if you don’t like his content. All of these websites give a 100% satisfaction guarantee but it’s probably easiest to execute on the iWriter platform.
Based on my experience Textbroker loses the competition between these 3 websites. If you are a freelance writer and want to earn money for writing, I recommend that you sign up to all of them and stick to the best one. When you have a profile on 3 websites, it gives you more opportunities to work as a writer. But notice that Textbroker and HireWriters accept only native English speakers.
Conclusion – Is Textbroker Worth It?
Based on my little test Textbroker wasn’t worth it. However, I could still try their services for other niches. Maybe they don’t have experts on “make money online” niche but they could provide better articles for other websites. I will keep their website in mind and probably try it again later in the future.
When you invest money into something, it’s good to measure your return on investment. If you put a dollar in, you want to get more than a dollar out. You can try Textbroker service but be sure that the articles are making you more revenue that you are putting in. Otherwise, you won’t make any profit.
As I explained in the video, I wouldn’t recommend working as a freelance writer in the long run. It can be a good way to earn money if you need it immediately but in the long run having your own blog is much more profitable. You can earn $10,000/month or even $100,000/month in the long run if you become successful with your blog. We could only dream of such income as freelance writers.
The great thing is that there’s a step-by-step training that will teach you everything you need to build a profitable blog. It’s called Wealthy Affiliate. That training taught me how to earn money online by having a blog even though I before had any former experience of it.
Now I could take a month or two off and I could still cover all my expenses from the income that I get from my blogs. It’s all passive income. If I can do it you can do it.
=> Learn How to Build a Blog to Earn Passive Income.
Do you have experience of Textbroker or other similar platforms?
Have you worked as a freelance writer or outsourced some of your content writing?
The downside here is that as a writer in Textbroker, you won’t be able to earn much money as a full-time income. It is good if it is kept as a side hustle. You can only earn sufficient amount of money after you’ve built a good enough reputation, which can take loads of time.
That’s true. Some companies hire a regular writer on Textbroker when you would be able to earn a full-time income but in order to do that you need to have a great track record.
Writing as any other profession requires some skills and experience to make a good income. It’s completely possible to make a big income with writing but I personally prefer writing to build my own business instead of write to build someone else’s business.
Having your own business can be profitable in many ways. My dream is to also have my own business.
Hey! Thanks for your research. I was looking whether I should use Textbroker or not and now I see I can better start trying one of the other services you mention like iWriter and HireWriters. So your post has been very useful for me!
Hi Nils,
yeah. At least as a client I have been much more satisfied with HireWriters than with Textbroker. Today I’ll order even more articles from HireWriters 🙂 They seem to get ranked high on Google and drive tons of traffic to my websites.
Textbroker, is not a scam. It does has it pros and cons though. You have to look at certain companies in a certain way. If you don’t mind getting up early in the morning or spending gas money then go get you a 9 to 5, nothing wrong with that.
If you can’t get out and find a job, then working from home is a great way to earn an income. Yes some companies charge a fee for offering their service, but it’s alot cheaper then spending $50 a week for gas to get to a 9 to 5.
Textbroker pros is you can work from home with there service. There cons is yes they charge a fee for there service but again it’s cheaper then spending gas a week and you possibly can make more money with there service then a regular 9 to 5.
I am not talking for having a 9-5 job as you can clearly see on my website 🙂
I am a full-time online marketer and I definitely prefer this freedom than spending money on gas.
It’s possible to earn money on Textbroker but I explained several points in the text that you need to consider. In the beginning, your earnings won’t be very much. If you find clients who pay well, you can make a comfortable income. Otherwise, it’s just some extra money.
And the earning potential with freelance writing is never as good as with affiliate marketing.
I see that from your point of view it isn’t worth it and the thing you got wasn’t worth it. I thing I have heard about this website before. I think it’s a good option for people who want to write only in their spare time and don’t mind writing long articles.
The big disadvantage of this site is their fee, the page takes almost half of the money the client pays, I think that’s way too much.
Yeah, I was quite surprised to see how big their fee really is. Before that I thought that writers are earning quite well because my articles are expensive but then I realized that the company takes a big fee as a middleman.
Is textbroker available now in Philippines? I want to try things out if this really works. Though they have a very low rating in the past i think they still deserve to be tried and tested because some users are satisfied with their services.
Hi Jemuel,
I recommend contacting Textbroker support to ask whether it’s available in the Philippines. Notice that native language needs to be English if you want to become a writer.
Thank you i hope someday i could able to know about that i just want to know if how they pay you and in what way you will get the money if ever this is available in our country. There is no problem about English language speaking because i learned it from one of your recommendations and helped me to be more fluent in it and i am so thankful now im ready to use the English language sharing thoughts and communicating with others.
Great to hear that. 🙂 Just send a message to Textbroker support if you have questions how the website works in the Philippines and other details. They’ll respond you within 24 hours.
I looked into possibly joining this site once and found a lot of negative comments from previous users. Some have stated that clients usually just run off with their content once they have submitted the first draft, and TextBroker doesn’t do much to combat it.
Also, I read a lot of complaints that the site itself will keep some writers from reaching five star status or knock them down from it way too easily or quickly. To be fair, though, it’s been years since I first read these comments and complaints, so they could have improved a lot by now.
Anyway, thanks for your review, I’ll have to check and see if it’s good to join again now. I do agree with you that it’s much better to just use your own articles for yourself though, but like you said, sites like this can be good too if you need the money immediately.
Hi Fantasia,
I have actually heard the same complaint about other freelance writing sites as well. Writers have said that the client reject the article and just take the content. I have never been involved in any such cases so fortunately I don’t have first-hand experience about it.
Yes, it’s good to write the content yourself. However, if you want to leverage your business and take it to the next level, at some point you need to start outsourcing things. Man’s time is limited so it’s better to have a team 🙂
The fact that they have so many 1 star reviews compared to 5-star reviews is a bit of a bad indication. I know that a lot of good sites tend to have bad reviews as well but they mainly have good reviews as well. This is just bad.
Personally, I will be staying away from this site especially after hearing that you spent almost $90 and the return just wasn’t good enough. The fact that the quality of the posts wasn’t great either is not good at all.
Yeah. I compared my results with articles that I have received from HireWriters and here are the results:
On HireWriters I usually pay 3 times less for the article than on Textbroker. Still, those posts are driving way more traffic than any post on Textbroker.
So, based on my experiences I don’t see any reason why I would use Textbroker instead of HireWriters.
Working as a freelancer has not been that easy for me considering the fact that I lacked guidance on how t earn on these sites and how not to make mistakes working on such sites like Iwriter and the rest. I really want to know if you offer mentorship on upcoming freelancers that want to work on sites such as this?
Also, your review about TextBroker as a content outsourcing/freelance writing makes one tempted to register immediately on the site, but I want to know if the native speakers of English mean that someone in Nigeria won’t be able to join? I would like answers to these questions to guide my next step of action.
If I remember right, Textbroker is available only for U.S. residents. But iWriter and HireWriters should also be available for Nigerians if your native language is English.
I offer mentoring and support for all who register to Wealthy Affiliate through my website. There you can send me unlimited personal messages.
Don’t worry about the mistakes. The most important thing is to get started, keep going and learning. If you don’t start, you’ll never succeed. Try new things and you’ll have also great experiences.
In as much as I am disappointed to learn that Textbroker is only available to those living in the US, your kind words of not giving up really spurred me on not to give up on my pursuit of making money on the internet. I would have been happy to join Wealthy Affiliate program, but it seems the program is not available in Nigeria as well.
So, aside from that, there is no other form of mentoship that you offer to those that were not able to join the Wealthy Affiliate program?
At the moment no. Maybe in the future.
But of course, there are other sites that offer affiliate marketing training. For example Chris Farrell and Affilorama. I think I mentioned them before.