There are many reasons why I’ve been an Angela Hoy fan for years. Angela heads up the marvelous Writer’s Weekly site, the online Bible and writer’s manual for the freelance writing profession. Her ability to cut through the BS and give you a clear picture of specific publishers, magazine groups, and “employers” has earned my respect and the respect of thousands of hard-working writers. She chases down non-paying clients. She warns us. She informs us. And she lets us be part of her family.
As I wrote my post about selling out a few days back, I had no idea Angela had put together an article on Demand Studios. She also called out actions by Deb Ng, owner of freelancewritinggigs.com, who has recently entered into an agreement with Demand to run their ads on her site and has since advocated working for Demand. This has caused quite the uproar among professional freelancers, who have discussed, debated, and argued the move on various blogs. I will openly admit it prompted my post on selling out, and it revealed my opinion a bit more than I wanted to reveal it. (For the record, though I admire Angela Hoy, I don’t know her beyond her site, save for maybe three emails over a span of six years. I’m merely a writer who holds similar opinions.)
I’m not a people basher. I’m not someone who enjoys or strives to call out others. But I’m an advocate for fair pay and fair treatment of writers. To me, ignoring my advocacy in deference to another writer’s feelings is cheating myself and cheating you.
I have never had any debates, arguments, or even detailed conversations with Deb Ng. I am a Twitter friend of hers. But I cannot agree with her decision to promote Demand Studios as a legitimate source of income. As Angela’s newsletter article reveals, writers are selling ALL rights for the potential $20 per article (not a guaranteed amount, we’re told). Some writers are fired when they question assignments. All are being underpaid. To promote that, to me, is to deceive people into believing this is legitimate work. It’s not. It’s the online version of serfdom. It’s bondage. And any writer who sticks with that sort of bondage is a fool.
That’s why I have issue with Deb promoting this content mill. She’s openly admitted, to her credit, that she’s receiving money in exchange for her advocacy. It’s disclosure, but it’s still advocating to those pursuing a professional writing career that bastardizing themselves for a clip is okay. But to blame Deb entirely for writers accepting these wages is unfair. Writers have to take responsibility for their own careers.
The bottom line, for me, is if you take a content mill job, you are allowing yourself to be used. You’re allowing yourself to be underpaid, and you’re agreeing to let these companies leech off you and make exponentially more money from your article than you’ll ever see. Angela said it best: “Five to fifteen dollars for a well-researched, well-written article, with references and illustrations, is pathetic. Claiming it isn’t makes you a laughingstock in the industry. Everybody’s just afraid to say it to your face. I’m not.”
Make that two of us who aren’t afraid to say it.
As you know, I stopped visiting Deb Ng's site regularly quite awhile ago for a variety of reasons, one of which was her advocacy of content mills. I've occasionally clicked on to see if anything changed, but it didn't, and then I saw the sponsorship post, and it made it obvious, once and for all, that the site just doesn't fit in with either the reality or the vision for my work and career.
I'm interested in earning living wage, and I'm good enough so to do.
You're always much nicer than I am — I firmly believe you get what you pay for and those who write for mill content sites and defend it aren't good enough and/or motivated enough to land the good jobs from the unique business professionals.
I just don't give a damn anymore if someone decides to write for them — just means less competition for the good jobs.
And, as you know, if a client uses the mill content rates to try to bargain me down, and I, "You get what you pay for. Go ahead."
Out of the clients who've chosen a mill content writer over me, all but one has come back, extremely contrite, asking me to fix what the content writer broke. And I take them back at a higher rate.
The one who did not come back went bankrupt.
Getting "exposure" means nothing, if said exposure makes you look cheap and unqualified.
Amen to Devon's comment on exposure. When beginners tell me they'll get exposure or gain clips by writing for mills, I tell them point blank that the vast majority of legitimate editors won't take those "clips" seriously – even if they happen to include a byline.
The scary thing is that because Demand will pay a set price per article – while other mills pay per click-through, or have complicated payment systems designed so no one ever knows if or when they'll be paid – it appears to be more legitimate to desperate writers. Read some of the comments in Angela's article. "They pay on time!" "I have $15 in my PayPal account twice a week!" Excuse me, but reputable publications, sites, and clients pay on time, too. They also pay a heck of a lot more than $15 or $20 for a 400-500 word article.
If she doesn't mind, I think I'll adopt Devon's attitude that when other writers choose to work for content mills, it means less competition for the rest of us.
I had no idea this was going on over at Deb's site. I haven't marketed much for the past year or two, so I stopped checking her site religiously — and I just rarely go there anymore.
I agree that her advocating the site is distasteful, especially when you consider what her site used to be — a good, pretty much non-biased source for job ads. She used to weed out the crap jobs and only post the (relatively) good stuff, saving a lot of people the time it takes to wade through all the scams and other crap on Craigslist.
You know, if this content mill paid $20 (not "up to" $20) for a short, basic article, no illustrations or extras, I might say that it's up to the writer whether that's enough. I started out writing content articles for $15 each, and hey, it got me started. It's the mysterious sliding scale, and how much they demand for that small amount of pay, that gets me in this case.
I have to admit, though, I haven't yet read Angela's article. I'm a bit behind on my newsletter reading this week, so I'm heading over there to do that right now!
Cheap and unqualified – exactly, Devon. Exactly. The clips you get aren't worth showing ANY employer. So, um, why bother?
Paula, amen. I get no less than 50 cents a word for those same articles. In most cases, it's $1 per word. Why is 15 bucks so great? Because they pay on time? So what? Why not wait the usual billing cycle to get 10 times that amount for the same article? I'll never understand it.
Katharine, I was also a regular at that site for the same reasons. There was the promise of good jobs – not the churned-out crud. I can't speak to what's there now because I stopped visiting quite a while back when the level of job posting went south.
I'm not sure when you started with the content mill, but I would venture it was before they began their current business practices. Still, I'd rather have seen you working for a local paper. Same pay, but much better reputation and clips!
I've decided it's time I stop encouraging writers to avoid these low-paying markets. Devon and Paula have it right – we have to let them to swim in their own muck while we build / maintain reputable careers. These places will always exist as long as clueless people take the jobs. By conducting ourselves as professional writers, we'll be able to defend our pricing structures much better than those who get a whopping 5 bucks for their troubles.
Yes, I started freelancing way back in early 2005! By the time I went to full-time freelancing, I was no longer writing for that content site anymore. I wrote for a couple others here and there, but that was around the time they started dropping their prices more… and more… and more.
I also wrote for a local newspaper early on, but I'm not sure I agree with you that the pay is the same. The content article paid $15 and was something I could complete in about an hour, sometimes less. The local newspaper paid $50 per article, but once I prepared interview questions, interviewed the person, transcribed the interview, and wrote the article, I was earning a lot less than $15 per hour.
And even if you meant writing for a newspaper full-time, I still don't agree. Two friends of mine did that — one was paid $10 and hour, and the other got $24,000 a year with tons of unpaid overtime. Even that $15 content article paid more per hour than either of them earned.
I'm definitely not supporting writing for the rates most of these content mills offer. I'm just saying that the $15 per content article I earned when I first got started actually wasn't that bad of a deal, compared to what they pay now.
Stay tuned. I was already in the midst of an undercover sting when this whole Demand Studio debate caught raging fire. I can say with certainty that at least one of DS's business models pays nowhere near a living wage.
I don’t like DS for many reasons. Pay rate is only one of them. My beef with Deb didn’t come until after this whole thing came down. I know that she’s always been for DS and I know that she kind of prepared her readers before the deal took place, but it’s what happened after that; that bugged me.
I followed that blog for a long time, because she had always given her opinion on jobs and companies by telling you what she thought was good and bad and then let you decide whatever you wanted. Then, the “partnership” was announced. Her attitude changed. Not about DS, but about the way she had previously done things.
She wrote an article about times changing, which came after the partnership. She also wrote that she was no longer going to do any blog wars, which came after the partnership. The thing that made me stop going to the blog was when another writer on the blog was given a hard time, by a commenter, for stating her opinion when it didn’t reflect well with DS, the sponsor of the site.
Deb’s response to that was that the article had been posted before the sponsorship. Which means what? From now on their opinion only matters when it doesn’t attack DS? I can no longer trust anything on that site, because I don’t know what their opinions really are or if what they’re saying is being influenced by the Sponsor.
Hi, Lori, I too blogged about Angela Hoy's analysis of DS yesterday (http://joanslingswords.com/2009/10/15/demand-studios-analysis/) and certainly hit some people's hot buttons. Must be my week for controversy because on my old blogspot blog I wrote about Thomas Nelson starting a vanity press and hit other hot buttons there!
I've been answering comments and nasty emails most of the afternoon until I've decided to just delete the worst of the emails. The downside of contact forms.
Published a rebuttal to the DS supporters today in the form of Writers Must Choose.
I always try to be nice in point/counterpoint. "Met" a really nice blogger during this whole discussion, and we amicably agreed to disagree on the DS issue. *g*
I stopped going to her blog a while back for many reasons, all of which came down to her integrity. She claimed she was a big advocate of high paying jobs, even going so far as chastising other people for taking what she considered low-paying work. Then, she said she needed someone to write her blog for her and offered $5 an hour. No joke.
I was insulted by the lack of ethics on her part after portraying herself as such a different person. For some reason, though, I kept visiting her site. It got worse and worse as far as jobs. By that time, most of them were CraigsList scams. There was no effort at all to weed them out.
The last straw to me was a particularly horrible poster who bashed and insulted the other people who commented on her posts. She allowed him to do this again and again and again, never saying anything about it and occasionally even defending him. I then noticed that he had bought some ads on her blog. That's integrity for you. In my opinion, and it's just my opinion, she'll sell out anyone to make a buck. She doesn't mind giving crappy advice, paying crappy wages or letting dozens of people get flamed to heck and back as long as the money is rolling in.
What I find most interesting that all of this is no one is asking Deb for her comments? Angela Hoy is supposed to be fair and biased but she didn't ask Deb to comment. Even the people she singles out in her whispers and warnings are asked for their defense before being put on trial. All of you are burning Deb in effigy but did anyone write her and say, "Hey Deb, as a member of your community I'm confused and betrayed by your decision. Can I ask you some questions so I can understand your decision before I bash you on my blog?
I can tell you as a member of the DS community and forum Angela took a lot of stuff out of context and twisted it to her benefit. She embellished. This is what Deb said to us
"Angela Hoy at WritersWeekly.com is investigating Demand Studios in her series about content writing sites. She's asking for writers from DS to send her a note detailing how long it takes to write each article, your hourly rate, and in general, if you're having a positive experience.
Weigh by sending your note to angela@writersweekly.com. "
That's kind of different from what Miss Hoy said, isn't it? That's only one thing she twisted around and she didn't post any of the nice comments she received on behalf of DS.
Lisa from DS
Whoo-hoo! Let the wars begin!
Lisa, I can't speak for Angela or anyone else, but Angela did quote Deb's blog and linked to the page where she supported Demand Studios. Also, if you'll notice, Angela also stated that the quote she used was from later in the thread, when Deb was no longer asking for anyone's experiences — only the positive ones.
Unless Deb intends on recanting her position, I think we already know what she has to say.
And, Lisa, I contacted Deb multiple times over several months before I finally stopped visiting her site, stating my concerns (more diplomatically than usual) about the change of direction for the site, and asking for her POV as to how she can claim to advocate for fair pay for writers when the listings started to go (in my opinion) south. This was well before the whole DS thing. I never received a response. When I clicked back on, months later, and saw the sponsorship post, it confirmed my suspicions.
It would take days to locate the emails, but I saved them.
I used to love that site, I was a huge supporter when she started out, I even wrote an article for it (choosing to work for a much lower rate because, at the time, we seemed to share a purpose,and I wanted to support her).
She's made her choices. I disagree with them. Therefore, I no longer visit her site or link to it. I don't think you can call yourself an "advocate" for fair pay for writers when you're sponsored by a site that doesn't pay writers a living wage. That's contradictory. It's her choice, not mine, so I go elsewhere.
The jobs I land pay much more than anything I ever found listed on her site.
I stand by what I said earlier: You get what you pay for and those who choose to write for mill content sites either aren't good enough or motivated enough to land high-paying jobs. Because if they were able to land them, they would.
Of course DS people are going to rabidly defend their choices — they have to prove to themselves that they're doing the right thing. I considered working for them at one point, because of the cult-like fervor of some of their members. But the bottom line is, they can't afford me.
None of this is brain surgery. It's skill and motivation.
During a witch hunt, no one puts down his torch long enough to ask the witch if there's another side of the story. Why do think that is?
I'm not here to make a lot of excuses, words tend to get twisted and taken out of context and I'm not interested in a flame war. I just want to say I'm very sorry I lost you as a member of my community.
As far as the bashing Deb goes:
If you’re referring to the blog post, then you’ll notice Lori isn’t bashing her; she’s simply disagreeing with her on that particular point. There’s nothing wrong with that.
If you’re referring to some of the comments made, then you’ll also notice that some of us simply chose not to go to her blog anymore. That’s our choice, for whatever our reasons are. There’s nothing wrong with that. I highly doubt that not having us as her blog readers anymore is going to cause any hardship on her part.
Deb, why do you take this personally?
If you are the Witch (your words, not mine), I'd love to hear your side of the story.
Make that three of us! I have written about this too on my blog, http://www.kimomorgan.com.
Any writer who sells out and works for less than minimum wage sells out all writers. And what really gets my blood boiling is that Demand and its many other web sites take up a huge chunk of space on the writing job sites.
These are not real writing jobs and any writer who writes for them is not a professional writer.
Deb, thank you for stopping by. I'd like to extend the offer to have you post your side of things here. If you're interested in putting together a post, drop me an email.
As I said in my post, I'm not into bashing anyone, nor have I bashed anyone. It was an odd coincidence that Angela Hoy wrote her piece as I was writing mine. And that's all it was – coincidence.
I'm not defending myself here because I've done nothing more than say I disagree with Deb's choice to align with DS. I stand by that opinion. I also stand by my opinion that content mills are the worst possible place for a writer to work because the work involved is nowhere near equal to the payment received.
Deb, if you're interested in having a say, I'll devote an entire post to you. I can't say it will change anyone's mind, but everyone deserves a chance to be heard.
I think, Lisa, the comments by people here are useful. They're telling Deb exactly why they left her community. That's something a good business person can use to move forward. Complaints are gifts – they're blueprints for correcting things and making a more poistive impact with your audience.
Kathy, I'd love to hear your results! Let us know when you've completed your investigations.
Sorry – "positive" impact. Oy. Not enough tea on a Sunday morning. 🙂
Thank you, Lori. I will be on a plane all day but may take you up on this next week after I catch up.
As I said, I don't want to get into a lot of tit for tat but Anonymous? I don't offer people $5 an hour for jobs.
Devon: I do my best to answer all my email and I apologize for not answering yours. I'm not going to say I didn't get it, but I don't recall seeing any email from you recently and after searching my gmail just now I didn't find anything from you. However, I apologize as I know it's frustrating when you write to people and they don't respond. I'm so sorry to lose you as a member of my community.
Lisa – As Lori said, all comments are food for thought. I believe there are no haters, only opportunities. Thank you for your support.
Joan – I commented on your blog.
I hope you all have a nice day. Good luck with all of your endeavors.
I absolutely can't wait to see Kathy's post!
That said, I haven't been back to Deb's site since I decided that I really don't want to be a freelance writer (I don't want to deal with clients, and I don't want to do interviews, so I'm sticking to internet marketing and will hopefully make enough some day to hire freelance writers at a good wage instead), so I missed this whole sponsorship thing.
That said, I did sign up for DS at one point, but never bothered taking any of the jobs because none of the titles were interesting enough to research (or subjects that I knew well enough to not have to research), and the pay wasn't good enough to waste my time on learning new guidelines and such.
My guideline for taking on writing jobs was always that I wouldn't take less than I could get from doing PayPerPost posts on my own blog- that pretty much rules out any content mills!
Nice topic! In addition to Angela's informative piece on Demand Studios, I think this story I found would be right at home here. The title? "Demand Studios: 4Reasons Why It Sucks."
http://hubpages.com/hub/Demand-Studios-4-Reasons-Why-It-Sucks
Thank you for your excellent article. I vow never again to write for a content mill that's only willing to pay me what amounts to $2 per hour.
Writing for these content mills only SEEMS to be a good way to get started in freelancing. The time it takes to research, write and rewrite would be better spent in learning more about writing and in seeking out better paying markets. A shortcut is usually really a bad idea-you end up lost and confused, and then you starve. Not a great recipe for success.
I wrote for Demand Media as a newcomer mistake! I needed the money so badly because I couldn't afford to freelance when I quit my "day job." I refused to do any 'articles' that required more than 20 minutes of research because it was such disgusting pay. And I'm not justifying this site and these jobs at all, but I made a lot of money doing it. I think they are a complete joke because they will hire anyone with the tiniest bit of writing experience and their copy editors have no idea how to edit.
I would never, ever advise anyone to work for this company. I don't even list it on my resume I'm so embarrassed by it!
Two points. First, while I agree with your argument in principle, the anti-content mill crowd never suggests any alternatives. For folks who are just starting their writing careers and are having trouble finding work, a few hundred bucks a week from DS is a great way to get some cash while looking for other higher-paying opportunities.
Second, your claim, "Some writers are fired when they question assignments" is positively insane. Please back up this claim. Writers at DS choose from a pool of assignments. No writer is ever forced to write anything. The notion that someone would be fired for questioning a particular assignment is crazy. You probably heard that third-hand from a disgruntled writer and now you're spreading false rumors. If you want to criticize DS that's fine, but don't make shit up to bolster your argument.
Actually Chris, anyone who reads this blog, About Freelance Writing, All Freelance Writing, or most other writers' blogs WILL find suggested alternatives. I've gone out of my way to make sure beginning writers are aware of the options. In fact, last week I began a "write this instead of that" series. Before that, I pointed out several alternatives and have encouraged others to ask for more.
The second point is this. A few of DS's former writers have stated both here and at other sites that they were fired when they questioned assignments. I will dig for the one particular post, but know that I don't write what hasn't been reported elsewhere. I don't "make shit up", as you so eloquently say. I state what I know to be true. If you'd like to prove me wrong, I'd welcome that.
i found this post i am at my witts end, after being demoted and fired with two of the popular content mills. Maybe I just need to move into something else completely different. I am tired. Thanks for writing this post.