What’s on the iPod: The Loneliness & The Scream by Frightened Rabbit
I’m running a virtual marathon right now — two articles are done, one more to go, one other project to complete this morning, and a world of stuff waiting for me in May. I love it. Makes you feel alive.
Since I’m busy today, let’s get right to it. Here is this week’s free advice. Well, it’s all free, but today it’s….free-er?
Free Advice Friday: This Job, Not That Job
Ah, the return of the incredibly bad, pathetic, and vague job listings. How we’ve missed them, uh, not at all. Here’s the latest drivel from Craig’s List:
Ghost Writer
Interested in fast ways to make money? We guarantee pay every 8 days for content analysis. New content creators need to have a high school diploma along with give effective results . Send us an e-mail to start building your online business.
compensation: 50+
Wow. Okay, let’s just tick through these in order.
Fast ways to make money. That’s the equivalent of saying “Make a few bucks in your spare time on very tight deadlines.” If it’s fast money, that means turnaround times are going to be just as fast. High demand for quick content is my read.
We guarantee pay every 8 days for content analysis. Okay, that makes no sense at all. The job is ghost writing, which is already weird enough to need anonymous content quickly. Paying every 8 days? Why not every 7 days? Starting to smell a bit. Content analysis– are you expected to write and be analyzed or are you the one doing the analysis?
New content creators need to have a high school diploma along with give effective results. Stop. My eyes are bleeding. If this ad was written by your “editor” your diploma isn’t going to make any difference. That’s the worst sentence I’ve seen in eons. The good news is you can pretty much hand in garbage and it will outshine this crap.
Send us an e-mail to start building your online business. There’s the carrot. They’re implying that working with them will mean you have your own business. Sure you will, and it will start out in the worst possible way — turning out fast content that’s edited by people who can’t string together coherent sentences.
Compensation: 50+ Talk about vague — is that fifty dollars, fifty cents or fifty copies of the file you just wrote? Fifty goats? Fifty pesos? What? Whatever it is, the number fifty is entirely too low in any currency.
Instead try something like this:
Quill Magazine
Looking for topics of general interest to journalists. Also looking for technical and how-to pieces.
Pays $150 to $800 for 800 to 2,500 words.
Better, isn’t it? While 800 words at $150 isn’t exactly setting your career on fire, it’s a legitimate publication and you know at the outset what they need and what they pay.
Writers, what else can you see wrong with that first ad?
How low before it’s too low for you to accept?
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