And They're Freakin' Serious!

lostgirl said:

Lets face it, writers that don't do the low paying blog writing here aren't insulted.

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I think what it comes down to is that this kind of writing offends people.

When you write a bunch of product advertisements that use popular search terms, that makes it harder for me to find what I want to find. It's reverse-spamming. I go to a search engine and type in my terms, and I find myself looking at several pages of advertising for crap I don't want.

The advertiser, for whatever reason, thinks that I will actually buy this product. What? Why would I do that? I'm looking for something, and this isn't it. I'm hitting the "back" button. It's just like the guy who sneaks his ads into my email; he's carefully crafted this horrific illegible monstrosity to slip past my spam filters, because clearly the only reason I don't want his product must be that I don't know about it. Damn spam filters! Getting in the way of his business like that! How dare they?!

I don't think you should do this job. I think it's wrong. I think it is morally reprehensible and preys on the innocent. If you don't care, that's fine; morality is a luxury, and given the choice of starving children or an SEO job, I'd take the SEO job myself. But I'd look awfully hard for other choices.

My issue is not that it's done, but that the market value of it is SO LOW. That no one actually values the effort or talent of the writer.

Then you have the double-edged sword - the writer takes it to make ends meet, and because there are writers that will take the low pay, the pay continues to be low. It's Catch-22 (not to use too many cliches). I agree with whoever said the problem is there's no SAG or scale for this type of work. Even movie extras get minimum amounts based on a scale. But for writers, people will pay as little as someone will accept. If you don't take it, there is someone else who will. The overall effect on ALL writers is more lower paying jobs, and the value (monetarily, not quality) of the work is depressed across the board.

You need to pay the bills, but wouldn't it be better if you could get paid what you're actually worth?

I'm bowing out now.

I misunderstood the whole direction of this thread. I'll admit that I got fired up being called a detriment to writers because I took a blogging job for a penny a word. I'll admit that I also didn't pay attention to what kind of blogs were being talked about: SEO copy advertising as mentioned in the original post of this thread.

I don't write SEO content. I don't think poorly on those who do. I just do simple blogging on a multitude of different subjects. I'm still offended by the fact that its implied that I write crap because I blog for low pay. But its not worth getting more fired up than I already am. I have writing to do, other than my blogging job, I also have my national glossies articles to write, a children's short story collection to finish for publication, and some graphic work to complete.

I guess I'm lucky that some people are willing to pay top dollar for my crap.

inkkognito said:

What if someone asked me to write spam that I knew was going to be forced upon unwanting recipients?

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Backend royalties. I want a hundredth of a cent for every spam you send. That's about $800 per batch for most spammers.

Remember, a custom professionally-written message will go right through most spam filters. It's definitely worth it to the spammer, and if you write enough of these, you could make a comfortable income.

I still don't recommend it, but that's me personally, not me businesswise.

I think writing spam and writing for term paper mills are different from low paying SEO and blog posting. Spam in some jurisdictions is illegal and writing term papers that you know others pass will off as their own is at best unethical no matter what the pay.

As a final (I hope) thought to people who do take very low paying SEO and blog post work: If you are a fast enough and accurate enough writer to make any significant amount of money (significant defined as making a difference in your life) writing for a couple of dollars an article or pennies a post, they you are seriously underselling yourself and should be looking for higher paying writing work.

CDarklock said:

I think what it comes down to is that this kind of writing offends people.

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This is incredibly harsh. This "kind of writing" doesn't offend me in the least. No one is forcing me to read it. If I come upon it as a result of a search, I can leave. If it's in my inbox, I delete it. It's advertising. Advertising is here to stay, and if it offends you then turn off the TV or Internet.

Advertising isn't going anywhere, and if you are earning money as an advertising writer then you have nothing of which to be ashamed. No one has the right to tell someone else that the pay is too little or that what they are doing is wrong (as long as it's legal). It's about choice and your decision to make the one that is best for you at the time.

RE: Tish's last post:

Who says that's all they do?

Cranky said:

RE: Trish's last post:

Who says that's all they do?

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First, its Tish, not Trish.

Second, Nobody has said that is all people do, but if you read the whole thread, you can see that we are talking about taking VERY LOW PAYING SEO and minimally paid blog posting done only for pay, not out of interest in or passion for the topic.

Can you give me one good reason why writers who claim that they can write a multitude of intelligent, articulate 250-300 word SEO articles in 5-15 minutes and who are doing it only for the pay should not be doing for better paying work? I can't think of a single rational reason, so the only conclusion I can come to is that either a) they are underselling themselves or b) they know that that what they are writing won't pass muster in a better paying, more selective market, and they don't want to put in the effort to write something better. I hate to see good writers undersell themselves.

First, I apologize for misspelling your name. Second, I did read the entire thread, thank you very miuch.

As for the rest...forget it. I'm not in the mood to fight.

myscribe said:

This "kind of writing" doesn't offend me in the least.

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I didn't say it offends everybody. I said it offends people, because it does. It offends me, it offends my wife, that's "people". That's not "incredibly harsh", it's true.

I don't have a problem with advertising in the sense of "a message from our sponsor". Someone has to pay the money to produce the content I want. If an advertiser does that, then I don't have to, and I like that.

However, I do have a problem with advertising that relies on fraud and trickery to relay its message. SEO pages deliberately infiltrate the search results for something you want, leading you to a page about something else. They don't support anything you want. They're just leeches.

Now, if you don't care about that, great! Delete your spam and hit your back button. But the guy who posted the original ad isn't talking about one article. He's talking about thousands of articles, each of which will come up on millions of searches, and exactly how many people are going to waste their time clicking on that link and then hitting the back button?

I think that sucks. Sure, it's not me, it doesn't affect me, I don't lose anything... but it sucks, all the same.

Tish Davidson said:

Basically what I hear you saying is that you are ashamed of this kind of writing, but are willing to churn out crap for cash - a sad commentary on the state of the economy that you have to do this.

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Actually, I do not believe that the things I write quickly are crap. Even when writing fast I try to make my writing the best it can be. My goal is to learn from every writing project I take on, and that includes SEO-type work. Knowing how to optimize your writing for search engines comes in handy with every type of internet writing, including blogs which seem to be a perfectly acceptable way to earn a little extra cash online.

I don't believe I'm the first person who has ever had to take work that might be beneath their talents to pay the bills. I also don't believe it is specific to this economy. Personally, I would like to keep my internet connection to make it easier for me to pursue higher and higher paying venues. If I can make $5 toward that bill in 15 or 20 minutes, I probably will do it. Sure I still pursue much better venues, and am accumulating clips. However it is a more competitive game and often takes longer to get responses. If I only pursued things that I was passionate about, I would have to go back to working a second job and not having the energy to write.

At this point, all I wish is that I hadn't chimed into this discussion. I'm fine with my decisions. I'm sorry others of you are not, but we are obviously not going to change each other's minds.