Content Spree: Freelancer writers, right the write and cut out the middleman!

As a freelancer myself, especially in the early days, I certainly paid my dues to enough "content agencies" to know where the larger slice of the pie ends up. Content Spree, on the face of it at least, appears to have added some welcome transparency to the process. On top of that writers who sign up and the businesses they write for get to communicate rather than leaving the management of a project to the guy in the middle.  It’s not all free of course but writers will at least know how much a potential employer is offering before Mr Ten Per Cent takes his cut rather than just accepting an agencies price for the job. Additional fees are payable for enhanced services and we’ll come to those a little later.

It is free to join and writers who register can upload their CV and samples of previous writing to their profile as well as listing particular skills and preferred genres. Businesses with a writing job to fill can register and post details of it along with the minimum/maximum cash on offer. The site then provides a project dashboard allowing employer and writer to stay in touch throughout the process.

As well as the bidding process the site caters for contests where employers can receive a number of submissions and choose their preferred one with the winner walking off with the cash.

The thorny subject of getting paid for what you write is covered in some way by the fact that employers have to deposit money into an escrow account. This can be by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Once the project reaches a successful conclusion they simply authorize the release of funds into the writer’s Content Spree account. As a writer, actually getting the cash into your own hands (less the 10% charge) requires you to have a PayPal account.

Going back to additional fees these apply to both writers and employers. The standard package gives writers a number of free bids per month. The opportunity to bid for more comes at a price. Similarly, employers who want their project to feature more prominently on the site than the standard package allows will have to shell out for it. There are also additional services such as a plagiarism check to keep everyone out of court.

Conclusion

Although still in the early stages I think this one has great potential. Going forward, writers will gain a rating based on work done which can only help employers in their decisions. Furthermore anything that brings writers closer to the actual people commissioning the work can only be a good thing.