Right now I write for a few different content mills – enterprises whose main purpose is to produce content for the web. One was pretty good for a while, but it recently slashed compensation rates by more than 50%, and so what used to be a nice comfortable gig is now essentially a minimum wage job. It’s disappointing – they must have made the conscious decision to get worse, both in the relationship they had with their freelance writers and editors, and also with respect to the quality of the content they delivered to clients. Plus they hired so many writers, it’s hard to find any work at all!
One of the mills often has small tasks on an on-demand basis – if you’ve got a few minutes free, literally, you can knock off a few quick tasks. The pay isn’t great, but I’d rather earn a few bucks and practice my writing than sit for half an hour waiting for a job to come my way.
There’s quite a good post on a blog I visited recently. It’s one of the first times I’ve seen honest appraisal of content mills, in many cases from the perspective of writers who have made their living at their craft, and can recognize the content mills for what they are. See, that’s where I was behind the 8-ball. Before getting these online gigs, I was really unaware that there were such things as content mills, or that I had any shot at writing more substantive pieces for websites and magazines, for significantly more substantial pay. Here’s a link to the post. Reading it, and the many replies, opened my eyes to two main facts:
1. Compared to other content mills, I didn’t know how good I had it, both at the beginning, when I was earning 7 cents per word, and later, when the pay was a flat rate of $20 per 300-word biography.
2. Compared to other gigs – magazines, websites, white papers for corporations, and other technical and professional-level writing – I had no idea how short I was selling myself, both at the beginning, when I was earning only 7 cents per word, and later, when I was paid just $20 per 300-word biography.
Now, there’s little real difference from other content mills, except for the fact that I’ve already passed the tests and gotten my foot in the door. I looked into signing up for some others, but the list of things I had to do to get on the list of approved writers – before being permitted to bid on any jobs – was ridiculous. Plus I’m not giving anyone any “writing samples” on a topic of their choosing. If you want to see how I write, visit the Georgia Yankee blog or visit WiseGEEK, where there are over 200 articles under my byline. (You can see a clickable list of those articles here!)
The Georgia Yankee 