How Much Money Can You Realistically Earn Writing for Textbroker?

How Much Money Can You Realistically Earn

Let's face it: You've just graduated college with an unmarketable liberal arts degree, you're broke, and and you suddenly think you can make money by writing content on the Internet.

You Google how to make money online, find out about either creating your own blog or online content mills, and then stumble upon a website called Textbroker that offers paid cash for your writing skills.

While the idea of a content mill isn't something new, the possibilities become endless once you begin to leverage your burgeoning writing career on Textbroker.

In this article, I'll discuss how much money you can realistically expect to earn writing for textbroker with some personal examples from my own brief time with the online content mill.

My Background as a Writer for Textbroker

I personally first heard of Textbroker in June 2017 after a short stint while homeless in Cleveland, Ohio.

At 31 years old, I had a background in writing from my days as an English undergraduate at the University of Toledo, and decided I wanted to make money writing for other people.

Through the magic of Google and its wonderful algorithms, I stumbled upon Textbroker, which seemed like an easy way to make money while unemployed.

Upon submitting my writing sample, I was awarded a 4 star rating (you cannot start out as 5 stars until you pass their writing test) and was given an option of categories to pick and choose from.

How Hard Can It Be?

As anyone familiar with content writing will know, most content mills such as Textbroker pay per word rather than by the hour. Starting out as a 4 star writer, the average asking rat of pay for basic orders was 2.1 cents per word.

You read that right. For a 4 star writer, I earned a whopping 2.1 cents per word for 4 star rated articles, and even less for 3 star rating articles.

Mind you, this was in 2017, but by the year 2021, when I applied to write for Textbroker again, not much had changed.

The Ugly

The cold hard truth is that Textbroker is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to writing content on the Internet. It's an entry level content mill to help build resumes and establish connections with potential clients.l, and while that's great, the pay frankly stinks.

In fact, when you log in as an author, you can even see on their url subdirectory the word "Intern".

In plain sight...

Yes, you can make more money by getting a higher rating and getting invited to team orders, which I did, but the trick with such low paying content gigs is to create similar content in a niche as quickly as possible and an as often as possible.

No, you cannot copy and paste article after article, but with enough repetitions, you begin to know your niche or category and can quickly whip up a keyword implemented article for your random HVAC and publishing company in no time.

By 2022, my bread and butter were online casino reviews, HVAC websites, and personal orders for music related articles of all things.

Personally, the HVAC articles were the simplest and most often requested, netting me up to a whopping 3.1 cents per word for personal team invites, while the music related articles were the most difficult and challenging.

I say HVAC were the easiest because the orders were all the same. Most assignment directions were to write a description of services offered by a company and list some benefits of utilizing their HVAC services.

The music articles were far more difficult due to them always being unique and more research intensive. Mind you, these articles were for a personal client that I have no idea found me as a writer.

While I technically made more per article with the music related content, the HVAC was by far more easy to replicate and speed up.

How Much Money Can You Realistically Earn?

As you can surmise, writing for a content mill such as Textbroker is about churning out content fast and repeating the process as efficiently as a possible to make money.

But unless you are a machine or cheating the system, burn out will come quick, no matter how much YouTube gurus tell you you can make.

From my personal experience, an averagely committed writer on Textbroker can expect to earn around $200 dollars per month on their platform.

Six Months of Earnings Back in 2021

I say this because that's what I averaged putting in a couple hours a day on their website. However, keep in mind this was back in 2021, and a lot has changed in online content mills.

For starters, AI has killed a ton of orders through Textbroker, to the point that often there are no orders available.

Wow, So Empty

I've read that team orders are still a way to get paid orders, but for the average writer, this might be a death sentence to whatever hopes they might have at making money on Textbroker.

Side Hustle or Getting Your Foot In the Door?

As Textbroker's URL subtly hints, they basically are a part-time internship for new and experienced content writers looking for video game money and an entry point into content writing.

Personally, I found the content I wrote enjoyable and engaging, but the burnout was real and the effort not worth a full-time pursuit.

Yes, there are other content mills that pay more, such as Contently, but chances are you will only slowly move up the ladder in terms of how much you can make as an online content writer, and not by much.

But just like your best baseball player or star athlete, writing is about repetition and hitting the ropes. You simply won't get better at the craft unless you do the reps.

When I reapplied to Textbroker in 2021, I topped out at $1200 for six months of work, and that was before taxes!

Nothing is Guaranteed in Life But Death and Taxes

Mark Twain was Right

With taxes, you should expect to pay 25% of your earnings to taxes as a self-employed individual.

That's right, unless you want to hide your earnings, you're going to have pay federal, state, and even and local taxes on what you earn as a self-employed freelance writer.

If you are business minded you might find related expenses to offset this but as a general rule of thumb, you should expect to pay about 25% of your earnings to taxes.

At $200 per month, or $2400 per year, that comes out to about $150 or $1,800 per year in take home pay.

The Bigger Picture

If making a full-time income is your ultimate goals as an online content writer, I'll just keep it simple: Textbroker isn't it.

However, if you're a realistic human who understands how getting entry level experience works, you'll know that an internship with Textbroker, as sly as they reveal this to you, is just that. A highly underpaid internship that offers an easy way into the business of online content creation.

What you do with that experience is up to you.

I personally found 6 months to be the limit, and began other pursuits such as writing for Contently and selling articles on other platforms such as dotWriter, as well as unpaid entry level gig writing comic book articles through an unpaid internship with Fandom.

Let me tell you, now that was a gig!

Conclusion

To summarize it all up, if you want to know how much money you make as a writer on Textbroker, from my personal experience with the company, I would say about $200 USD per month, if you can make it to 4-stars.

No, I did not churn out articles full-time nor did I ever achieve 5-stars, but as someone who was just a beginner, that experience was invaluable and ultimately something I am proud to put on my resume and LinkedIn work experience.

With that said, the sad news is that AI has destroyed a lot of available, and frankly, cheap work through online content mills such as Textbroker.

While $200 per month was obtainable back in 2017 and 2021, I honestly don't think that strategy for professional content writing is currently viable.

Rather, open source content such as articles posted to Fandom or Wikipedia that rely on heavily generated information from writers doing so for free seem to dominate basic information searches on Google. While there might be work out there for the actually talented content writer, the truth is many major websites don't pay anything at all for that content.

Combine that with the cost-cutting automation that basic artificial intelligence can now provide and you can begin to understand the race to the bottom of the barrel for unskilled copy writing.

As of writing this article, I honestly believe your best bet for making money as a content writer is to go into business for yourself or work for a higher level field, such as writing content for specialized online magazines and journals.

While I personally have written for an academic journal and university newspaper, I can tell you that getting your foot in to these industries without proper internships and experience is pretty much not going to happen.

If you lack such experience, then even something as simple as making money on Textbroker might not even be a realistic option.

In that case, to gain experience in this field, you would need to start up your own personal blog or work for free to build a portfolio, such as by publishing articles on Medium, and slowly establish a brand that you can use to market your skills as a writer.

But, whatever your feelings about making money on Textbroker, always remember: content is king and no matter what naysayers will say, will sell if good.

In that regards, get your foot in the door whatever way possible and keep writing!