Don’t Lose your Rating: Tips for Maintaining or Improving your Writing Quality

We know the rating system can be a point of frustration, but Textbroker’s strict quality guidelines are in place to keep our clients happy and returning for more content. Additionally, our star ratings make it easy for clients to connect with authors based on their needs and budget. The rating system is in place to help you succeed, and today, we’d like to share a few tips on navigating the Textbroker rating system.

Here are the top 5 most common issues that can affect an author’s rating:

1. Filler

Filler is described as any content that does not contribute new, relevant information to an order. Repeating the same information multiple times or writing sentences that are grammatically correct but contain no new information is likely to get your article marked as filler. The biggest difference between 3- and 4-star work is filler; filler is not tolerated at the 4-star level. Clients paying for higher quality levels often want their content to rank well on Google or other search engines, and filler makes this nearly impossible. Filler also makes your work less interesting to read and often generic or similar to other works.

2. Basic Capitalization, Punctuation and Spelling

While our rating team is looking for correct usage of all punctuation and correct capitalization of proper nouns, there are a few key things to keep in mind that, if done incorrectly, can very quickly lower your rating. These are the kinds of mistakes that make writing look unprofessional and unappealing to clients.

• Make sure to capitalize the first word of a sentence. It sounds obvious, but when writing quickly, it can be easy for your finger to miss the shift key. This is true of proper nouns as well.
• Always capitalize the word “I”.
• Punctuate each sentence with a period or the appropriate end punctuation. Again, it sounds obvious, but when writing in a hurry, this is the kind of typo that can be detrimental to your rating.
• While abbreviating words in casual communication is easy and fun, abbreviating “through” to “thru” or “you” to the letter “u” in professional writing is a quick way to have your rating reduced.
• Remember to follow key comma rules: commas should always come after FANBOYS conjunctions linking independent clauses, after introductory elements and surrounding nonessential information.

3. Following Instructions and Revision Requests

One of the best ways to become a valued member of a team or to build a DirectOrder relationship with a client is to follow instructions meticulously. A client’s instructions are a blueprint for their ideal product and the best way to make a client happy. Following instructions is a good way to help protect yourself against demotion because Textbroker checks all orders against the original instructions. If you find a client’s instructions confusing, most of the time, they will be happy to clarify what they mean. Just send them a message!

4. Taking QA Comments to Heart

Our quality assurance staff is dedicated to ensuring quality content for our clients and helping our authors to grow and improve. When your writing improves, we all benefit. Your rating can be reduced for a single problematic order, so the best way to maintain and improve your rating is to avoid making the same mistake twice. With every rating, our QA editors provide detailed feedback that not only explains what to do differently but why. Furthermore, the feedback you receive will increase in specificity the better your writing gets. Once you’ve solidified the basics, we’ll work with you to improve the details until you’re writing near-flawless orders with ease.

5. Proofread

We see it all the time. Solid writers with great potential lose their star ratings all the time for simple but repeated errors. Proofreading is absolutely key to submitting the kind of quality work that will get you promoted. While many small errors are easy to catch by using a proofreading program like Microsoft Word or LanguageTool, a lot of errors still require the human touch to be caught. Homophone errors, many usage errors, and certain typos and punctuation issues still elude computers, but with a few short minutes of proofreading, they can be found and eliminated. Taking the extra time to breathe, change your perspective, and give your orders a thorough once-over before submitting can save you a lot of time and hassle later on.

Things to Keep in Mind

• There is no appeals process for ratings. That’s why it’s important to make sure every order you submit is a good representation of your skills. We can’t allow a client to pay for poor quality content just because an author is having a bad day. A lost client means lost business for us and lost work for other authors.
• The way to improve your rating is by writing. Articles are thoroughly reviewed during the rating process: By the time the rating is finalized, we have already seen your work and agreed on the result. But improving your rating is not impossible! The more you write, the more likely you are to get rated again, and the more closely you follow these guidelines, the happier you’ll be with the rating’s outcome.

As your rating improves, the feedback you receive will be tailored to your higher quality. We may point out tips for improving tone and style, but our goal stays the same. We want to help you be the best writer you can be!

Have more questions about our rating standards or being a Textbroker author? Drop us a line at [email protected] or check out the author FAQ!