The $3 Article: Not Worth the Pixels It’s Written In
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Low rates of pay for freelance writers is an extremely contentious issue, and one I feel quite strongly about – I fall into the anti-camp, and make no apologies for that. Today I spotted a prime example of the kind of job that I personally feel no self-respecting professional should touch, no matter how desperate they are for writing credits.
The advertiser asks for “1-2 blog entries a week (300 words each); well written and researched.”
Even if the post takes 20 – 30 minutes, the research is going to take much longer, but I’ll be optimistic and say the whole job takes an hour, how much would you charge for that? I know what I’d ask for, and it would be considerably more than the $3 the publisher is offering – that works out at 1.97 sterling at today’s exchange rates.
The publisher is based in the UK, and specifies only native English speakers should apply, so effectively, they’re asking for a writer resident in Britain to work for less than two quid an hour. There are currently three bids, which is depressing.
That’s pretty much all I have to say about this, except: if you are tempted to take these kind of jobs please think again. You would do yourself more favours if you took a job flipping burgers and wrote guest posts on friends’ blogs for nothing. That way you’d have a regular income (at about four times the hourly rate) while you built a portfolio of credits, and wouldn’t have your work littered all over what usually turn out to be little more than spam-blogs. You’d also be doing other writers a favour because, by accepting such low pay you legitimise those who offer it and make it harder for your peers to ask for what they’re really worth.
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Twitter: joannacake
on April 20, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Oh, I hear you sister! I’m just starting to try to make some money from my writing and it’s soul destroying to see some of these ‘opportunities’.
Some advertisers seem to want several completely unconnected links worked into a coherent piece that someone will actually want to read, but they’re not prepared to pay anything for the amount of time and research involved in putting together such an article.
Recently, I’ve become involved in internet marketing and so many of the gurus advise outsourcing the writing to the Far East or purchasing one of the many ’spinners’ that will rewrite the article for you by changing some of the words. It’s cheaper than paying a native English speaker to do it, apparently.
The problem is that, whilst most self-respecting English writers and speakers can tell when either of these two options has been taken, there seems to be a whole section of the general public worldwide who think that such articles are worth reading. They just don’t seem to notice the strange grammar and odd vocabulary. Or, my particular bugbear, the rogue apostrophe.
Real writers, who care about that sort of thing, are being written out of the market when it comes to price and I fear for our beautiful language
Joanna Cake´s last blog ..Mothers, Sons and a Tight Forskin
Hi Joanna
I fear for our language too! You’re right when you say there’s a market for badly written articles, and it’s so sad; not just because of the effect on language as a whole, but also because it means new writers like you find it much harder to make a living from their craft. It’s also bad for people who aren’t really up to the job, they may get a lot of these low-paying gigs where there’s no editorial control, but they’ll struggle once they aim for more lucrative markets where skill and talent are prerequisites.
My bugbears are the pluralisation of the word stuff – it’s already plural, why add an ’s’?! And the use of ‘however’ in the middle of a sentence; I know it’s pedantic but whenever I have to edit a piece that includes that I just want to scream.