|
||||
|
||||
|
|
I'll be honest with you. Before AmSAW began running its Writer for Hire Jobs Board for Professional Members BECOME A PROFESSIONAL, I wasn't all that familiar with content mills. I am now. Content mills are content creators who purchase content from freelance writers for redistribution.
The idea behind content mills is that they create new jobs for freelancers, and they generate income for themselves. In short, it's a win-win situation. Isn't it?
In practice, content mills crank out the maximum amount of copy--or |
|||
|
their freelance writers do, more appropriately--and pay mere pennies on the dollar on their investment. Some mills boast pay of from $10 to $15 per 450-word article, which comes out to two to three cents a word. Others pay as low as a penny a word.
By comparison, when I broke into freelance writing more than 40 years ago, I routinely received 10 cents a word for my freelance articles--and that was considered low back then!
Something is rotten in Denmark. (Not to mention America.)
How do content mills get away with it? Simple. It seems that there are so many people out of work (thank you, Mr. President) and so many people who think that freelance writing is as easy a job as you can find (thank you, Mr. Corporate Slum Lord) that there's never a shortage of freelancers available. Never mind that the quality of most of the work they receive is below par or that even the poorest of freelancers eventually comes to the realization that he's merely spinning his wheels writing for the mills. When one "writer" falls out of the pool, another one simply takes his place.
It's the law of supply and demand. And, from a content mill's point of view, the Internet is an endless well from which to draw its life-sustaining water.
How do we break the cycle? Equally simple. We stop writing for them.
And start writing for the legitimate employers who are looking for (and willing to pay for) quality freelance writing. Professional freelance writing. And with more companies downsizing their full-time staffs in order to cut back on payroll, the amount of quality freelance writing and editing jobs has quadrupled within the past six months since AmSAW's Jobs Board started running.
Can you make a hundred bucks a week writing articles or press releases or Web content? Absolutely. Can you make a thousand? Without a doubt. And more.
Can you count on a certain amount of income every single day of the year? Of course not. No freelancer can. But of this I'm certain: the work is out there. So, if you're a quality freelance writer, grab your piece of the pie, build your portfolio as you get paid decent wages for your work, and enjoy the life we writers like to think of as the best thing since sliced bread. (Well, notwithstanding this month's commentary.)
I promise you, Writer for Hire and AmSAW's Jobs
Board work, because I've been finding good-paying freelance jobs through
them exclusively for nearly six months now.
If you're ready to do the same, kick the content
mills out of your life once and for all and get down to some serious,
good-paying writing or editing.
In the meantime...
Smoke if you got 'em. |
||||
