TextBroker Review: Is It a Scam or Legit?


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TextBroker Review: Is it legit?I've been in this industry for many years and it's always been a struggle for people to land a work at home job. It's either most of them are scams or folks don't have the skills that are actual demand. For instance freelance writing always in demand because all websites need content. I see ads recruiting writers to work on all kinds of projects, from writing a review of a favorite game to making a product description for a camera. With these “opportunities” popping up all over the place, it's hard to know what's real and what's not. So let's take a look at TextBroker.com, an online freelance writing platform, and see if it's a scam or legit.

What is TextBroker?

Simply put, TextBroker.com is an online content exchange platform. It was founded in Germany in 2008, and it currently has headquarters in New York City and Las Vegas. TextBroker basically has two areas of focus. One area is for clients who want to purchase articles or content. The other side is meant for writers who want to make money writing the content for these clients. Writing for clients can be a pain in the but, so you may want to consider easier ways to earn like Fusion Cash & Swagbucks.com.

How Do You Join TextBroker?

It is free to join, with an application process. Click here to take a look at the signup process. For starters, they require you to submit an article of your choice based on a few topics they issue. This is REALLY important to nail, since you only get one shot at determining your initial “quality rating.” Theoretically, you could get anywhere from a 1 to a 5. However, a 1 cannot get ANY work, and it is extremely rare to get a 5, and it's even more rare for a client to be willing to pay for a writer with a quality of 5.

It takes a LONG time (up to 2 weeks) to get your article evaluated, so be prepared to wait. Then, once you're assigned a rating, you can start writing. You can see what articles are available for your quality rating, and each article gets assessed by the author AND TextBroker staff. This is a double-rating system that ensures you get treated fairly. Every 5 ratings, your quality is re-assessed, making it easy to advance in the ranks and earn more and more money if you're serious.

If you get to the 4-star level (fairly easy to do if you've written for any length of time) you can expect to be earning a little less than 2 cents a word, which adds up very quickly.

If that sounds like chump change to you, you may want to consider Fusion Cash & Swagbucks.com as a better paying alternative way to earn money at home.

How does TextBroker pay and when?

Like a lot of freelance writing sites, TextBroker is only willing to pay through PayPal. You NEED to have sent them a W9 form that they very explicitly require before payment. If you're not actually a US citizen and/or you're uncomfortable giving them this information, do not proceed. They have no minimum threshold for this; for them to send you ONE PENNY, you'll need to be on-board with this process.

To get paid once you've submitted all that documentation, you'll need to have earned at least $10 in your account. They send out payments at the beginning of every business week, so it's fairly often.

TextBroker Complaints

Since TextBroker is such a commonly used platform, there are tons of complaints, some of which are more valid than others. Here are some I have personally observed and others online have concurred with:

US Residents Only

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, TextBroker is open to US RESIDENTS ONLY. Don't even try to fool TextBroker by using a proxy or VPN, since they require a fully validated US government-issued identification as well as a confirmed W9 tax form to be sent to the United States' IRS. I feel bad for my competent international brothers and sisters but I don't make the rules.

HORRIBLE user interface:

Be prepared to have a stress ball around at all times when using TextBroker. I'm not sure if the interface was made in the late 1990s or just by someone who didn't have it all together, but it is very difficult to use. It's filled with complex little tables and buttons, and it very frequently will throw frustrating “internal errors” that cause my research team to have to log in and out all the time. This can get very old very fast from using the platform. Just know you'll have to be patient, since there isn't any way around it.

Why Are You ALL Up My Personal Business?

Textbroker.com requires a lot more personal info than most sites to work as a writer for their company. If you're an private person, be prepared to be paranoid about the company's use of your information. They require much more information than any other freelancing company I've researched and their application process is oddly lengthy for an open-market freelance writing platform. It can take almost a month in total to get fully verified and ready to go. All this digging into your information might give you pause. But my research team could not find any reports of them actually misusing your info, and they have been around for a long time.

A bad client can make or break you!

Your rating is your livelihood on TextBroker. It's determined technically by the last five evaluations of your content. Don't like a rating? Too bad! TextBroker will supplement the rating with their own evaluation, but there's nothing you can do to solve a client's unfair rating other than choose to not write for them again. You can try to avoid this by writing only for clients with a good track record.

Update:

The clients do not rate you. They can provide an evaluation and rating, but it is only one part of the rating system. Until June of 20016, client evaluations had no bearing on your rating. The new system, however, is supposed to take that into account.

The rating system is different as of June 1 2016. Now, one article is reviewed by an editor and that one article determines your “star” rating. Just a few misplaced commas can drop you a level. The editor is the only one to determine your rating, not the clients.

Clients can reject an article after giving you one chance to revise it. Textbroker will review the article and if they feel the rejection was unwarranted, will overturn it and the writer gets paid. If they decide it was warranted, and they can decide that based on something other than why the client didn't like it, the rejection is upheld and you are not paid.

So is TextBroker Legitimate?

TextBroker does provide payments when they say they will, and they're very upfront about earnings. The only somewhat misleading thing is that it takes a lot of work to get approved to write for them, and this time and effort is not factored into the overall money you will make. It's a huge amount of work, but you do get paid as promised, and there are advancement opportunities, providing you are willing to look at your own writing critically. If you're not a native speaker or you don't have a particular inclination towards writing, this might not be for you.

What's Next?

I personally have a love hate relationship with content sites like TextBroker. My blogger business side just feels that in the long run it just makes more financial sense to start your own blog and get rid of the middleman who's taking a cut of your money. If you feel the same way, then you should seriously consider My Top Free Work At Home Recommendation which teaches you how to make a living by blogging. The advantages are you don't have to deal with demanding clients that can limit your income growth.

Now with that all said, I'm not knocking anyone that wants to give TextBroker a shot. Clearly you can make some money with it and I'm big proponent of multiple streams of income. So with that in mind I would encourage you to look into my popular Work At Home Courses, Fusion Cash & Swagbucks.comas well. When you couple all these opportunities together they may add up to some real money and help you mitigate the risk of losing all your income that may be tied to one company.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about my TextBroker Review. So please leave a comment below on your way out. Thanks for reading.

Eddy with a y

34 thoughts on “TextBroker Review: Is It a Scam or Legit?”

  1. What is so scary about being on this website, is reading the atrocious English grammar that is being used here by both the author of the website and commenters. So many people making words plural when they should be singular and singular when they should be plural, no punctuation being used, and incomplete sentences to name but a few. And the horror starts with the author of this site in the first 2 paragraphs, down to multiple commenters. Does anyone use proper grammar anymore or most importantly, proofread? What makes it so horrifying is that this is a website for writing services! The decline of people who have real command of the English in the past 2 decades is alarming.

    Reply
    • This so called atrocious English used on the site has helped thousands of people avoid scams and make money. And fortunately the audience that visits this site appreciates that.

    • You’ve omitted a couple of commas:
      “…and incomplete sentences [_,_] to name but a few”; and,
      “Does anyone use proper grammar anymore [_,_] or most importantly, proofread?”

    • To be specific, it does matter. Textbroker does not allow for grammatical errors, whether in spelling, punctuation, or general sentence structure. As an author, you are rated by your first writing sample and then given the level of stars that your writing has earned. If you are a two-star author, which may reflect many grammatical and spelling issues, then you can only answer and fill orders requesting a two-star rating. You have access to up to four stars if you are a four-star author. You have the opportunity to improve your writing skills to advance to the 5-star rank, but it does require absolute accuracy. So, to answer your question, yes, it does matter, and the amount of money you are paid for your submission reflects quite literally how much it matters.

  2. I, a US citizen, worked for Textbroker for four years, from 17 different countries, and I was recently terminated because I logged into my account from the airport in Nairobi, Kenya.

    Nowhere on the site does it specify that an author will be terminated from logging in to his/her account from Kenya, and “Textbroker Author Services” told me that Textbroker doesn’t need to make this known; the company can terminate authors at any time, for any reason.

    Textbroker still owes me money–from articles the company accepted after I received the email that said my account was terminated–so we’ll see what happens with that.

    I highly recommend NOT WORKING FOR TEXTBROKER because they treat their authors terribly.

    Reply
    • Hey Brit,

      Thanks for sharing your experience. That was a crappy thing for them to do. If you’ve worked with them for years with no issues, you would think they would extend you the courtesy in this situation.

  3. I think your research was very good but I found many errors in your writing. You may want to edit it and republish. Just my opinion.

    Reply
    • Nah I’m good. The mistakes you found never stopped people from finding the information useful and it certainly didn’t stop my site from making money. But you may want to take your talents to the site we reviewed above.

  4. Thanks for the review. Very informative, especially when reading the comments at the bottom. I am wondering if you can provide an example of the kind of work a website/company like this will be asking for. Is there a way you can show something like this? I am having a hard time imagining how one would write a random article and furthermore, who would be asking for one to be written. I’d like to know this before I give out my information. Also, just out of vanity I feel dumb not understanding. HA! Thanks in advance.

    Reply
    • Sorry the best thing to do is sign up yourself and get a feel for yourself. But freelance writing isn’t for everyone. You can stick to topics and categories you know if you feel uncomfortable with the idea of writing various topics. That’s what many writers do with sites like this.

  5. I, too, started with skepticism of Textbroker. I read all the reviews I could find. What I found was that the ones who complained the most were also the ones with the most grammatical mistakes in their complaints. Quality work gets quality ratings and quality pay. The rest get what they deserve accordingly. I will agree that the website can be a little frustrating at times, but so far, I am happy with my success. I write what I want as often as I want to. It’s working wonders for me.

    Reply
  6. Your top work at home waste of time crap. 10 minutes reading bullshit to last but not least tell me to pay you 10 bucks? Man in you short video there is not a single payment that reaches 10 dollars and you want me to pay you that?
    Here is an important questions.
    How are you trying to help people asking them for money when I suppose that they are struggling looking for a job and they literally don’t have that amount to give or pay?
    Kmmon man this is no way a helping people thing.

    Reply
  7. I have written more than 140 articles over the past year at the 3* level. Unfortunately, I am a recent victim of a few misplaced commas and got downgraded to a 2* which offers little to no writing jobs. I have learned a lot about my writing and discovered areas I never considered before. It has not been a waste of time and I miss being able to scan the 3* list for new material. I begged and pleaded and have upgraded my spell/grammar check in hopes of avoiding this in the future. In the meantime, I am not earning any money which I need to supplement my social security income. I have looked at other sites, but have not found anything that appeals to me. Any advice?

    Reply
    • Sorry to hear about that Vivian. My advice is to start your own blog and write for yourself. It’s what I’ve been doing for years and make a full time income. It takes time to get there but you don’t have your money isn’t dictated on perfect grammar and spelling. So that’s my personal two cents.

  8. Textbroker is more of a “having to start somewhere” in terms of starting a freelance writing career. The pay is low for the work to be done and the pressure you are under to complete the articles. If you’re at 3 stars, it is going to be frustrating to use this as a source of income (even for supplemental income). You will spend quite a bit of time and deal with aggravation for just a couple of dollars. I would avoid Textbroker if you are trying to advance your freelance writing career.

    Reply
    • Thanks for sharing your opinion. I tend to just feel you’re better off writing for yourself or with direct clients if you want to make real money writing. So I agree with you.

  9. Thank you for this review! I just started writing for Textbroker a few days ago. It was a wonderful website. I have already made 25 dollars writing for them. Initially, I worried about the information I was handing out, but after I discovered the legitimacy of the website, it became apparent to me that I would enjoy writing for money.

    Reply
  10. This is a fairly accurate review. I write for Textbroker on a regular basis and average around $300-$600 per week with them. There is one thing that is incorrect, however.

    The clients do not rate you. They can provide an evaluation and rating, but it is only one part of the rating system. Until June of this year, client evaluations had no bearing on your rating. The new system, however, is supposed to take that into account.

    The rating system is different as of June 1 2016. Now, one article is reviewed by an editor and that one article determines your “star” rating. Just a few misplaced commas can drop you a level. The editor is the only one to determine your rating, not the clients.

    Clients can reject an article after giving you one chance to revise it. Textbroker will review the article and if they feel the rejection was unwarranted, will overturn it and the writer gets paid. If they decide it was warranted, and they can decide that based on something other than why the client didn’t like it, the rejection is upheld and you are not paid.

    Just wanted to clarify a few things…other than that, great article!

    Reply
  11. Thank you so much! I’m a newbie in the big, bad world of freelance writing and need all the help I can get. Your review was very straightforward and helpful. Keep up the good work!

    Reply
    • You’re very welcome Margie. I’m glad you found my review useful. Freelance writing can be very profitable. But it takes time. Textbroker and sites like it are a good way to get your feet wet. What type of writing do you currently do? Do you have samples?

  12. That’s a really good honest review! The lesson to take from this is that many sites like TextBroker might be legitimate but for one reason or another, they’re not as great as they’d like you to think.

    Reply
    • Thanks Cheryl,
      Every company has good and bad points. It just comes with the territory. So it’s important to know this so you can make an informed decision.

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