What Kinds of Work Can I do for Quality Gal?
Quality Gal is an SEO content writing service that provides articles to its clients. It relies on the expertise of its writers. Before writing for Quality Gal, you must create an account on their writer panel. Next, you must fill out a confidentiality agreement, writer application and a W-9 form for tax purposes located here. On Quality Gal’s front page, it is advertised that each article pays at least $15. This is something of a misnomer – if writers meet special criteria, it is possible to earn between $15 and $30 per article. So far, it appears that Quality Gal is only hiring freelance writers, and not editors or proofreaders.
What’s Involved?
I filled out the application and related paperwork for Quality Gal, which took about two hours. The company expects a thorough report of previous writing experiences. After that, I scanned the paperwork and sent it to Quality Gal. I received a reply within two days, mentioning that I would receive a test assignment when an available one popped up. About a week later, I did receive an e-mail. My test assignment was on vitamins and minerals.
The minimum word count was 750 words, but “high quality” articles, as the page told me, have a word count of at least 900 words. I noticed a grading scale at the bottom of the page, indicating “$15” for “A” and “B,” and “$10” for “C.” It turns out that Quality Gal rates each article and assigns pay based on that. If the quality isn’t up to snuff, you will receive a smaller pay-out. As the number of links in your assignments increase, the pay increases up to $30 (Quality Gal mentions that some articles require upward of 60 links).
I started doing the test assignment. It was incredibly time-consuming. Quality Gal wants each link embedded within the body of an article to come from a high-quality, reputable source. It also expects that users will not use more than one link from any particular site. This proved incredibly daunting despite my years of Internet research. After about 2.5 – 3 hours, I completed the test assignment and submitted it. I wasn’t pleased with the coding of the site – I had trouble submitting my article several times.
I took Quality Gal’s suggestion of writing my article in Microsoft Word first, and then copying and pasting it into the submission form on the Quality Gal site. However, using the button to do so on the Quality Gal form ended up mutilating the article formatting. I had to manually fix the formatting, and only after submitting and reviewing my article did I see that suddenly the text was all bolded. It was not all bold when I submitted it!
The test assignment didn’t go well: Quality Gal doesn’t hire people who flunk out on the first assignment. I was informed that my writing had several grammatical errors and Quality Gal would not be able to use it. I was, however, paid $15 by “Find Your Dreams, Inc.” through PayPal for the test.
The Upside
Since I didn’t make it past the initial test, I can’t say how many assignments Quality Gal has available. I have heard from other writers around the web that Quality Gal is a decent writing nest egg to have access to, but I can’t verify this. The pay per article is also higher than many other writing sites online, which may more typically pay just a few dollars per article for SEO-related content. In that regard, Quality Gal is somewhat similar to Demand Studios.
The Downside
Quality Gal uses CopyScape, a plagiarism check program. My test assignment came up with a result. I write for other sites, such as Article Document, which also uses plagiarism checking programs. However, Article Document allows writers to see the results of the check. Writers then have the chance to go back and make corrections to avoid setting off the plagiarism detector. The problem is that these detectors may pick up on plagiarism when as few as two or three words in a row match up.
If you plan to write for Quality Gal, it may be worth it to invest in a plagiarism checking program to run your copy through before you submit a test assignment. Especially when writers are covering health topics, there are only so many words to describe certain medical conditions.
The amount of time it takes to write these articles makes their pay comparable to some of the lower-paying writing web sites. Sites like HowtoHint.com pay $3 per article for a 500 word article, and users must use the keywords listed a minimum of 5 times. It takes me between 10 – 15 minutes to write articles for HowtoHint.
In the 2.5 – 3 hours I earned $15 through Quality Gal, I could earn at least $30 in the same amount of time writing for HowtoHint. Writers may well adjust and write more quickly for Quality Gal over time, but the sheer number of links required for articles (usually 15 – 60) makes it unlikely that users could speed through an article in less than an hour.
workingtelecommute 