How long it takes also varies.
When I started working for them, I sometimes made like $1.25/hour because I was homeless and deathly ill and blah blah blah and it would take me all afternoon to complete something wroth $5.
Eventually, I was making more like $15-$20/hour.
Something I wrote previously on the topic:
https://writepay.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-value-of-not-chasi...
You do need to work at it and get good at it, but it can become a middle class income. I was clear it had a lot of potential upside when I began and it worked within the restrictions I had, so I kept working at it and slowly getting better.
I absolutely haven't yet hit any kind of ceiling. I could still work longer hours, increase my rating, etc. There is still a lot more money I could make. It's just up to me to make that happen by getting healthy enough, arranging my life that way, etc.
b. Quote from my post today:
Some years ago, I wrote a blog post trying to encourage people on Hacker News to develop other services on the Textbroker model. It was basically ignored. Maybe this time it won't be.
And maybe I should expand on that in specific. At some point.
I didn't post it here to suggest laid off programmers should become low paid writers. The people most people are worried about are things like restaurant workers making minimum wage.
