And They're Freakin' Serious!

Must admit I'm currently working my tail off writing copy part-time for a computer game for $35 a fortnight (about 20,000 words). But then, they're a starting company, I write more than is required, and I just keep telling myself it's good experience...

Holy goodness! Such jobs have their place and purpose, I guess, but it seems like so little for so much.

If someone would pay me $2.00 for every 250 words I wrote, I'd make pretty good money. As it is, I'm writing 20,000 words a week for free.

Yes, they are serious and, yes, there are writers who will work for these paltry wages, to the detriment of us all.

Birol said:

Yes, they are serious and, yes, there are writers who will work for these paltry wages, to the detriment of us all.

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-feels guilty-

In all seriousness, there is some difference between taking ridiculously small paychecks for freelance work, and working on a project for small pecuniary reward for the greater good of the project, right? Right?

Birol said:

Yes, they are serious and, yes, there are writers who will work for these paltry wages, to the detriment of us all.

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For some, these paltry wages help out quite a bit for their monthly bottom line and also allow the writer to earn some paid writing credits.

Is it the same as being a regular paid contributor to the Atlantic Monthly? No, it's not. However, not everyone can and will be a paid contributor to the Atlantic Monthly.

I think turning up our noses at both jobs like these and the people who take them is the same thing as turning up noses at someone who will do the other "dirty jobs" for low pay that keep many things -- like the food and restaurant businesses -- running. It's fine if it's not your cuppa, but someone else doing it is neither evil nor detrimental to the rest of us.

There is a problem with paying writers this low and taking jobs that are so low paying. I think all of you must realize that deep down inside because you have to know you are worth more. $2 per story is not going to help anyone any more than collecting and recycling cans.

gettingby said:

There is a problem with paying writers this low and taking jobs that are so low paying. I think all of you must realize that deep down inside because you have to know you are worth more. $2 per story is not going to help anyone any more than collecting and recycling cans.

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Really? Yet it's something that a stay-at-home parent can do while taking care of the kids and the house because it's not a lot of work to pound out a couple of hundred words here and there. Many of us do that in one or two posts on AW.

I also happen to know writers who are out there trying to find cans to recycle to pay for their ink, paper and postage. So, um, yeah, I think a couple of bucks for, in some cases, 5 minutes writing effort (if you're fast) and maybe 30 minutes (if you're not) is, frankly, nothing to be insulting or insulted about.

Truly, until you're walking in someone else's shoes, and, more importantly, paying someone else's bills, no one has the right to belittle what others are doing to earn money in a legal way. This is writing random blog posts on the cheap, not selling off the Great American Novel for tuppence.

Don't get so upset. I still say there is no need to even think about taking these jobs. There are tons of places that actually pay! $2 or $5 for a story is not really payment! I think people who take such low-paying or no-paying gigs are selling themselves short. If you are any good and you believe you are worth it, someone will pay you a fair amount.

When did I turn my nose up at anyone, Jeanne? The truth of the matter is, as long as their are writers who are willing to work for substandard wages, the amount that the industry is willing to pay all writers will suffer. It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

I still say there is no need to even think about taking these jobs. There are tons of places that actually pay! $2 or $5 for a story is not really payment! I think people who take such low-paying or no-paying gigs are selling themselves short. If you are any good and you believe you are worth it, someone will pay you a fair amount.

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Exactly so.

And what is "the industry"? Do you really think that penny-a-word website rating boosting content is competing with real writing?

Birol said:

When did I turn my nose up at anyone, Jeanne? The truth of the matter is, as long as their are writers who are willing to work for substandard wages, the amount that the industry is willing to pay all writers will suffer. It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

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Substandard wage compared to what?

Comparing a job -- and that's what these blog assignments are, a job -- that pays you X per word or per article to being accepted by a paying publication is comparing apples to oranges.

The only comparison appropriate is between the paying blog sites. Which pays better, which demands what for the best price?

Additionally, supply and demand is saying that there are enough active blog sites out there that several someones are PAYING people to do what everyone on THIS site does for free. To me, that shows there is a market, likely in its infancy. In a few years, who knows? Maybe those blog sites will be paying big bucks and only allowing in a few "new" bloggers every month because they have such good stuff...and are paying for it. Could it happen? Sure. Will it? Who knows? That's what make the future interesting.

As Matera said, how in the world are paid blog posts affecting whether or not someone gets a fiction piece in the New Yorker or a freelance piece in the Atlantic?

And, Lori, "paltry wages" and "detriment to us all" doesn't exactly sound like applause and "go get 'em, tiger". It's a judgment -- yours, which you're certainly entitled to. My judgment is that if someone wants to earn an honest few dollars writing blog posts, more power to them. I don't see them as detrimental to anything, nor do I see a paid blog post as a threat to my ability to sell a piece to a paying pub.

Hope To The Horizon said:

If someone would pay me $2.00 for every 250 words I wrote, I'd make pretty good money. As it is, I'm writing 20,000 words a week for free.

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Here, here.

As a "detriment to us all" I will tell you why I took a blogging job for $.01 a word. I can bust out 300 words in 15 minutes or less and it requires absolutely no research and no effort. As a stay at home mom, I bring home 100 bucks a month doing this. Is it great money? No. Does it allow my family to have a little extra spending cash? Yes.

Personally, being called a detriment, because I do what I can to help my family make ends meet, is belittling. A blogging job doesn't require near the work that submitting to glossies does. Do I do that, too? Yes. Do I make money at that as well? Yes. Is it the steady income that I know I'll bring in each month from my blogging? No.

So pardon me if I am hurting the rest of you by working for peanuts but I'm still going to do what I need to so I can help my family make ends meet.

Considering I'm making about $.02 per 100 words... I feel envious of lostgirl now.

Personally, I believe a dollar earned is a dollar more than you had to begin with. Rock on with your bad self Beyondian!!!

Keep accepting low paying jobs and they'll keep putting them out there.

I didn't compare it to submitting to magazine, or glossies, or anything. I believe that was Jeanne.

What writing for blogs is and writing for SEO sites amounts to is creating marketing materials. Professional bloggers are not just generating materials for people to read and pass a few minutes in the evening with. They are driving people to particular sites, particular shows, and particular industries. They are helping generate buzz about a brand, regardless of what the brand and the product may be.

There was a time when creating any marketing materials or white papers were high paying assignments, regardless of the amount of time they took to create, so that $100 a month -- and yes, more power to you if it helps your family have some extra cash in these difficult economic times -- would have been far more than that and far more extra income for your family.

To make $100 a month at $.01 a word, you have to write 10,000 words/month. At 300 words/article, that equals slightly over 33 articles per month. Do you have to do research to create the articles, ever have to look something up, create invoices for your articles, turn them in, do editing, revisions, communicate with the editor, etc.? If so, that's time spent writing, too, even if you aren't actually putting words to the page. That detracts from your hourly wages.

Look, be insulted with me for suggesting that your time and your words are worth more than you're being paid. Be insulted with me for saying that YOU are worth more. That's your choice and your decision. But whether you are writing full-time or part-time, if you are making money from this, then you are in the business of writing. You must approach it as a business.

The future of writing lies in the internet. More and more publications and writing jobs are moving to that media. If those opportunities are devalued now, it will be more difficult for all writers to change that fact later. If you need an example of this fact, look at what the screenwriters recently went through. Because they allowed the studios and producers to pay them paltry wages on DVDs years ago, when that media was in its infancy, the studios and producers thought they could always pay them paltry wages on that media.

The places that run the blogging and SEO sites aren't small businesses. They aren't individuals struggling to get by. They're businesses. They don't care about you as an individual. To them, you are a cog in the wheel that can be replaced as soon as you stop fulfilling their need. To them, all writers will be cogs in the wheel to be discarded, treated poorly, and replaced until all writers insist on being paid what they are worth.

That may be true. Exercise your choice and don't accept those jobs. My problem is being called a detriment for taking a job that works for me and my situation.

edit: And no.. I've never had to look something up, I don't have to do invoices, and I literally spend 15 minutes or less on each article. I'm sorry if I mistook being called a detriment as something bad as opposed to it being a compliment that my time was worth more.

Birol said:

The places that run the blogging and SEO sites aren't small businesses. They aren't individuals struggling to get by. They're businesses. They don't care about you as an individual. To them, you are a cog in the wheel that can be replaced as soon as you stop fulfilling their need. To them, all writers will be cogs in the wheel to be discarded, treated poorly, and replaced until all writers insist on being paid what they are worth.

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Business does not exist to care or worry about the needs of the individual employees. Business exists to make a profit. Businesses do this by providing goods and services to the marketplace. Every employee, of every company, in the entire world is a cog. Each business belongs to either a principal, a partnership, or to the stockholders. If you work for a business of any kind that you do not own, do not have a partnership in, or are not a majority stockholder in, then you are working for someone else's dream. And to get you to do that, said someone else pays you a wage.

The internet happens to be a global marketplace. Right now, the going rate for blog posting jobs is approx. .01/word. If you don't like that, there is no one forcing you to write these blog posts. However, until you offer a better, more guaranteeable source of income to the writers who are willing to earn money in this fashion, then, I say again, calling them a detriment IS an insult.

If you ask me (and no one did) then perhaps part of the problem lies in the fact that we don't have a writers' union. Sure, there's the Screenwriter's Guild, and the Author's Guild, and RWA but who represents US? If you hit it big time, then your agent does that--but what about the bloggers, the internet article writers, the people who bang out short story after short story to semi-pro or small magazines and don't quite qualify for the guilds? Who represents OUR interests?

The answer is--nobody. No one does, at least to my knowledge. We have to look after ourselves, and for a lot of us that means doing things we don't want to do--just to pay the bills. Hell, it's obvious the writing industry is moving to the internet--and e-book publication isn't considered at all (because epubs rarely if ever get advances) or, in the case of RWA for example, you have to provide proof of --I believe--$6k in sales for a single title in one year. I could be wrong on that and I'm sure that someone will set me straight, but still--look at SFWA and the eligible publishers' list. Publish with another company, a new one not on the list, and are you eligible? No.

Look, I understand what both sides are saying here. YES, even at small rates of pay, blogging jobs or short article jobs are ideal for some people who can crank out good copy quickly and don't have a lot of extra time to devote to it. (Taking care of a toddler definitely counts.)

And YES, it is a detriment in a way--because since we have no union or guild to protect us, those rates of pay are going to remain the same.

No one here is discrediting what anyone else does as best I can tell. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to take the same position.

First, if you're freelancing, you're not an employee. You are in business. For yourself. Let's be clear about that. Freelancers are, by their nature, not employees. They are self-employed individuals contracted by others. That means they are free to set the wages they will and will not accept. If the majority of freelancers say no to substandard wages, then the wages will go up, because the work will still have to be completed.

Second, every employee is not a cog. Some are valued more than others. Some businesses, often small businesses, value the individuals who work for them and help make the business succeed more than others.

Third, this is actually no set definition of what "going into business" or "being in business" is. For example, if someone tells you that they are going to school to "become a journalist" or to "become a doctor" or to "become a lawyer," there is some concept of what those professions are and do. But if someone is going to school to "become a businessman," that could mean any number of things. While the current default business model is one in which profit is earned and everything about the current business model is meant to drive the profit margins and the bottom line.

However, you can still "be in business" and not have profit be the primary motivating factor. What a business actually does is deliver a set product to a consumer. That's it. That's all. This product can be almost anything. How the business measures its success can also be done in any number of ways. It can be done by how happy its employees are, by how much its product helps the community or environment, or by how well it fulfills a need.

Now, again, I recognize and know that the current default standard of a successful business is based upon profit margins, as they relate to monetary returns. It's an easily measured amount. Just like writers who want readers will talk about how much they earn in a year in order to gauge their popularity with writers, so do businesses. However, businesses often artificially inflate this measurement by undercutting their suppliers. In the specific case we are talking about the writers are suppliers. Again, as freelancers, writers are not employees. Should the writers accept this? I say no.

Can someone enlighten me... what exactly is the nature of that guy's business? And in the context of this discussion what is SEO. I do understand the use of SEO as in Search Engine Optimization but, forgive my naivety, everyone here seems to be discussing something that they understand as writers but I don't.

He says he has "thousands" of websites.. I somehow have a vague picture of using cheap content to generate web traffic, and probably some sort of multi-level marketing scheme. Is that it? It's probably a daft question to the enlightened, but not something I've ever known much about.

akiwiguy said:

He says he has "thousands" of websites.. I somehow have a vague picture of using cheap content to generate web traffic, and probably some sort of multi-level marketing scheme. Is that it? It's probably a daft question to the enlightened, but not something I've ever known much about.

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I don't think it's a daft question. I believe you've described the business model represented by the ad in question fairly well.