Frequently Asked Questions for Writers

Freelance writers can submit pre-written content for sale in our large Marketplace and also view current job listings from content buyers. These job listings are one-off jobs with no long-term commitments. You work on your own schedule, only accept the jobs that you want, and receive payment whenever you'd like. No need to wait for monthly or bi-monthly payments. Get paid as soon as you make a sale.

In order to write at Contentgather, you must be at least 16 years of age and English speaking. You are not required to live in an English speaking country, but you must have very strong command of the English language. You will also need a PayPal account, as this is the only method of payment that we offer. All content that you submit must be 100% unique and not found or listed anywhere else, even if the source content is your own.

There are currently 2 ways that you can earn money as a writer at Contentgather:

Pre-written Content: Submit your own articles on a wide variety of subjects (your choice), and list them for sale in our Marketplace. Buyers can browse through articles listed in the Marketplace and purchase any that appeal to them.

Custom Jobs: Wait for a buyer to come in and submit a Custom Job, which is a specific request for the type of content that they need. If you meet their requirements and are interested in the job and price that they offer, you may claim that job, fulfill it, and receive payment when complete.

There is no limit to how much you can write or how many articles you can list for sale at Contentgather.

As a writer, you make sales either via pre-written content or custom job requests. Both are dependent on there being buyers who are in need of what you are writing. While we cannot guarantee a certain number of sales, we publish our recent sales history so that you can see what sells, and how often. You can view that here.

We prefer to offer our writers a certain amount of freedom when it comes to organizing and formatting their content, but we do have some rules and recommendations. You can find those in our Writer Guide. This is an absolute must-read for all Contentgather writers.

• You may go here to submit your article. The minimum word count is 250, and the maximum is 2500.
• Once you submit your article, it will be sent to Contentgather staff for review. We will either approve it, reject it, or return it to you for editing.
• If your article is approved, it will listed for sale immediately, and you will also receive advanced payment for the article, before it sells, if you are eligible. There is more information about our advanced payments later in this FAQ.
• If your article is rejected, you will not be able to re-submit the article for consideration. You are welcome to submit other articles, but you will not be able to submit an article that has previously been rejected.
• If your article is returned for edit, then you will receive feedback from us as to what we would like for you to change. You can make the changes and submit for another review. We will then review again and approve/reject/return for edit just as before. If your article is returned for edit a second time, you only have one more opportunity to fix it before it is rejected permanently.
• Once your article is listed for sale, it must remain exclusive to Contentgather. If you wish to retain ownership of the article, you may remove it from the Marketplace at any time and maintain ownership. You may only do this if it has not sold.

Our Writer Guide is the best place to go for advice on writing content that sells. If you're struggling thinking of a topic to write about, consider viewing our recent sales to see what people are buying.

The "Value" assigned to your Marketplace listings is based on a combination of your cost per word and the staff rating. This calculated value is on a scale from 0-10, with 0 being the lowest value and 10 being the highest value. The highest value articles are going to be those with a high staff rating but are not too expensive. You can manipulate the value by adjusting the cost per word, if you would like. Higher value articles are designed to attract more buyers.

If you are a Silver level writer or higher, you will receive advanced payment for any Marketplace article that is approved. This advanced payment is sent to you as soon as your article is approved, before it sells! This money is yours to keep. If you later decide to remove that article from the Marketplace and it has not sold, you may do so, however you will forfeit the advanced payment that you were previously given. The table below illustrates how much the advanced payment is based on your writer level.

"Maximum Listings" refers to the maximum number of active Marketplace listings that you can have which will award advance payments. As a Silver writer, you may have 25 active Marketplace listings that will provide advance payment. This means that you will receive 0.05 advance payment for each of your first 25 approved listings.

You are welcome to submit more than 25 listings as a Silver writer, however you will not receive advanced payment for anything past 25. As your articles sell and your listings drop below 25, you will begin to receive advanced payments again until you reach 25 active listings.

The maximum amount that you can receive for advanced payment for any single article is $15.00

No, you may not list your article for sale at Contentgather and another website at the same time. If you have an article listed for sale in the Contentgather Marketplace, it must not be available for sale anywhere else. If you wish to sell it elsewhere, you must deactivate your listing at Contentgather first.

If one of our buyers has specific needs for content, they can submit their own request as a 'Custom Job' at Contentgather. When doing so, they will clearly define what they are looking for and any eligible writer may claim the job, fulfill it, and receive payment for the listed job price.

Review your selected Interests / Expertise under your profile and also your Notification Preferences.

If you have enabled notifications for new custom jobs posted, then you will receive an email immediately when a new custom job is listed that matches one of your Interests / Expertise.

Note that we sometimes choose not to send email notifications when listing a new Custom Job. If we are confident that at Custom Job will be claimed very quickly by one of our writers, we will not send emails to all interested writers. We feel that this is not good use of your email inbox knowing that you will have little, if any, opportunity to claim the job before another writer does so.

With this in mind, you may only be aware of new Custom Jobs if you happen to be browsing contentgather.com when the jobs are posted.

All Custom Jobs that are currently available for you to claim will be listed here.

• Once you claim a Custom Job, you will be given a certain amount of time to submit the article to the buyer for review. This time is based on the word count on the Custom Job:

  Word Count	Deadline for Submission
  Less Than 1000 Words	8 hours
  1000 to 2000 Words	16 hours
  More Than 2000 Words	24 hours

• If you do not submit by the deadline, you will forfeit the job, and it will be returned to other writers to claim.
• Once you submit your content for the job, the buyer will have 72 hours review the content and either Approve, Reject, or request that changes be made. You will have an open and direct line of communication with the buyer from start to completion.
• Once the buyer Approves or Rejects the article, both you and the buyer will be given the opportunity to rate each other based on your experience and work ethic.
• You will only receive payment once the buyer Approves your content.

Your Overall Rating is determined based on four different measurements, all ratings themselves: Content Rating, Approval Rating, Transactions Complete, and Account Age. Your Overall Rating is the average of these four individual ratings. The individual ratings are calculated as follows:

• Content Rating: This is the average of all ratings that you receive for your articles, whether in the Marketplace or Custom Jobs. All ratings from the Marketplace are used in this average, from the initial Staff Rating to the rating that the buyer gives the article after purchase. If your article is returned for edit by the Staff Editor, the rating that it is assigned when returned for edit will be included in your average, in addition to the rating that it receives when it is approved or rejected by the editor. If you have received more than 25 ratings, only the most recent 25 will be included in your average.
• Approval Rate: The percentage of Marketplace articles and Custom Jobs approved vs those that are rejected. Only the final decision on an article (Approved or Rejected) is considered. Any Edit Requests that are made will not be included in your Approval Rating. If you have more than 25 articles, only the most recent 25 will be included in your Approval Rate.
• Transactions Complete: The number of Marketplace or Custom Job articles sold and accepted by the buyer. The progression from 0 to 10 Transactions Complete rating is as follows:
  • 1 / 10: 5 transactions
  • 2 / 10: 10 transactions
  • 3 / 10: 15 transactions
  • 4 / 10: 25 transactions
  • 5 / 10: 50 transactions
  • 6 / 10: 75 transactions
  • 7 / 10: 100 transactions
  • 8 / 10: 125 transactions
  • 9 / 10: 150 transactions
  • 10 / 10: 200 transactions
• Account Age: The length of time since creating your Contentgather account. Your Account Age rating will progress as follows:
  • 1 / 10: 1 month
  • 2 / 10: 3 months
  • 3 / 10: 6 months
  • 4 / 10: 12 months
  • 5 / 10: 18 months
  • 6 / 10: 24 months
  • 7 / 10: 30 months
  • 8 / 10: 40 months
  • 9 / 10: 50 months
  • 10 / 10: 60 months

You are given an Overall Rating based on the factors discussed in the previous question (Content Rating, Approval Rate, Transactions Completed, Account Age). These are all used to determine your level, from lowest to highest: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, or Diamond. The higher your level, the more you will be allowed to charge for articles, and the more likely you will be selected for high-paying custom jobs.

The exact formula that we use to determine writer level is complex and proprietary and not something that we can share with the public.

If you receive a Marketplace rating that is lower that you had hoped for, the first thing that you should do is check the email that you received upon approval of the listing. The editor may have included feedback in that email to indicate why the rating was chosen.

Our editors do not provide feedback for every submission. Most submissions, in fact, do not include feedback. The editing process itself is very costly, and we do not always have the resources available to provide detailed feedback. In the event that you do not receive editor feedback on your article, please refer to our Writer Guide for advice on writing better content. The reason for your low rating is almost certainly covered in our guide.

Do not contact us asking for a second review or an explanation for your article rating. All initial reviews are final, and we do not review any articles twice.

Our Writer Guide is an excellent place to start. We try to include as much information as possible in our Writer Guide to ensure high-quality content.

For most writers, the path to an advanced writer level takes time. Advanced writer levels come with exclusive access to jobs and pay, and this is only something that we can offer to highly-vetted writers. For most, this means taking time to establish a firm reputation.

Having said that, if you are among the very top of writers, we do provide a way for you to advance to the top almost immediately. If you are a native English writer in the US, UK, or Canada, you can apply for Elite status at Contentgather. If you are accepted, you will receive a significant and immediate boost in your rating and writer level and will gain immediate access to all job requests at Contentgather. You can learn more about this in the next section.

Elite status is a designation that we apply to our absolute best writers that signifies to buyers the highest level of skill, expertise, and professionalism. Elite writers represent the top 1% of all writers at Contentgather.

Elite writers have access to all custom jobs and the highest pay scales. You can gain access to the high end without being an Elite writer, however, it will take longer to do so because you will need to establish a reputation if you are not an Elite writer.

There are only two requirements to become an Elite writer:

• You must be a native English writer living in the US, UK, or Canada.
• You must have an excellent grasp of the English language with extensive talent and expertise as a writer.

Our goal with Elite writers is to select the top 1% of all writers at Contentgather. We are not just looking for writers with good grammar. We are looking for writers who have mastered the art of writing. Writers who can generate some very unique and engaging content. It can sometimes be difficult to put this into words, as it is an "x-factor" of sorts.

• Your user profile will display an "ELITE" label on your profile - giving buyers extreme confidence in your ability
• Membership in an exclusive pool for Custom Job requests. When submitting a Custom Job, buyers can restrict to current writer levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond). In addition to writer levels, they will also be able to only make the job available to Elite writers. The minimum rate when sending to Elite writers is $0.15 per word.
• A significant boost to your current writer level. By simply receiving the Elite label at Contentgather, your writer level is likely to increase 1 or 2 times from where it started. If you're currently a Silver writer, you will be bumped to Gold or Platinum just by obtaining the Elite level.

• Send us a message requesting elite membership
• You should indicate in your email that you wish to apply for Elite status. Include any necessary background and credentials. Please do not send writing samples. If we require writing samples, we will request them separately.
• We will respond and request additional information if we feel necessary. We may require more information on your background, additional writing samples, photo identification, and phone/contact verification.
• If you have little reputation at Contentgather, we will likely require writing samples. These will need to be new articles that you write on specific topics that we provide. This content will be yours to keep, but it will need to be written specifically for the Elite application to ensure that they are truly yours and were not taken from elsewhere.
• Once we come to a decision, we will inform you as to whether you have been accepted or declined. If declined, you may apply again in 6 months.

We cannot place a timetable on processing your Elite application. We will process them as quickly as possible but will also be very thorough in doing so.

If your application for Elite status is rejected, you may apply again within 6 months. If you are still unable to obtain the Elite status, there is absolutely no reason to worry. Keep in mind that it is reserved for the top 1% of all writers. Not making the top 1% is not going to significantly hinder your earning ability at Contentgather. The vast majority of content exchanged at Contentgather is below the Elite level.

The amount that you are paid for your content will vary based on your Contentgather writer level and also the job that you are working on. Payment is on a per word basis and ranges from $0.02 per word to $0.20 per word.

• Marketplace: When one of your pre-written articles sells in the Marketplace, you will immediately receive your asking price minus a 25% Contentgather fee.
• Custom Jobs: Once the buyer approves your submission, you will receive the price listed on the job, minus a 25% Contentgather fee.

It's 2023. You don't need to wait around for a monthly or bi-monthly payment.

Whenever you're ready to cash out the funds in your account, you may do so within your account pages. All payments are issued via PayPal. Once you submit your request for payment, it will take up to 24 hours before it is processed and payment is issued. Once this happens, the funds will be available immediately in your PayPal account. Please reference our payment terms for more information.

There are 2 scenarios where you may pay fees:

• Contentgather will take a 25% fee on all Marketplace or Custom Job transactions. This 25% comes out of the asking price, and you will then receive the rest.
• You will be charged a $1.00 fee for any payment request that is less than $20.00. Payment requests that are greater than $20.00 will not incur a fee.

You do not retain any ownership rights to articles that you sell, whether via the Marketplace or a Custom Job. The buyer retains full rights to modify the content in any way, remove credit to your name, and even claim as their own. This is commonly referred to as "ghostwriting."

Once your article is approved by Contentgather staff and listed at the Marketplace, you are guaranteed payment when it sells. If a buyer purchases your article and is unhappy with it, they are not eligible to return it or receive a refund. This is something that they agree to before completing their purchase.