If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know my stance on content mills. I’ve used up plenty of blog space railing against the low pay and the lousy math they use to convince hapless writers that they’re riding the gravy train.
So today’s post is another post about content mills, but with a twist. When Jenn Mattern told me about Dave Snyder, I was intrigued. When I talked with Dave myself, I knew his story was perfect for this blog and for Writers Worth Month. We talked about content mills, and we talked about the value writers bring to the table. Let’s just say Dave is the most unlikely person to tell you just how bad content mills are. Here’s why.
Evolution and the Writer
by Lori Widmer
Dave Snyder knows all about content mills and what they mean for the writing profession. He used to run one.
Snyder is CEO of CopyPress, a company that was, until just a few years ago, a content mill.
These days, Snyder is a reformed man who spends a good deal of his time fighting against his company’s history, trying to show the writing community that things have changed, times have changed, and evolution was, and is, necessary for survival. That includes not only the evolution of his own company, but also of freelance writers.
The CopyPress evolution was one that happened, in part, due to the glut of content mills flooding the search engine results before 2012. It was then Snyder says he sensed a change coming in the market, and when he foresaw that “Google would eventually come down hard on the
volumes of poor content being generated at that time. It’s when I thought, wow,
high-end quality is going to be the future for content. There’s going to be a
big push-back from the low-end copy and that’s where we need to be.”
There was another reason for his company’s change in direction: the realization that his writers weren’t being paid enough to survive. “It was soul-crushing for me to look at the economics behind what we were paying people — I’d be like ‘This is crazy.’”
He ought to know — he once supplemented his teaching income with articles in the fantasy sports space, earning less than a penny a word. It hit him one day, and he decided to approach the client about it. “They were like: ‘Well, we’re giving you a byline and experience’ you know, that whole story.”
The Race to the Bottom
Before Snyder’s revelation in 2012, his company paid low rates. Ironically, it was that race-to-the-bottom business model that had the company struggling. “When you do penny-a-word content stuff, you’re using the same writers as everyone else offering penny-a-word content. And you’re going in pitching
bids that are all the same price. It was so commoditized that growing a business was pretty much impossible.”
Still, even after CopyPress started going after higher-priced project work, Snyder says they weren’t looking at the larger picture – the focus was on articles and product descriptions, whereas now the company secures clients for everything from eBooks to infographics. “At that point, we still weren’t looking at customized pricing. We were going to pay multiples more and charge multiples more, and get better writers and start grading them. But we were still about two years out from us being like ‘Hey, how about on certain projects, we have writers tell us how much this is going to be and kind of work as a negotiator on both sides?’”
Now the company has baseline pricing for various services.
Quality Begets Quality
Snyder says CopyPress has about 20,000 writers on its rosters — but uses the most vetted writers. “We pre-test writers before they come in, and we probably use only about 200 to 300 on an ongoing basis. We also keep quality scores, and we’re pretty aggressive about keeping the quality high from our writers.”
The experience with so many writers has made him realize all writers are not created equal. “There are really great writers out there, and then there are people where you think ‘Wow, you don’t even know how to put together a sentence or you don’t know how to hit deadlines.’”
So when he hears writers saying they deserve a certain price for their skills, he says “This whole mindset that every writer should be paid a premium is kind of crazy. If you’re a great writer, you deserve great pay.” But not everyone is a great writer, he adds.
Yet Snyder says the old-school notion that great writers will automatically get great pay is an antiquated one. “In the new environment we live in, mostly online, your expertise and being able to leverage that expertise is what’s going to get you the higher amount of pay.”
Marketing the Right Way
Still, he says he’s astonished by how many writers don’t have their own portfolio or even a website where they can showcase their work. “I met an auto writer locally who writes for all the big auto sites. I asked ‘So where’s your website?’ and he’s like ‘Oh, I don’t have one.’ What are you doing? You’re an expert and you’re not building your brand, which would allow you to make even more money.”
And it’s all about freelance writers building a business, he says. Far too many writers, in his opinion, take a passive approach to their careers — using sites like CopyPress as their main source of client work. “What CopyPress should be used for is really as a back-fill for those slow cycles,” he says. “If you’re a great copywriter, you should be focused on your niche and on building your business, and using us as a
back-fill, not for your primary place to get work.”
That said, Snyder says writers with strong expertise in a niche can also leverage that background within the CopyPress platform to secure clients looking for specialty writers. He says within the travel industry, for example, he has writers with strong credentials whom he’s able to place with top-tier companies.
He just hopes all his efforts prove to the freelance writing community that CopyPress is no longer a content mill, nor does its current business model resemble Demand Media in any way. In fact, of Demand Media, he says this: “I use it as a marker for a time. These were the Demand Media days. They were the biggest symbol of ‘I’ll pay you nothing’.”
Times have indeed changed, but Snyder’s not sure they’ve changed for the better. “In some ways, today’s market has become almost worse. Now there’s this whole grouping of publishers that make people write for free – the HuffPos of the world. It’s weird where we’ve gone. Demand Media was bad, but at least they were paying.”
What’s Next?
Snyder’s next objective is to create a line of communication between marketers and writers. “Creatives should learn how to speak the marketers’ language. I know it’s one of the problems marketers have – to learn how to speak the creatives’ language. If you can know how marketers think and speak, and how things are driven, that can also affect your pay rates by a lot. It allows you to know how to structure deals appropriately.”
To that end, Snyder is now promoting the company’s latest survey, and he invites freelance writers from all niches to weigh in with their opinions. In the
State of Content Marketing survey, Snyder hopes to share the results among both marketers and freelancers in hopes marketers will understand the value of quality writing, and that writers will learn to work better with marketers.
Writers, what do you think about Dave’s points about writers having a niche or creating their own brand?
In your opinion, can a former content mill can change for the better?
10 responses to “Writers Worth: Why You Need a Freelance Evolution”
I'm the eternal optimist, so of course I believe things can change for the better. Even a former content mill. (As for HuffPo? Well, maybe not.)
Reading Dave's story was enlightening, and his line about the HuffPos of the world: "Demand Media was bad, but at least they were paying." Was so true it's chilling.
That struck me too, Paula. We think we've scored a victory when in fact things just eroded even further.
I suppose it's tough to give a thumbs-up endorsement to a former content mill. It's like asking us to believe that reform has happened — in this case, it appears to have, but writers have pretty long memories, I guess.
I do like how Dave even said his company shouldn't be a writer's main source of clients, but more as a backup system for those inevitable slumps most freelancers face.
Very refreshing, especially considering most content sites seem intent on keeping their freelancers beholden to them.
Interesting points here Lori. It's refreshing to see this attitude. If only all content mills would make this change…
I agree, Laura. Not all care enough to do so.
And for what it's worth, Dave admitted that part of the reason they changed their business model was because they couldn't turn a profit. The change wasn't entirely altruistic, but I'm still glad it happened.
I noticed that too, Lori, that they weren't making money, which is why they took another look at the business model. At least they changed, I suppose. And at least he recognizes that great writers deserve great pay. That's what worth is all about!
I'm slightly hesitant to comment here, but you know. That rarely stops me. 😉
The reason I'm hesitant is because (full disclosure), Dave is a client. I was brought in to consult on and help improve the survey Lori mentioned. But I hope those who know me also know I don't get behind anything — even a paying client — if I don't believe in what they're trying to do. (Same gal who walked away from a long-time $30k+ per year client simply because their new SEO policies crossed my ethical line — I don't take this kind of thing lightly.)
I'm not going to tell you that CopyPress is awesome and you should sign up. I don't personally use them, so I'm not in a position to do that. But what I will say is that Dave is "good people." As others have noted, it's refreshing when companies try to change for the better. As a PR pro, I have quite a lot of respect for that, as well as companies who take criticism and turn it around to improve things (as in the case with their survey).
One important thing Dave pointed out in our previous discussions was that this survey isn't just about collecting data on freelancers. It's about educating marketers. It's important for marketers to see what real freelance pros expect and charge (compared to feedback they get only from big marketplaces featuring a large number of low quality writers, which can skew data.)
We're not always the easiest group to reach, because we don't tend to congregate in large groups in marketplaces and content mills. So please, take some time to take the survey mentioned in the post. Make sure we're better represented this time around. Let marketers who hire freelance writers know that, no, $.05 per word is not a "standard" freelance writing rate for example. Even if you don't work through these marketplaces, you don't know where your own prospects are getting their data before considering your rates. Help make sure that data is more accurate.
I, for one, appreciate that CopyPress saw the shortcomings of their past surveys and is trying to improve things this time. The biggest issue is reach. So spread the word.
You get what you pay for. Since he wasn't paying for quality content, of course he wasn't getting it. I'm still a little skeptical.
Of course, I am the Anti-Niche — also known, thanks to the article I wrote for WOW- WOMEN ON WRITING — as a "Renaissance Writer". I can do many things, and it serves me well.
Thanks a good post!
Glad you liked it, Susan! It’s always good to examine things closely, I think.