Bankrate.com Financial Info [UPDATE]

I came across the latest Bankrate.com financial announcement, as it is a publicly-held company, and so freelancers can get a pretty good idea of how the business is doing. Here's the short view:

• This was for the second quarter of 2009.


• Overall revenue was down 23 percent, from $40.2 million to $31.0 million. Online revenue was down 23 percent to $29.0 million, which also shows that the bulk of its money -- 93.5 percent -- comes from online.


• Net income was down even more sharply, from $4.1 million to $1.9 million, or roughly 53.7 percent.


• Company CEO Thomas Evans blamed it on "macroeconomic conditions." Translated, it means that financial advertising, particularly in the banking, mortgage, and credit card channels, is still way off of normal. The question is whether this is the new normal.


• There is cash or cash equivalents of over $55 million and quarterly expenses run around $15 million. Normally you'd want to see a much bigger amount of money tucked away so the company could ride out longer than, say, a year, but there is still plenty of cash to pay people, so seeing delays in payment wouldn't be reasonable. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone is reporting delayed payment. But it's good information to keep in your back pocket in any negotiation.)

One other big piece of news: the company is going to be acquired by Apax Partners, a private equity group. Given how most private equity firms work, you can probably expect in the near future a big downward push on rates and terms.

The acquisition also shows the value of intellectual property (IP) like copyright and why companies push so hard to own it. The IP because a major asset that is worth money. In this case, the Bankrate.com shareholders are going to get $28.50 a share in cash, or $571 million it total. Companies know damned well what they're asking for when they want articles under a WMFH basis. They're taking the value out of your pocket so they can put it in theirs. Don't forget that when you're negotiating price.

[Update: Check the comments on this post. One reader pointed out that according to the SEC documents about the deal, much of the cash on hand will go to fees incurred to conduct the deal. That would have some predictable ramifications for the time it will take to get paid.]

The Writers' Mill Anthem

The Writers' Mill Anthem
(to the tune of Born Free)
By Erik Sherman


Write free
As free as the grass grows
Who cares where the cash goes?
Write free, and follow your heart

Work free, and readers surround you
Exposure astounds you
Although you live in a car

Type free, no business controls you
You're free as the roaring tide
Though your net worth will slide

Write free, your publisher's living
But only well living
'cause you write free

Type free, no business controls you
You're free as the roaring tide
Though your net worth will slide

Write free, your publisher's living
But only well living
'cause you write free

(Feel free to distribute to any writer who considers working for nothing. And you can blame Randy Hecht, as she's the one who suggested I write this in the first place.)

Has Entrepreneur Media Just Put Its Foot In It?

The news of the continuing editorial bloodbath at Entrepreneur Media, publisher of Entrepreneur Magazine, have been making extensive rounds of the media circles. Even after a round of lay-outs earlier this year, editorial folk have continued pulling their ripcords to parachute out at a time when media staff jobs are none too plentiful. And now a recent flare-up from an ex-employee elicited a response that seems like a bad business move and might even leave the publisher open for legal action.

Click here for the rest of the article - I think Entrepreneur may have responded to an ex-employee flame fest in a way that leaves it open to being sued.

7 Practices to More Successful Corporate Assignments

On a writers board, someone mentioned a difficult experience with a difficult corporate project that was turning into many revisions, big reversals in direction, and increasingly hostile clients. If you haven't done many corporate assignments, it's easy to make a classic mistake and assume that they are like editorial, in that someone says what they want and you deliver it. Corporate work can be far trickier to manage (not that editorial is easy). Here are seven tactics that can help you manage the process:

1. Limit on number of drafts with additional payment for additional drafts.


2. Start with an outline that they must sign off on, and don't write a word of draft copy until you have agreement on the outline. That way it's clear when they want to change directions. It also lets you go through some alterations without much pain.


3. Indicate in the contract that drafts are based on approved outlines and, if the direction changes, so does the fee.


4. Get the names of all people involved in the approval process. Often you'll get someone in marketing claiming to have the say, but that is almost never the case. You want all decision makers involved from the beginning so you can get all the feedback early, rather than turning it into an edit-by-committee experience that you'd get at one of the big women's magazines.


5. Remember that you are the facilitator and are there in part to help them come to agreement on what they want to say.


6. After any meeting, you circulate a draft of minutes so, again, there is no confusion.


7. When someone wants something different, you patiently walk them back through drafts and meeting minutes, all calmly and coolly.

It may sound like a lot more work, but it's actually less. This give you control of the process, which will cut the total amount of time you spend on the job and will come up with something that they have bought into.

Linking and Free Content? It's the Old Features Vs. Benefits

Here's a link to a post of mine on BNET Media that you might find interesting - how the difference between free and paid content in discussion can often become an issue of confusing features versus benefits in marketing.

I had an epiphany while reading Virginia Postrel’s New York Times Sunday Book Review piece on Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Postrel was going through what has become a fairly common discussion of the book and the ideas of cross-subsidy (giving away in one place to make money in another), the infinitesimal cost of distribution, and the exploding number of suppliers of content. Suddenly I realize that publishers have largely been going about the free versus paid debate in completely the wrong manner.

Rest of the post...

Selling the News

The other week, when I wrote my post What Is the News and Do Reporters Matter?, I got an interesting response from long-time arts journalist and writer advocate Debra Cash (who gave me permission to quote her email and address this on the blog):

Mostly I'm in agreement, especially about the issue of "recognizing" news and of course the idea that all journalists don't go to journalism school!

However, when you say but ultimately, the audience decides what is news, not the reporters

I respectfully disagree. Sometimes, often -- and especially in international or technical news -- reporters on the ground/beat know something is significant early on and it can't interest the audience until it either builds up a head of steam or impinges on the personal/local/national concerns of the reader. It would have been easy for readers to say "who cares about break-in at the DNC at Watergate?" It would have been very easy to write it off as just another petty crime story. If it had not happened in Washington, with Washington Post readers having a vested interest in the DNC, it might have been. Can you imagine what would have happened if the office had been, say, in suburban Cleveland?

I thought my response to her might be worth considering:

What you’re suggesting is that sometimes, when you’re trying to sell an idea that you think is important, the sales cycle is longer than you might normally expect. And I’d agree. But it’s a thin line that separates a Watergate from a Spanish American War. Too often the press has turned something into “news” when it was crap.

There is a difference between making news, taking time to uncover news, and getting audience buy-in. Ultimately, if you can't get audience buy-in, you don't have news. That's not to say that the buy-in comes immediately. There will be stories that you have to develop because your audience may not see the implications right away. (I can remember having to do this with an editor who wanted to know why the business topic I suggested hadn't yet appeared in major media. The answer was that it was a growing issue and the business reporters simply didn't know about it or get it. Ultimately, it turned into a good-sized story.)

But this doesn't mean that journalists "decide" on the definition of news. They're still following what is of interest to the audience. Like good sales practitioners, they sometimes will find something that people don't realize they want. When that happens, you need patience and persistence to get the story out.

As I mentioned in that earlier post, news judgment is the ability to correctly guess more often than not when your audience will care and when they won't. And there is always the issue of having only so many resources to tell a finite amount of stories. Whether on paper or pixels, no publication ever has the people, time, and money to write every possible story. You have to make the best decision you can and hope that you're right.

Perhaps it's in the hope that the best antidote to journalistic arrogance resides. When you remember that you're mortal and fallible, the best you can do is hope that you're doing the best you can do, and remember your audience and why you write what you do. I recently had the experience of posting a story on BNET that had a couple of readers declare that I was being sensationalistic, bringing up something that they considered a non-story. I stood by my guns and said that the issue had been under reported. In this case, I was right, and the topic resurfaced in a big way a few weeks later.

Sometimes persistence pays off in a renewed sense of being on the right track and doing well in following your craft. There is that constant battle -- particularly online, with the pressure to increase page views -- between working with integrity and manipulating the system to use story topics and keywords as "link bait." But focused as I get on this blog (and in my work day) about the business of writing, I like to remember that there are things far more important than money.

Real Simple Essay Contest Aimed At Simple-Minded

Over the years, I've become used to seeing unreasonable contracts. But the terms for the The Second-Annual Life Lessons Contest by Real Simple Magazine are simply beyond belief. I could go through the whole thing, but one simple section says it all:

In addition, by entering, Entrant grants to Sponsor a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to edit, publish, promote, and republish at any time in the future and otherwise use Entrant’s submitted essay, along with Entrant’s name, likeness, biographical information, and any other information provided by Entrant, in any and all media for possible editorial, promotional, or advertising purposes, without further permission, notice, or compensation (except where prohibited by law).

No need to wonder; you are reading it correctly. By virtue of entry, a writer gives unfettered use to the publisher to publish an essay as many times as it wants, with any edits that it desires, whether as editorial or for promotional or advertising purposes. The mag doesn't have to ask or even inform the writer and doesn't pay one penny. And that's for any entry, not a winning one.

Using the entry of the winner who gets $3,000? Sure, I can see that. Open use of anything that comes in the door? What the hell are they thinking? Oh, wait, I know: someone in management read Chris Anderson's book Free and misread that it's about the publisher giving away some free things. Or maybe the person in charge didn't bother to go past the title. Here's a clue to those at the top: If you want people to value what you do enough to pay, you'll find that you have value what others do for you enough to pay them. Otherwise, you're in no position to criticize anyone who thinks that "information wants to be free." It's one of those little truisms that make the world go 'round. Or is that too simple a concept for a mover and shaker?

Cross Promotion on Twitter and YouTube

I'm mainly pointing to a blog post by web video journalist Robb Montgomery that should be of interest to any independent journalist or writer: How I used Twitter to get 9,000 views on YouTube. (He's @robbmontgomery on Twitter.) The headline gives you a good encapsulation of the topic, but what it fails to get across the detail in which he goes into how he actually drove traffic, building credibility in a specific search term (or trending hashtag) on Twitter so people would come to see him as a "credible source" and not a spammer. It may be that this step is more important when trying to tie into a topic on Twitter on the upsurge of popularity but of limited lifetime, like the tag referring to Obama's speech in Cairo. I suspect it may be different if you're posting regularly using an ongoing hashtag.

Because of his preparatory work and some lucky timing of comments by some people who could give him a boost, he got 8,901 views on YouTube in one day.

What Is the News and Do Reporters Matter?

There have been a couple of blog entries -- Dave Winer on whether something is news if it's not reported, and Jeff Jarvis on journalistic narcisism -- that got me typing. Although I first started this as a comment on BuzzMachine, given the quickly burgeoning length, I thought it made more sense to post here. (I also skipped BNET Media for this post because it's a bit long and possibly theoretical for there.)

I've certainly disagreed with Jeff Jarvis in the past, but I do agree that there is too much self-importance in much of the press. Perhaps my view comes from never having formally studied journalism. My educational background was in math and engineering, and other than a brief exposure when I was much younger, I didn't get into journalism until my late 30s. So I'm something of an outsider and see the business and craft differently than someone who didn't spend time in corporations, in management, in consulting -- and also doing grunt work in restaurants, in construction, and in trucking.

When journalists feel that they are needed, I think they are reaching toward something, but making the mistake of seeing themselves as center of the issue, rather than serving the topic. (That mistaking the importance of self-expression and voice in comparison with story is one of the biggest problems I see in much writing.) News doesn't happen: events do. Circumstances do. News is a relative importance that people place on the events. But the problem is that it takes effort to put the events, people, actions, and so on into a context, so you're not just the mouthpiece for one aspect or another. That's where reporting becomes important, if you think that trying to get at least a half-way balanced view of the world is important. Someone has to be interested enough to do investigative reporting, to get views from more than one camp, to question the answers they get. That's reporting and I think that it's necessary to society that someone do it. That someone doesn't have to be a "professional" journalist. The person simply has to undertake the necessary skepticism, curiosity, open-mindedness, research, and patience ... and develop enough skills in writing to be able to coherently present something.

Unfortunately, I see journalists focusing more on enjoying vicarious power, building and maintaining careers, and congratulating themselves. Too many talk only among themselves and not to enough other people. Too many don't understand the topics they cover, although they begin to think that proximity is the same as understanding. There's been more than once when I've had to talk editors into a story that were for a given audience. All you had to do is know enough about the topic, the logical implications, and the interests and needs of the audience to see the connection. I saw it because I had been part of the audience at one time. The editors took convincing because they never had been, although they regularly wrote about the topic.

Of course something can be news if it's not reported. How else could you have journalists complaining about being pushed into doing too much celebrity coverage, say, and not being allowed to do "real" stories. But, again, they begin to mistakenly think that they are in the middle of it all. It's not that journalists decide what is news. They are supposed to recognize news, which is completely different. That implies being tied in to the readership well enough that you begin to understand their concerns, and that you then seek out information accordingly. Here's what Jarvis wrote:

I was trained to accept that myth: that journalists decide what’s important, that it’s a skill with which they are imbued: news judgment.

The problem there is the word "judgment." According to Merriam-Webster, it can mean "a formal utterance or opinion." But I think the intended meaning of the word is actually "the process of forming an opinion by discerning and comparing." Ultimately, it ain't news if the audience doesn't care. News judgment is the ability to correctly guess more often than not when they would care and when they wouldn't. It comes down to knowing your customers.

That shift from recognition to declaration is what makes much of the public so angry with journalists. They don't want to be told what to think and what they should find important or not. Look at what Winer wrote:

At least for me, the reporters are as irrelevant as paper delivery of the NYT, WSJ and SJM had become in 1994. I know what they're going to say before they say it. I also don't feel their ability to set an agenda anymore.

Ultimately, I think he's saying that journalists can't tell him what is important. Exactly. All they can do is present information that they think he might find interesting.

The positive thing about having more sources for various types of news is that you have more people looking and, hopefully, fewer things falling through the cracks. But ultimately, the audience decides what is news, not the reporters. Otherwise they could get paid for writing about any old thing, and anyone in the business knows that would last no longer than the end of the first pay period.

That said, I find that there is actually a mirroring of the same fault. (Remember the old saying that what bothers you most in another person may well be something in you as well.) It's also important for individuals like Winer, and for journalists, to remember that the country is big, including many individuals with different tastes, interests, and backgrounds, and just because something doesn't interest you, meaning you don't think it's news, doesn't mean that no one else finds it important. As Winer wrote:

The only reason Palin has any viability is that the press remembers who she is. For me, and I'd bet a huge chunk of the electorate, she's a fading memory of an election we've put way behind us as we've turned to face our futures. For me the last election was only important in that it got Bush and the Republicans out.

That may be true for him. It might even be true for a "huge chunk" of the country. But it certainly isn't true for everyone. It would help if individuals, as well as journalists, began to ask themselves, "Am I trying to decide what others should be interested in?" Perhaps the real problem the news faces is not the hubris of journalists, but the hubris of our culture.

Another Writer Mill: Atlantic Publishing Co. (APC)

I seem to be on a kick of discussing professional wastes of time, which I'm calling writer mills. These organizations bring in writers, grind them for whatever word juice is available, and pay a pittance. Now there's another to add to the list: Atlantic Publishing Company (APC).

Recently I've mentioned Helium and Demand Studios. Both share some telling characteristics and give insight into the institution of the writer mill:

• The pay makes burger flipping seem like glamorous high-rolling.
• The only way to really make money is to let quality fly to the winds, because you almost need to end the assignments before they start to make a reasonable dollar per hour figure.
• They constantly advertise for new writers, suggesting the deal is so bad that they cannot keep people around for long.
• (Bonus Characteristic) They have executives scouring the web, looking for potential criticism and trying to counter it.

On the first three points, APC seems to be lining up as a classic writer mill. The company advertises fairly frequently. Here's the copy of an ad on JournalismJobs.com (though the ad is set to expire on July 29:

Atlantic Publishing is looking for writers in various fields to write books on subjects such as: Building, Cooking, Farming/Animals, Gardening, Arts/Crafts, Recycling, Internet/Technology, Business/Investing, Real Estate, Finance, Parenting, Pets, Publishing, Education, and Self-Help. This position is a freelance opportunity. The payment varies from project to project. Writers are not required to reside in Ocala, FL, work may be done anywhere in the United States. If you are interested please contact Amanda Miller at amiller@atlantic-pub.com with your resume and writing sample.

I was curious at one point this year and replied to one of the ads. Here's what they said in an email about their projects:

Because we have many manuscripts that need to be rewritten, and each are in different stages of writing, the amount of work that needs to be done will vary. Some of the material in the manuscript may be useable [sic] or the book may need to be rewritten completely. Some sections may just require you to revise information to make the material up-to-date or reorganize. We would like to hear your comments on the manuscript, how much work you feel needs to be done, and how you can contribute to the book.

On the low end it's supposed to be copy editing, and the upper bound is full rewrite. Given that range of scope, what do you think they might pay? Here's the answer:

Upon acceptance of your bid we will e-mail you our freelance author agreement ( work for hire), and research material to complete the work. Typical time frames run from 30 days to 90 days for completion, we pay upon acceptable stages of completion, we check all manuscripts against proprietary plagiarism software, and we typically pay from $500.00 - $1,600.00 depending on the scope of the work involved. Many of our authors have completed several manuscripts for us. We give you full credit on the cover, in online databases such as R.R. Bowker, Amazon.com, B&N.com, and recorded CIP data in the library of congress.

Oh, goody -- credit. And a full typical $1,600 to completely rewrite a flipping book on a work for hire basis (though technically books don't quality for work made for hire under U.S. copyright law). That even makes a publisher like Adams Media, known in the industry for its relatively low fees, seem like a spendthrift. No wonder they check manuscripts with plagiarism software, because they're barely paying enough for a chapter. Why does any writer mill think that people will slave away for laughable sums? Because they get enough inexperienced ones to do so and know when they leave, dejected and squeezed, there will be others whose credulity and eagerness to "get into the business" will leave them vulnerable.

The only point I couldn't verify was the bonus characteristic of whether their executives also troll online, looking for anyone that might question their practices. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Demand Studios Responds

Yesterday, I posted a criticism of pay rates at Demand Studios, calling them "nothing more than intellectual sweat shop piece work." I received a comment from Jeremy Reed, senior vice president for content at Demand. Because I didn't want this to be buried, and also wanted to directly address his points, I decided to treat it in a separate post. Here is the entirety of his response; my points will follow:

I want you to consider this argument.

I freelanced for too many years in my twenties. As a writer just out of college and with no (or few) clips, I hustled to get as much writing experience as possible and as many bylines on different topics in multiple publications. I did not make a lot of money, but it did lead to a good career in publishing.

Looking back, I came across a number of parasites and just generally bad people along the way in the freelance world. There were many publications that paid nothing. There were many publications who checks arrived months late or never. There were many publications I pitched tirelessly for years w/o ever having any article see the light of day. There were many publications with untrained or tired copy editors who butchered my content and sometimes even added wrong facts - but kept my name on the article. Those are just some of the bad experiences - there are plenty more.

We can argue whether or not we are paying a fair wage at Demand. It is a valid point. But, consider all the other time sucks and hurdles Demand cuts down or removes: 1) You don't have to pitch, if you remain qualified you can grab work at any time, any hour; 2) you get constructive feedback on every article you write. We invest in making the writer better because it also makes good business sense; 3) we pay every single Friday for all work done through the Wednesday of that week -- yes, that means you can get paid as early as two days after turning in work; 4) we've offered the chance to get your original work - video and text - published on LIVESTRONG.com, Trails.com, GolfLink.com, and eHow.com -- both also third parties like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and 5) we are smart about how we've built this so you can expect more work (and have) as opposed to less work from week to week.

I do agree it is not for every writer or even for certain ones at different points in their careers. But, it does fill a need for a writer who wants a steady paycheck, who wants to get better at their craft, and who wants unlimited amounts of work at any hour of the day.

Thanks for considering my thoughts. I only took the time to write because I respect the points you made.

Best,
Jeremy Reed
SVP, Content at Demand Studios

Now I'll address the various points in his post:

I freelanced for too many years in my twenties. As a writer just out of college and with no (or few) clips, I hustled to get as much writing experience as possible and as many bylines on different topics in multiple publications. I did not make a lot of money, but it did lead to a good career in publishing.

Certainly when you have no experience, you need to get some, and I understand that you see yourself as having a background in freelancing. But to assume that a new freelancer cannot make money is an invalid assumption. Yes, you need a few clips to get started, but as those in the business know, you can almost immediately start moving up the value chain, to use some business-speak. Each piece you do goes to leveraging your knowledge, talent, skill, and craft into better markets. To that end, low-paying and low-prestige markets have to go to the wayside quickly. These are the simple mathematics of the business.

Looking back, I came across a number of parasites and just generally bad people along the way in the freelance world. There were many publications that paid nothing. There were many publications who checks arrived months late or never. There were many publications I pitched tirelessly for years w/o ever having any article see the light of day. There were many publications with untrained or tired copy editors who butchered my content and sometimes even added wrong facts - but kept my name on the article. Those are just some of the bad experiences - there are plenty more.

Yes, there are many bad, incompetent, insensitive, and untalented people in the business. One of the best ways out of such experiences is to generally move up the value chain as quickly as possible. The more people are paying you, the more they value you and, paradoxically, the better they tend to feel like they need to treat you. Markets that require more capable reporting and writing cannot afford to develop a bad name, or they risk alienating the writers they need to create the content that will attract the proper reader demographic and advertising that follows.

We can argue whether or not we are paying a fair wage at Demand. It is a valid point. But, consider all the other time sucks and hurdles Demand cuts down or removes: 1) You don't have to pitch, if you remain qualified you can grab work at any time, any hour; 2) you get constructive feedback on every article you write. We invest in making the writer better because it also makes good business sense; 3) we pay every single Friday for all work done through the Wednesday of that week -- yes, that means you can get paid as early as two days after turning in work; 4) we've offered the chance to get your original work - video and text - published on LIVESTRONG.com, Trails.com, GolfLink.com, and eHow.com -- both also third parties like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and 5) we are smart about how we've built this so you can expect more work (and have) as opposed to less work from week to week.

I am glad that you acknowledge the criticism of low pay. However, your arguments as to the benefits of Demand Studios are actually incorrect, for the following reasons:

• When you are paid little, you must do much more work to try to keep afloat. This keeps you from putting proper attention into marketing that can help you move up the value chain. So, effectively, you become an indentured servant or a worker who must live in company housing and shop at the company store, because you don't make enough to walk away.
• Pitching ideas is one of the key ways to establish additional value to publications. Yes, it's nice if someone hands you a story topic, but it's far better to create your own and develop your own market. That way you are less dependent on the kindness of strange editing. Or something like that.
• The best feedback generally comes from the best publications. Given the rates you pay to copy editors, you aren't paying enough to get the amount of attention required for really solid insight into copy. And given the volume of articles in which you traffic, your in house people cannot have the time, either, to provide really useful feedback on any kind of a consistent basis. Either your entire operation is based on massive volume, or you're marking up the work of writers to an unconscionable degree. Given the markets on which you seem to focus, I strongly suspect the former. And so the entire operation is trapped by the need to churn out copy. In effect, it also lives in company housing and shops at the company store. There are no resources to improve things.
• You say you invest in making the writer better, but that is also contradictory, because you only survive through writers getting starvation wages - and given the rates I've been hearing, and you seem to acknowledge them - I'm not indulging in hyperbole. You can't afford for the writers to improve to the extent that they can make a living elsewhere.
• Quick payment is nice, but given that you lose maybe 2.5 percent value for each month delay, even a three month wait, which would be 7.5 percent, still leaves you far ahead if the assignment is paying at least 10 times more than Demand Studios will pay. That would still leave the writer making 9.25 times as much, including the time value lost.
• When you talk about the chance to have work on a number of sites that apparently are your own as well as third party sites, that's a variation on the "do it for the exposure" argument. As I've demonstrated in the past, working for exposure is foolish. You need exposure to the right markets (that is, editors who might pay), and that comes in the greatest degree from the highest prestige publications in your given niche. Exposure value is roughly directly proportional to pay, and the better paying markets don't have to mention the exposure value because it is an added benefit.
• Of course you are smart in how you've done this, because you're getting copy at dirt cheap rates and presumably selling it at a good mark-up. But smart for you isn't smart for writers.
• To say that this fills a need for writers who want a steady paycheck is disingenuous. It's not a steady paycheck, which would mean guaranteed work, like a job. It's a steady flow of absurdly priced work that leaves you stuck where you are. In business and marketing classes I've taught to writers, I've seen people get stuck in this way at even 25 cents a word, and that would be a huge step up from your rates.
• Unlimited work doesn't exist, because people have limited time. Better to do one piece well than to rush through and do crap jobs on ten pieces for the same amount. You have more time to think, to market, to live. And, to avoid the anticipated argument, getting $300 for a single article is still chicken feed.

I do appreciate Mr. Reed for having written, but I simply could not allow it up as an unchallenged comment. Such arguments need to be clearly deconstructed so writers can see what it is they are being asked to do.

No Demand for Demand Studios

You've probably seen the Demand Studios ads on such places as JournalismJobs.com and Mediabistro. They want experience, they want productivity, they want ... trust fund babies. A thread on Mediabistro's forum is worth reading for comments like this:

I had the same experience when Demand launched the Livestrong site. They asked for cycling and/or medical experts. I was offered work: 10 articles, $300. I wrote back asking if that was a typo and nope, it was not. Not worth it, and at least to me, the low pay puts into question the quality of the site.

A thought that might proceed through the mind of a skeptical journalist could be as follows: "I don't know the poster, so how do I know the observation is accurate?" Good question. I did a quick search on JournalismJobs and found a copy editing ad that mentioned rates. Although I can't guarantee that it will be up indefinitely, I can quote some of what I found:

We are looking for dedicated editors who can deliver quality work in a timely manner and are comfortable occasionally communicating with writers. Some fact checking is also required.

We will only accept candidates with 5 years of demonstrated editing or copyediting experience with a newspaper, magazine or book publisher.

This is a part-time freelance position and all work is done online. While your schedule is flexible, we do require our editors to commit to working a minimum of 12 hours per week, every week.

We pay a flat fee of $3.50 per article, with most editors averaging $20-$25 per hour, paid on a weekly basis via PayPal.

The copy editor must have five years experience, do some fact checking, and receive $3.50 per article. To make even $20 an hour, you'd need to do between five and six articles an hour. That's ten minutes per ... what, maybe 300 to 500 words I'm guessing? From times I've edited and had to hire copy editors, the going freelance rate I found was between $45 and $55 an hour. If the writing rates are equally bad -- and why wouldn't they be? -- the editing must be painful and far closer to mass rewriting.

This type of rate is nothing more than intellectual sweat shop piece work. I'd be surprised if the business owners don't laugh over after hour drinks at the gullibility of those who actually agree to such terms. The scary thing is, this is still better than what you might get at a place like Helium.

[Note: Demand Studios responded.