In 2005, I worked in the publishing industry and my job was outsourced. It took four people to replace me (not native English speakers and definitely not in the United States) and their combined salaries were less than half of mine, which wasn’t so great to begin with as it was an entry-level job.

My stepdad is an IT professional approaching retirement age. He was laid off. Who is going to hire someone in his position when there are recent college grads with fresh certifications willing to work for a quarter of his lowest salary requirement?

I’m not saying it’s right–or fair–but it is the way business works. At least as freelance writers, each of us can set our rates and limit how low we are willing to go. If you are willing to supplement higher-paying workloads with content mill work, then it’s good that it’s there. I’m grateful for it. If I’ve worked a full freelance day and have spent time on a high-paying article, marketing, invoicing, and research and still feel like working, by all means…I’ll crank out a few DS articles. Nothing wrong with that–it’s earning a living. If I feel motivated, I’ll take advantage of it!

Another thing. Most of the bulk stuff is bought along with the copyright so in reality, you can’t even use it in your portfolio of works completed — in fact you’d rather not promote that you even created such a thing. Its aside income filler. Gas money more or less. Its something to do when your out of work and the employers around your area are acting like the same outsourced mill machines some love to hate. You have to start somewhere. I blame the publishing culture in the end. Try E-Lance for instance. How is someone supposed to break into a market with these huge resumes of people with Master-Doctorate-J School degrees — that basically have 2 to 3 people who are working as a team to get most of the work and thus monopolize on everything. Then you have those who are paper-degree happy, and won’t even give you the time of day lest you had an English degree of some kind. What in the world is someone going to use an English degree these days? Sorry but at best you were better off with a Business, tech, or science degree of some kind since the progression of the internet. The time it takes to make these expensive queries and article plans — someone they know will walk in their office and get the job via nepotism.

I personally think as a general rule, one should get themselves a pretty good traditional job, and do this type of thing on the side. Its a bit too chaotic, you may get a few good gigs and then poof. Nothing. Lest you write for a magazine or publication of some kind.

But I do blame the sloth like system the old publication companies have gripped too in an age where printed media can be condensed in a PDF these days or put on Amazon’s Kindle.

The posts are poorly written, light on information, and devoid of attribution. In other words, hastily slapped-together junk copied from other websites with a few words switched around so the posts don’t fall into the plagiarism category. (Although I’m sure if you snipped the right sentence fragments, Google would make the whole copy job transparent.)

So unless Mr. Nelson is omnipotent and drawing from his vast and deep well of knowledge about everything credit score-related, he’s doing exactly what I said he’s doing — chopping up Wikipedia entries and repackaging them as his own.

Is that “writing”? Does he really have an endless list of orders for $15 blog posts, or is he taking his best day — or hour — of every month and making it seem typical? Most definitely the latter.

I have a problem with people who devalue the writing market and make it seem as though it’s possible to make a living rewriting junk for content mills. And like I said, the vast majority of those “jobs” pay a whopping penny per word. They’re contracts offered by sleaze, for bottom-dwellers who don’t mind allowing themselves to be exploited for $4 per submission. All of us know you can go to a site like TextBroker and find hundreds of “contracts” for 500-word articles, paying as low as a buck fifty each. If you want to slave away for content mills, I can’t stop you, but if you post on public blogs trying to convince others that it’s a good way to make money, I’m going to call bullshit.

Then enjoy your tenure as a bottom-feeding “writer” who allows himself to be exploited by content mills.

Your claim of three or four articles an hour, at $15 a piece, with no research required, is a lie. Either you’re copying off Wikipedia or similar sites without attributing the information, or you’re slapping together such garbage that you’ll never be able to include the work on your resume. The $15 claim is almost certainly a stretch as well, since the highest rates at content mills top out at about $4.

Most likely, you’re promoting your own site with anecdotes about inflated rates that don’t exist. Save it, man.

If you’re determined anyway, find those niche publications, make sure you’re on top of your game, and pitch to them. Work with legitimate publishers with phone numbers, street addresses and real products, not online content mills that serve the sleazy types who want 500-word articles for $5.

I can tell you from personal experience that the niche publications are among the few that are still doing well, and they’re your best shot at getting paid regularly and on time. Of the last two magazines I’ve contracted with, one was a national mag that folded and left me holding a couple kill fees, and the other is a highbrow regional lifestyle mag that set a deadline of May and didn’t pay me until November. It’s hard to pay your bills working for publications like that. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing regular work for a tiny niche publication, and it’s steady, reliable income.

Again, steer clear of the content mills run by people looking to take advantage of you for pennies or “exposure.”

And last but not least, READ. There are thousands of terrible articles produced by folks at content mills that start with, “I am an expert in XXX field, and in this article I will tell you how blah blah blah.” Hear that? It’s the sound of people snoring or clicking over to the next site. Sure, we may be an industry of people who get paid to push words around, but a good product still requires hard work, research, attention to detail, and pride in our writing. Read good sites and publications, and make it your priority to produce work at the same level.

Personally, I’m not planning on sticking around this industry too much longer. It’s a sinking ship. But best of luck to you if you dream of making a living as a writer. You’ll need it.

You seem to be so against anyone taking work from these “sleazy” employers, but don’t seem to have a lot of suggestions of what else to do.

What you’re really dealing with is people who want to get cheap or free content, quality be damned. No one’s going to stumble on some terrible web magazines hosted on a free blogger account, read your hastily slapped-together, 400-word article on your favorite sports team, and decide they want to hire you. Doesn’t happen.

In the meantime, it’s getting harder for the rest of us to live off of what we make in the writing market. I’m jobless after almost seven years working as a newspaper reporter and a magazine editor, and I have to sift through piles and piles of this “exposure” garbage on job boards every day to find paying assignments.

When I get an assignment from a legit magazine or newspaper I do real work. I pick up the phone and talk to sources or I meet them face-to-face. I do meticulous research, I verify my facts, I put effort into my writing, and I always file clean, accurate copy. I DO NOT sit at my computer for 15 minutes rehashing information from Wikipedia until I’ve hit 400 words. So when I spend hours, days or weeks on an assignment I do expect a living wage. The thing is, it’s getting harder to find those gigs.

The problem I have with the people who work for nothing (or next to nothing) is two-fold:

- They’re letting themselves be taken advantage of by (mostly) sleazy people
- By lowering expectations, they’re encouraging more sleazy “employers” who want the cheapest content possible

Like I said, these guys aren’t in it for the quality. They’re trying to drive hits to their websites so they can raise ad rates, or cramming their illegible weeklies with walls of text in between the ads. If you’re a new writer, or someone looking to break into the field, these people are not going to give you guidance or help shape your career. They’re going to take advantage of you.

The higher paying gigs are for longer, more specific, detail oriented, writing which often takes research. So that $100 per post sounds like a lot more, but chances are I’m making about the same. Of course, it is much more interesting, and I actually care about what I write.

Yes, you can make far more money cranking out dry, mind-numbing copy for some ad firm, but didn’t you become a freelancer to NOT work for the man? If I’m going to march to the beat tapped out on the drum by some sales exec in a suit, I’m darn sure going to get benefits and an expense account for it.

Don’t even get me started on print publications. Let’s see, I’m supposed to craft a personal letter or email to the editor with a well thought out pitch for an article. Then, I’m supposed to wait until they get back to me. Then once they say yes, I’m supposed to write it, do revisions and submit it (no pay yet). Then, once they accept it, I have to wait until it gets published (at least two months). Then, they will pay me within 60 days of it being published. All in all, 6 months to even see a dime. Even at $1 a word for a 4,500 word article, I’m going to starve to death. Oh, and I have to be doing this constantly in order to get enough Yes answers to make this worth my while. — Pass.

I am just starting in web copywriting, though I have been published in hard copy press previously. For me a combination of what are comparatively low pay spots that are regular are allowing me to stabilize my income, and Lordy-me did it need stabilizing. Twenty dollars for an article may not seem like much once you are making more, but if I sell even five of those little, low pay fellas in a week I have four hundred dollars more in a month and that four hundred holds the survival line while I look for better spots.

Further, I LIKE them, in an odd way. They are simple, quiet, low stress, bread-and-butter: I can count on them as my baseline. Mixed in with the range of other things I do I feel like they say I am not too proud to do the bread-and-butter work, too.

I’ve been paid, I’ve played real good for free, and I have occasionally been paid very well. Someday maybe the last will become my bread-and-butter baseline. But until it does, the small fry work allows me and my daughter some grace and some breathing room that pride and a refusal to work for so little would not give us.