Credit: Wasim Raja on Flickr
Throughout my career, I?ve had three freelancing phases interspersed between staff positions. The first time, I edited with a red pencil on hard copy, jotted queries on sticky (Post-it) notes attached to the margins, typed out my style sheets and invoices on a typewriter, and mailed them along with the manuscript via the U.S. Postal Service or delivery truck.
Fifteen years later, I finally bought a computer (after using computers at on-site jobs through most of the intervening period), edited in Microsoft Word using tracked changes and commenting functions, compiled style sheets and created invoices in Word, and returned assignments along with them via email.
Returning to Freelance
A year ago, after a five-year stint as an employee, I returned to freelance work (writing as well as editing) — and to a brave new world. The technology hasn?t changed much, but the market has, and one of the most distressing aspects of this dystopia was mentioned on this site in a recent off-topic comment, which I quote in part here:
?I?ve tried hiring some bloggers but I can?t believe just how infantile the examples have been from people that claim to be professionals. I really don?t expect perfection, but, just like with SEO firms, there are few people these days that are not spinning content, farming work overseas, or simply not interested in putting in real work to earn a buck. I would love any feedback, suggestions, or referrals. Thank you.?
I?ve got your feedback right here. My response is cliched, but buried in cliches are gleaming truths, and here?s one of the shiniest nuggets of wisdom I?ve ever seen: “You get what you pay for.”
New Opportunities
Internet commerce has opened up a vast new realm of opportunity for writers, because hordes of online entrepreneurs are desperate for people to populate the Web with content that drives visitors to their sites. So now you have content farms — sites like eHow.com — that act as clearinghouses for anything you might ever (more likely, never) need to know. And you have SEO spinners: freelance writers who churn out multiple versions of short articles about how wonderful World Wide?s widgets are.
What?s wrong with that? Nothing. Markets are markets. But when I investigated writing for content farms and read ads seeking writers for SEO articles, I was insulted: $5 for a 300-word SEO article? (?Must pass Copyscape!?) $10 for 500 to 750 word essays? (?No additional pay for rewriting!?)
Folks, look at this site, which explicitly lists pay rates for print-media writing. (The site is Canadian, but we?ll let that go.) A ballpark figure is $1 per word. Most online writing pays pennies a word.
There are exceptions, of course. But the overwhelming majority of assignments for online writing (and editing) aren?t about good or great writing — they?re about search results. I edited briefly for such a client — $12.50 per piece, keywords x times in every paragraph — and I was terrible at it, because I was trying to help produce good writing, and that?s not what they wanted; they wanted data, not prose. I quit before my soul had been reduced to a smoldering lump of carbon. I don?t know how other people do it.
I have written for several content farms; I still contribute occasional articles about films and filmmaking to a couple of them. The pay is minimal, but I write about what I want, when I want, and I enjoy it. But content farms get a bad rap for the inept writing that populates them — which is unfair to competent writers like me who contribute to them; however, I?ve read some of the articles by other contributors, and well, let?s just say the point is often valid.
Getting Wise
Some clients are getting wise, they are seeking: ?Native English speakers only? and ?Professional writers only.? Thanks to a frontier mentality, the market is glutted with people who have only a rudimentary grasp of written English, and the more savvy businesspeople understand that what they want is not just data, but prose — real writing by real writers, and skilled editing that polishes diamonds in the rough.
SEO, as many site publishers are learning to their chagrin, is not only about keyword saturation; it?s about good content. People read the posts at this site not because the posts are peppered with grammatical and publishing terms, but because visitors know they will find useful, coherently presented information — content produced not for pennies per word by somebody who knows how to type, but for a decent wage that allows the writer to share his love of writing, language, and knowledge to earn a living.
If you are hiring writers to produce online content, understand that anybody can type an article in a matter of minutes. But it can take an hour or more — up to several hours (if extensive research is involved) — to write an article like the ones you see posted here on FreelanceSwitch. I don?t know about you, but although I live a simple lifestyle, I can?t live on only $5 or $10 per hour.
Offer a living wage, and you?ll get prose that?s alive, that writers can actually live on, and that will engage your audience, while delivering positive results.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Wasim Raja.
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