I'm paying a ghost writer to write me a 12k word ebook...

11 days. Sorry I messed up with currencies, I am paying $240

Hmmm. It's hard to say, he could possibly be outsourcing the work, considering you can get the rate as low as $0.5 / 100 words, so $60 in total. If you receive utter shit back, you can request a cancellation and get the money refunded, but it will be in Fiverr credit like I said.

You can also request modifcation once it has been delivered, you do not have to worry about the final order being final.

If I request cancellation, is that subject to review from Fiverr or am I free to do this at any time? Having it back in Fiverr credit is lame but I plan on continuing to use Fiverr so it isn't too much of an issue.

The request is sent to the seller and they can either accept or decline. If they decline a mutual cancellation you should contact customer support and they will almost certainly side with you.

Cheers for your help mate

I love biz because its actually helpful at times. Keep fighting the good fight guys.

What's the topic of the ebook?

I'm amazed that anyone would work for such little money - 12k words is a lot!

Are you expecting it to be high quality for that price?

$240, I messed up earlier with currency conversion.

The topic is around internet culture and internet events which have spilled over into public news. As this is my first time outsourcing I'm really not sure as to what quality I can expect, I believed $240 to be a pretty good deal judging from other prices

The problem with sites like Fiverr, Upwork etc etc is that there are a lot of sellers competing for work which results in a race to the bottom in terms of prices. Also there are a high amount of sellers from countries like India, where people earn as little as $0.5 an hour.

For writing projects, a lot of sellers charge $5 for 500 words, with more expensive ones charging $5 for 300 words. I've actually seen one seller who charges $5 for 700 words.

Certain very highly rated sellers will charge $5 for 100 words for things like press releases.

Bare in mind on Fiverr the site takes a 20% cut.

I currently sell articles and I can write up to 3x 500 word articles in an hour. Of course not the greatest quality at all, but people generally don't care. This results in just over minimum wage for me, which I am happy with considering I am a student and just looking to earn a little to help out.

A lot of people employ cheap tricks though, like using an article spinner and "spin" an existing article so it pasts plagiarism checkers, however the result is often clunky.

Hope that helps you understand why or how people charge so cheaply.

He's already working for almost nothing, last thing he needs is someone breathing down his neck, demanding to make changes, causing the work to take twice as long. I wouldn't send it until it's finished, MAYBE send you a little peak after 10% of the work is done, just to get a "keep going" or "this won't work out", nothing else.

Those prices just sound mad to me. I'm a copywriter at a marketing agency and they charge like £275 a blog (500 words) all in.

Been thinking of going freelance recently for like £150 a blog (stealing the clients by undercutting the agency) but this is making me have second thoughts.

I'm really sceptical as to the quality of writing when it's that cheap. I know a lot of companies who'll happily pay £100+ for a blog as it helps their SEO.

$240 for 12k words just sounds mad - that's like an undergraduate (university) dissertation!

Thanks for your input.

If anyone is reading, what is your experience of ebook publishing or working on UpWork/Fiverr? I recently published some old uni work of mine related to Computer Networking, it's only around 2500 words but I've had 4 people purchase it so far. It's not so great in that I only get 35% royalty from each sale of $1.99, but I don't believe the content is worth $2.99.

So recently I've been thinking about getting more into ebook publishing, hence why this thread was made - I figured if I can manage to sell crappy uni work, I can outsource writers, maybe pay for some marketing promotion and rake in passive income while I work my full time job.

It is mad and the writing quality is generally quite poor. However what you have to think about is the people paying for the services are not expecting high quality results. Most people I have written for have their own small site and think the quality is fine. The people who contact me are not big companies. It really is true you get what you pay for. But to most people as long as its in English and makes sense they are satisfied.

It's similar to logo designs, a large company could pay $100,000, however someone who is not aware of the value would think you get the same results for $30, and would still be happy with the results.

If you want to get into freelancing definitely do not do it through sites like Fiverr. It really is a race to the bottom. However you can have great success if you attract clients in the right way. It seems like you know how much to value your own work and know the market for who pays for these blogs.

Thanks, you're right. Even for £500 a blog, say, the kind of clients I'm thinking of should still see positive ROI as it is all about search ranking, attracting customers, etc.

Have you thought about starting a blog/website to attract qualified visitors and selling your ebooks to them directly? This is something I'm trying to do (that last image is from one of my sites which I'm plugging). If you can rank well for niche search phrases you'll get high volumes of targeted visitors who you can sell to directly (so you'll get 100% of the profit as opposed to 35%)

It also sounds like what you're talking about is quite specialist so maybe you could charge a higher price for your ebook on computer networking? If you rank well on Google people will automatically assume you're an authority on the subject and be willing to pay more.

amazon.com/gp/product/B01FPF5IA6/

It's only 2400 words, is being slightly specialist enough of a justification to bump the pricess to 2.99?

I don't know, I think it's one of those things you'll have to test. Any higher though and it will probably put people off.

I think the trick with Amazon is, like Google, to get on the first page. Unfortunately 'Cloud Computing' is going to be quite competitive so I'd look to generate traffic to your Amazon page through other ways - website, social media, etc. It will definitely help to get some positive reviews as well. There are ways to do this but I'm not too familiar with them.

If you're quite knowledgeable about computing, my suggestion would be to write an ebook that addresses a very -specific- problem in depth. You might target college students who are writing papers or network managers of SMEs who need help installing whatever. If you find a niche it will be much less competitive and you'll be able to charge a much higher price. The more of these niches you can find, the better.

That's just what I'd do. You can try going mass appeal but it's very competitive.

I don't really have the time to write since I'm actually working full time as a systems admin. I do have some other work I've done through uni, but I think it may be too specialised, however there isn't any harm in trying...

If you're interested the one in mind is a type of virus called a "remote access trojan".

Side question - how does including images in ebooks work, is it completely fine as long as your source it? Or does the formatting balls up somehow

With regards to marketing, I have never touched any social media, blogging or website hosting before and I fear I lack the time to research enough to doing it, yet you may have a point in that it may do wonders to getting traffic/views to my product

I write novels, for free, in my free time. My biggest project is 60,000 words. I am nowhere near a publishing deal, but I would gladly send segments to anyone who wanted to pay me.

So that gentleman is bullshitting you.

That may be true, however the question I'm asking myself is does it matter? If I receive finished work at the time of deadline that is grammatically correct which is loosely what I asked for, I don't actually think it affects me from a purely business point of view... I can always edit it myself

The guy isn't only writing your ebook. He's writing 5 other peoples ebooks. 10 Other blogs and probably a few other random jobs.

He more than likely hasn't started your ebook yet. But that doesn't mean he's not going to complete it within the deadline.

I would just leave him to it bro. It's pretty common for these guys to not start until the deadline nears because they work so many jobs at once.

Fair enough, it is pretty much a full time job - especially if you have to learn it all from scratch as well.

I wouldn't worry too much about image copyright. It's probably best to search 'free stock images' to find some you can use but in reality you're probably never gonna get caught. The probability of any negative consequences is basically

chance of someone downloading your ebook x chance that that person recognises that image as being copyrighted x chance that they can actually be bothered to take you to court over it

When you look at it that way, you're almost guaranteed to get away with it. I always infringe copyright if I can't find an image I like

As somebody that does consulting work as a developer I've got to side with him. Here's what will happen if/when you get your way.

>he sends what he has
>you nitpick and critique on pointless shit like font and formatting and ask that he get those things corrected
>he does it because you're paying for it
>he brings it back and you've got more revisions and he hasn't had time to write more because of your requests
>he tells you the budget is running up and you get pissed that he's wasting your money

Before you started you should have had a schedule set
>initial draft
>once he's got the story completely fleshed out, you can have a review and suggest changes
>go back and forth with changes until you're happy
I guarantee you're going to kill your budget trying to micro manage his writing.

Is it not fine to add the source of image below? Or is it required that permission be granted (and therefore just a source being a statement of "this is where I stole this picture from")

There are only two images total, and they are removable if it makes things easier

Yeah, I think legally it's still not OK:
blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story

In reality though the chance of you getting caught AND successfully prosecuted is basically zero. Even then it will be a small amount!

I'd leave the images in. Content is much better with images.

Leave images in and remove the source text?

Final question while I'm being greedy for your knowledge:- for ebook titles, should I have it very descriptive of the book content (therefore possibly receiving higher search traffic purely from keywords in the title) or do I try to come up with a more catchy title?

For example for my report on remote access trojans I could choose:

An Introduction to Remote Access Trojans (boring but to the point)

or

RATS! How Hackers Take Over Your Computer
(seemingly more catchy/click-baity)

Then again, I could combine the two by using a subtitle to include "an introduction to......"

Asking for a segment is a normal and simple request.

Did you pay upfront? I hope you did not pay up front.

Usually you give them a down payment then pay the rest upon completion.

On Fiverr, you pay money into the pot and when it has been agreed by both parties that the job is completed, the transaction goes through. From this thread I've learned that if I request to cancel the job, the money is returned to me in Fiverr credit that I can spend on that site.

>Leave images in and remove the source text?
Up to you, it's still illegal even if you leave the source text in so I'd just get rid of it

I'd take bits of both - the first one is good because it has a decent 'long tail' phrase (I imagine) i.e. 'remote access Trojans' - this is the specific thing your audience will search for

But perhaps something alarmist (i.e. clickbaity) would help? I don't really know as I'm used to just writing blog titles.

This coschedule.com/headline-analyzer is a tool I use occasionally and may help you.

Try and get inside the head of people who'll want to download your ebook. I don't know the subject but will people be searching things like 'how do I remove Remote Access Trojans?'

If so, try and tailor the title more toward those queries rather than the generic 'an introduction to...'

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Again thank you very much for your input on this thread

Just a thought - I write fiction and non-fiction stuff regularly, and it is pretty common to write an extremely rough draft first, then perfect it though several rounds of editing. He could be done with the draft, but not wanting to send it to you because it needs editing. I would never want anyone to see my first few drafts.

Gw here the guy u hired isnt done on time and wont admit it or is outsourcing

>justification to bump the pricess

Expand to 3400 words and bump it up to 4.99. Low prices - low quality product.

You don't sell by being humble. A highly priced product is a high quality product unless it's absolutely undeniable that it's a scam.