Londonbrokers.net aka AMS reviews

Experience with the company:

I signed up for an account with londonbroker.net in 2010.  I did this on the recommendation or a friend who was making money as a writer.  I was bit iffy about joining at first because of the amount they pay per article and the type of articles they want.  They have 300, 400 and 500 word articles and UAW articles which are articles with two re-writes.  They pay $2 for a straight 300 word article, $4.75 for a UAW 300.  This put me off for a bit as most of their articles are UAW and for three 300 word articles I was going to get $4.75 which is $1.58 per article.

At first I only submitted a few articles when I could.  I was being paid by them weekly when I had a big enough balance.  Once I really got into the article writing thing I worked more and was making around $80 a week.  

I have to say at this point that I was quite happy with this.  I talked my friend into opening an account as well and they were also earning a bit each week.  For over a year we were all earning off the site.  The site itself is easy to use but you have to be fast if there are any straight articles on the board as they go very quickly. 

Of course I'm not saying that it has been clean sailing with the site.  The way that they present the articles are like this.  On the board they tell you the length of the article and the keyword you need to use.  You then have to find a way to write an article about the keyword.  The keyword has to appear in the first and last paragraph of your article.  The problem is that the keyword has to appear exactly as stated and they sometimes make no sense and do not fit grammatically in an article.  Even putting a comma between words stops the article from going through.  There is also the fact that parts of the main keyword can only have a keyword density of 1.5%.  So if you are writing a 300 word article about car insurance you can only use the word car 4.5 times in the whole article or else the editors reject your article. 

The editors can also be a bit of a problem.  Sure it’s their job to make sure that the articles are to a certain standard but the problem comes when they reject the article and just say punctuation errors or grammatical errors but don’t help with identifying them.  If I proof read my article and then submit it I think its fine so I don’t know where the errors are. 

I did have one major issue with the site when they suddenly disabled my account earlier this year.  I received an email stating that I had not confirmed my email address so my account was disabled.  I never received anything saying I had to verify my email.  Only after my account was disabled did I get the email asking me to verify and once I did my account was back up. 

Other than a few issues with keyword density and the above problem with email verification I had no problems with this site.  I would and had recommended it to other people.  I stopped writing as much at the end of 2011 as I got a full time job but I was submitting articles when I could and getting paid.  I didn’t have any problems with them until recently. 

The first problem came when the friend I had recommended at the beginning submitted an article and suddenly her account was disabled.  She had submitted an article and then received an email from the editor saying that the article had mistakes in grammar, punctuation and the general level of writing was not up to their standards.  She emailed them support about this and all they said was that the decision is down to the editor and that it was final.

I was a bit nervous about this because there had been no problems for her before.  Regardless, I submitted an article a few days later and everything was fine.  The real problem came when I did another article for the site.  On Word there were no problems with the article and I proof read everything.  I'm not saying that my writing is perfect but so far londonbroker.net had not had any problem with my work. 

The whole submission process went fine and there were no problems.  A couple hours after submitting my article I received an email from AMS saying that the article contained multiple errors in content, grammar and spelling.  Because of the number of negative reviews in the past, your work doesn't meet the quality standards expected of AMS writers.  YOUR ACCOUNT IS DISABLED.

Understandably I was quite shocked.  In over a year during which I have written over 350 articles I have had my articles rejected about 10 times.  At the end of the email they state if you have questions please contact us.  So I contacted them asking what was wrong with the article and what other reviews lead to the decision of disabling my account.  The reply I have received simply says that they are sorry but my account has been disabled and that the decision is final and irreversible. 

So no answer to my question and honestly that felt like a brush off to me.  I asked my friend who also had her account disabled and she told me that the emails I received are exactly the same as hers, word for word.  This leads me to think about the fact that at one point AMS didn't have many articles and they attributed this to having too many writers.  So maybe they are trying to lower the number of writers they have.  There is no way for me to know but the fact that they approved my last article without a problem makes me wonder about my account being disabled.  Well that and the fact that this happened to my friend not too long ago. 

The verdict:

So what would be my verdict on AMS?  The site is not a bad one to work for as you do get paid. However, I would be wearier to recommend this site to people now than I was a year ago.  The amount they pay per article is lower than other places like Text Broker or personal hires from eLance and Odesk.  Then there is also the issue that they might disable your account and never give you the complete reason or an email answer that is not standard.

I would say that joining will be up to you but I would no longer recommend this site.