Anyone have experience with filipino writers?

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vizilla

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Jul 11, 2006
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The Philippines used to be an American colony, so their English is surprisingly good. I know there are quite a few people here that have a global mindset - Does anyone have any experience using writers from there?

How good is the content? What can you use it for? How much cheaper is it? Any pain points in going this route?
 


Im a Filipino and I dont hire writers in the Philippines. I hire my writers in Forums such as this and a few others.

There's a lot of Filipino's with their first language as English but you will rarely find them online.
The good English speakers have a full time job in Contact/Call Centers talking to muricans all day.
You will find gems but its around 1/5



.
 
I always use them for a filler content or for 'just good' content.

Never for premium or sales content. I would try, but not being native English speaker myself, I just can't evaluate the quality, all the small details.


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Not worth it typically. Too hard to find a "gem" that doesn't know what their writing is worth already.
 
Whats your budget? you can find *good* native english writers from America for $1/100 words... how? ohhh I can't out that...
 
If you are just buying a few articles for cheap, shit will happen and they will let you down a bit. Fair enough, but they at least stay in contact with you and lie (internet down in whole village, family member rushed to hospital). Indians and the like just ignore you. I don't mean to be racist, I am just generalising. I appreciate the Indian guys I work with but they often just won't respond if something goes wrong. At least a Filipino will call you sir and make up an elaborate lie. I usually tell them to stop calling me sir but they usually carry on lol.

If you were to employ a Filipino full time you could get an amazing worker. I know some really intelligent people wasted in call centers in Manila. I just couldn't promise the security of full time work, health benefits and 13th month (they get a free months pay). They get a lot of public holidays too. Good job as my SEO business got nuked by the Google P's
 
It ranges from absolute trash to rather decent. You just need to build a system to weed out the terrible writers from good ones. Changing how much you offer doesn't always fix that as I've had great writers there for $1/100wds and terrible ones who were trying to get $3/100 out of me.


Having said all that, I would try US writers first, I have NEVER had trouble getting American native writers, many with english degrees under $2/100wds.
 
I get emails a few times a month from people asking if they can write for me, and that shit is so broken that I can hardly figure out what they're asking. They frequently say they're from somewhere in the Philippines.

That seemed a lot more helpful in my head.
 
schockergd said:
It ranges from absolute trash to rather decent. You just need to build a system to weed out the terrible writers from good ones. Changing how much you offer doesn't always fix that as I've had great writers there for $1/100wds and terrible ones who were trying to get $3/100 out of me.


Having said all that, I would try US writers first, I have NEVER had trouble getting American native writers, many with english degrees under $2/100wds.
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Interesting. I've done more research and I'm thinking about setting up a filipino content mill (sites like textbroker only accept native english speakers).

Do you think this would be an idea worth pursuing? What would the rate $x/100 have to be for it to be competitive? With the state of journalism in America, I'd imagine a large portion of journalism/english majors unemployed or underemployed and willing to work for $2/100.
 
vizilla said:
Interesting. I've done more research and I'm thinking about setting up a filipino content mill (sites like textbroker only accept native english speakers).

Do you think this would be an idea worth pursuing? What would the rate $x/100 have to be for it to be competitive? With the state of journalism in America, I'd imagine a large portion of journalism/english majors unemployed or underemployed and willing to work for $2/100.
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There's definitely a market for it even if you don't go the Filipino-specific route. While Textbroker is generally seen as the #1 general content mill right now, they've been slipping in a major way for about the past 12-18 months, and it's only been getting worse.
 
some of them are pretty great, but you'll pay just as much as with any other write (uk or us), i'm not native so I hire english speakers often and sometimes they are from the phillipines and do great work.
I'd never hire anyone else for copywriting though, because that isn't about grammar but sales.
 
You're going to have some good and some bad. A few years ago, I put up an ad in Craigslist looking for Filipino writers, hired a few, but I had to do a lot of editing, which sometimes takes longer than just writing the content yourself. The one guy that was the best was actually an American living there.
 
It really depends on what kind of content you want. I'm based in the Philippines and I'm in the process of putting together a team of writers that can actually produce content that is worthy of a high traffic news/media site. For my very strict requirements, I've found that the majority of writers that apply for my positon just aren't anywhere near good enough - but that doesn't mean there aren't any gems. To give you an idea, there are people here that read shakespeare, and can write poetry and short stories worthy of publication. It takes time, and you need to know what you're looking for and where to find it. I use jobsites, but referrals always yield the best results. Most good talent is either hired, or not looking for work. I currently have someone who writes better than most of the american freelance writers I've worked with in the past. It's definitely doable, it just takes a hell of a long time. And if you want to do it without actually being here, forget about it.

My experience in hiring freelancers remotely has always been complete shit. It just never works out in the longterm - especially if you want super high quality content that fits a very specific criteria. I don't know about your situation, but for me, going local, doing face to face interviews, and having people work full time from a fixed location is the way to go.

Tobias Funke said:
You're going to have some good and some bad. A few years ago, I put up an ad in Craigslist looking for Filipino writers, hired a few, but I had to do a lot of editing, which sometimes takes longer than just writing the content yourself. The one guy that was the best was actually an American living there.
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Yep, this is my biggest complaint. The writers here can never get it 'just right'. Even the best ones need their work edited. It's just a matter of how much editing is required - if it ends up taking as long as it would take you to write it yourself, well, the answer should be obvious.
 
King. said:
My experience in hiring freelancers remotely has always been complete shit. It just never works out in the long term - especially if you want super high quality content that fits a very specific criteria. I don't know about your situation, but for me, going local, doing face to face interviews, and having people work full time from a fixed location is the way to go.
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That is my exact experience. I used to hire a lot of Filipino writers but there was always way to much of unexpected delays and time off.

Huge storm hit the island? No contact with the team for a week. People using to much electricity during the hot days? They will shut down occasionally power generators. And then countless excuses for sick family, issues with home etc and my favourite - disappearing for a week and then saying "well it was holiday, didn't you know about it?". Everyone can have issues obviously, but the most problems I always had with Filipino VAs. Also whenever I would pay them more money a lot of them would just vanish for 2-3 days.

I found hiring pensioners from UK and Ireland is a much better option.
Especially older women.

People that are on minimum pension don't make that much money, so they are willing to do some simple jobs for few euro/pounds here and there. Its a win-win situation since they can work from home just few hours every few days. Maybe they are not as cheap as Filipino, but reliable to work with while providing great quality so you will save yourself time on proof reading and headache on dealing with the delays.
 
I've spent a good deal of time interviewing and testing Filipino and Indian writers - trying to come up with a very low cost team. What I found ranged from god awful English to readable. However, I never once received work back that I would ever consider putting on a "money-site" without at least some kind of editing.

I will say that they're great if you want unique content for link building - instead of spun / plr crap.
 
StackCash said:
I've spent a good deal of time interviewing and testing Filipino and Indian writers - trying to come up with a very low cost team. What I found ranged from god awful English to readable. However, I never once received work back that I would ever consider putting on a "money-site" without at least some kind of editing.

I will say that they're great if you want unique content for link building - instead of spun / plr crap.
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Afaik all the writers out there that have truly fluent English are either working in sales, customer service or have their own companies. You cannot expect to hire fluent writer with perfect grammar for usual $300. The last time I have checked the rates for such people start from $600. It is much easier to hire pensioner from UK/IE or English studies students from eastern Europe...
 
chatmasta said:
does anyone know full time salaries + benefits in phillipines? how much would it cost to hire a writer, or a programmer? what about office space?

edit: looks like <1000usd/mo for software engineer. woah!

Accenture Salaries in Philippines | Glassdoor
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