Writer Mills Making Money on Articles

I've gone on at length about the money that Demand Studios has made off paying writers a pittance. But payment gets far worse at some of the other mills. However, it doesn't mean that those companies aren't getting an astounding mark-up from their customers.

Let's start with Helium.com. As I've noted, if you crunch through the numbers they've made public, the average article makes 80 cents. (Ironically, while searching I found a piece I wrote about the company back in 2007 when it introduced its "Marketplace," with writers setting prices from $20 to $200 and Helium taking a 20 percent commission for the massive undertaking of listing the piece.)

But have you ever wondered how much Helium charges for what you write? I did a little snooping and got a price list directly from the company itself. It still has the Marketplace, only the customer sets the price and lets writers compete for the job. Great, eh? But the real eye-opener is for that stock content it offers. Purchase fewer than 25 articles and you're paying ... $30 each. Up the volume to between 25 and 49 and it's $25 each. That's every time the article sells. Quite the mark-up.

It's not the only case of a writer mill charging vastly more for content than it pays. Look at AssociatedContent.com. A typical online advertising CPM, or cost per thousand page views, is $10. If the ads delivered with an article get 5,000 views, that's $50 in revenue at a conservative estimate. How much does the writer get paid? Between $1.50 and $2.50. For 50,000 page views, or $500 in revenue, the payment to the writer is between $75 and $100. Let me tell you from experience in blogging commercially: the chance of getting 50,000 hits on a collection of articles even over the period of a month is pretty flipping slim unless you have many up. (By the way, since 2006, AssociatedContent has racked up about $21.4 million in VC money. It claims such clients as Autobytel.com, IAC, Mojo, and GoDaddy.com. The CEO was formerly chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive and, before that, was at Google for four years.)

I don't have the numbers on the flat fees that AC may pay, but I do on Delegate2, otherwise known as PureContent.com, which is the firm that shows up when searching for the former name on Google. You may remember my reporting that the company offered $3 for a "simple" 250 word article. What do they get for the short simple articles from their clients? According to a price list from the company, that would be $16. And for a more complicated article that has writers spending "extra hours researching your subject"? Try $50 for the same 250 word article. So what are they paying the writer? $10? For hours of research?

These mark-ups of 500 percent are large and show how much the writer mills depend on authors opting for orts. There's a reason I refer to this as piecework or a company store. Let's use one more term: sucker bait. They're looking for people who don't realize how much more money work can provide.

Writers Mill: Delegate2

A colleague gave me the head's up for another listing on JournalismJobs.com.

Company

Delegate2 Group

Location

UK

What They Want

People who can write on a variety of subjects with a good grasp of grammar and strong writing skills to join a claimed roster of 500 writers and 100 editors. At least, that's what they claim at the site where the writers are directed. On the site where they try selling the content, they claim 1250 writers and 200 editors.

What They Offer

At the low end, a "simple" 250 word article for $3. But wait, they make up for it in simplicity, as "most experienced writers being able to complete four in an hour." Oh, yeah, that's about in the upper end of burger-flipping money. They pay in one month arrears, which means that they don't pay until the one time the next month that they do pay. Depending on timing, that could technically be longer than 30 days.

What That Means

That's 1.2 cents a word. They say that they pride themselves on establishing long-term relationships with writers, though they've only been in business for two years. I'm surprised that "experienced" writers would last two hours.

Writers Mill: Digital Media Buzz

A friend and colleague emailed a link to this JournalismJobs.com listing for writers from Digital Media Buzz. And I'm using this to test a new format in reporting these professional aberrations.

What They Want

In-depth news analysis of the digital media technology industry, including business practices, online ad/revenue technology, software development, SEO, e-commerce, and mobile technology.

What They Expect

People with journalism experience, whether in paid positions or as interns.

What They Offer

$30 per 500 to 1000 word story. As the ad read: "Yes, it's not exactly $1/word, but we need a ton of content written and promise a steady stream of income to anyone looking to make a name for himself or herself."

What That Means

You get paid between 3 and 6 cents a word as often as you'd care to and probably have to write the analytic pieces with precious little time to read or think before grinding it out. Sausage never had it so good.

(Not) Making It at Gawker

Earlier this month, a Washington Post staff writer just covered something from his own experience: having Gawker "excerpt" his exclusive story to such an extent that it probably eliminated the need for anyone to go to the original version. You can read about the controversy about the potential of blogs to essentially rewrite articles as their own posts. Read the original in the Post and then read the Gawker piece and decide whether it's theft.

I'm actually inclined to think that it wasn't theft. Yes, Gawker should have properly credited the post in addition to giving the link, but there is a difference between the two pieces. The Post had the reporting; Gawker had a critical take on how silly the entire thing sounded -- something the Post wouldn't let its writers say, even if it should be necessary.

But I'm not actually interested in this issue so much as another. In Ian Shapira's piece, The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition), he mentions that the Gawker writer, Hamilton Nolan, who freely used his work is actually a freelancer paid $4,000 a month by Gawker. That's $48,000 a year. Freelance. Without benefits. Before taxes.

Pathetic if you consider, as I've always heard, that the work load to do a blog at Gawker is punishing -- long, long hours for the flat fee and whatever passes for page view bonuses these days.

There are better online opportunities, I've found, and ones that don't effectively require you to plan your entire career around the convenience of a single client.

Two more Writer Mills: Voyage.tv and Trails.com

Just came across these two while looking at the Mediabistro job boards. (An aside - always market, always look for new venues/clients, and never dismiss off-hand a potential source of leads, because something interesting might come about.)

Voyage.tv calls itself "is a newly launched travel and lifestyle media company" with a focus on luxury travel:

The cornerstone of the Voyage experience is our original lifestyle and destination video programming, which inspires, informs and entertains. Shot in vivid High Definition, our Hotel & Resort Profiles, Activity & Tour videos, and Signature Series deliver content that is unbiased, current, accurate and above all, personal. Original feature articles written for the discerning traveler supplement this video programming.

They want articles that don't exceed 600 words. And how much does this video-oriented, luxury pursuing site pay per article? A flat $25. Don't look for the zeros to the right of the five unless they fall after the decimal place. Instead of not exceeding 600 words, how about not exceeding 25 words? That would be at least be a buck a word.

As for Trails.com, apparently it has outsourced editorial to Demand Studios. Assignments vary in length and pay ... wait for it ... $15 each. And it gets better, "with some rates higher or lower depending on the length and format of the assignment." Lower than $15? That's even worse than the numbers I've been hearing about Demand Studios in general, though at $30 or so, they are also risible.

At least this ad and the one from Voyage.tv said up front how much they wanted to spend, which means you can keep moving on to other ads. That's better than most Demand Studio ads or anything I've seen from Helium.com. When a company typically (and incessantly) trolls for writers without saying what they're paying, it might be that they know what the reaction would be.

There's a sales psychology at work - and, yes, someone is trying to sell you because they want something for next to nothing. When you've invested time into checking out an opportunity, you become more open to it because you don't want to feel as though you were suckered. Just remind yourself that you're not really suckered unless someone gets you to spend the time writing for such a laughable amount. I don't care how many damage-controlling writer mill executives come leaving comments or emailing me and I don't care how many writers want to say how they can make a living doing this. There is no way that at a freakin' $15 -- or even $25 or $30 or $50 -- an article you can make a living -- or even supplement one.

Maybe some people who want to be writers don't have the drive or the skills to do better. In that case, they should simply recognize that fact and enjoy writing for its own sake. Guess what? I'm not going to appear on the stage of the Met singing a lead in a Handel opera, nor dance in a professional ballet, nor be made the CEO of some large company. That's fine. We all have to learn where we can excel. And there's nothing wrong with singing in the shower, if you enjoy it. However, grinding out intellectual sausage for the sake of money that wouldn't even buy a hardcover book is nuts.

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.)

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.

Questions to Ask Helium to Avoid Hot Air

Michelle Rafter's blog had a couple of guest posts about content aggregator Helium. Tim Beyers warned writers off writing for Helium and Helium new member outreach manager Barbara Whitlock said that writers should.

Being the sometimes practical and often cranky man that I am, I just want to know about the money. Helium announced that it had paid writers more than $1 million since its inception, and half of that in the last six months. That may sound attractive, but the real question is something I like to remember by the clumsy acronym HMWEM, or How Much Will Erik Make?

You see, when it comes to connecting writing and making money, I'm not interested in a good story. I want to see numbers on the page. Looking a bit further into Helium's press release on its million dollar mark, we see the following:

• Since 2006, writers have posted 1.25 million articles on 125,000 topics.


• Over 1,000 writers have earned more than $100 from their work for Helium.


• "Top earners" have made more then $5,000 "in a matter of months."

Let's do the math:

1. The average story will make 80 cents.


2. There's no indication I can find about how many "top earners" they have. But according to one mention on helium, there was one person who made $5,000 in six months. He averaged an hour a day, according to the release. That's 30 hours a month for six months, or 180 hours. So, he managed $27.78 an hour in revenue. But apparently there is no other big earner mentioned. Could he be the only one? Also, how many articles did he have to write?
   
3. On a "bulk sale" of content, some writers got $5. When you read this in context, it makes it sound like $5 was the high end.


4. According to the site's press page, there are more than 100,000 writers on the site. So, at the tops mathematically, it's an average of $10 per person.

I understand that Ms. Whitlock wrote, "Helium isn’t a substitute for a full-time job, but it can be combined with other freelance gigs to provide additional revenue. Plus, the freedom to also write what you want is appealing for many." But when put to the HMWEM test, the answer still sounds like nowhere near enough to justify the effort.

Why Low Pay Is Bad Pay, No Matter What the Hourly Rate

I recently saw another discussion on a writers' board about pay rates and whether it matters for periodical writers how low the amount per word is so long as you can do the work fast enough. That argument may be fine for the occasional piece, but it doesn't hold up over the long run for a few reasons.

I've written about one of the reasons before, the overhead inherent to obtaining, scheduling, and managing assignments, comparing long assignments to shorts:

But say that you are accurately monitoring your time. Why not then do a lot of shorts to make your income? Because there's another consideration - the time for marketing, billing, and overhead. If you make $500 for a short, then four of them pay as much as one 2000 word article paying $1/word. The amount of writing time might even be comparable. However, figure that a 500 word piece really needs two to three sources to come across as sold. You're now booking 8 to 12 interviews, versus the 6 or 7 that might be all you need for the longer piece. That means more time interviewing and scheduling your time.

You're also going to spend about as much time writing a query for a short as you would for a longer piece, plus you have to generate the ideas and pitch editors. So your marketing and sales time has just quadrupled. If you make a lot of your income from shorts, then you're probably spending many more of your hours marketing, interviewing, managing your time, and billing (and collecting). Now you see the real drawback - not the hourly rate, but the time you must invest to do enough shorts to make a living.

Instead of shorts, substitute low-paying assignment and the point is even more applicable. Not only is there the overhead, but, presumably, you still have to do a credible job on what might be running 1,500, 2,000, or more words.

That leads me to my other major point, which, I'm sure, will tick off some people. To make money at a low rate, you generally have to cut corners. You don't undertake the extra interviews and research, put in the extra draft and polishing, nor do the other things that let you create better pieces. I know this because much of the language I hear from those who tout the high hourly figures of their low pay rates is how they "knock these assignments off."

If you're depending on speed to make a good hourly rate to make up a bad word rate, then you'll have to cut corners eventually. That's because the client doesn't value the higher level of work enough to pay for it, and you can't provide it without subsidizing that work out of your own earnings pocket. But if you do too much of this, then all of your clips are of those 1,000 word pieces with one or two sources, which are probably not going to get you the higher paying work because it's not just about how well you write, but how well and how thoroughly you research and report. On those occasions when I assign and edit, I wouldn't consider someone whose samples were filled with pieces like that, because I assume that the person isn't willing to make the effort to do something better. In the past, I've found that when someone has spent time wanting to quickly get articles done and get out the door, they start to lose the work ethic necessary to produce higher quality results.

For those who want to disagree, start by asking yourself how many sources you use for a normally reported piece (not a Q&A). The lower the number, the less you bring to an article, and no amount of clever writing can make that up. And those who stress that they make money with low-paying assignments should look at two figures: their annual income and the percentage that these low-paying assignments represent of their total assignments. All the writers I know who make reasonable amounts of money (enough to support you and your family if necessary) focus on higher paying work and not rationalizing why low pay is really not that bad.

Harlan Ellison on Being Asked to Work for Free

If you're a writer, you need to listen to Harlan Ellison. This brilliant author and speaker (I had the pleasure to hear him lecture, if you can call what he does "lecturing," in college) has one of the best understandings of value paid for value received in the business. Much of his

"They always want the writer to work for nothing. And the problem is, there are so many writers with no goddamn idea that they're supposed to be paid every time they do something. ... I sell my soul, but at the highest rates, the highest rates. I don't take a piss without getting paid for it." Much of his industry reputation for being difficult is a direct reaction to his refusing to smile while being screwed. (Many who have worked with him have said that he's far more mensch than maniac.)

The next time you feel yourself weakening when asked to give more rights, take on spec, and otherwise bend over for the convenience of some corporation with an immense income and highly paid executives, listen to this.

Why No One Should Write for HuffPo

There is nothing wrong with building a business. Every freelance creative does exactly that -- developing a name, attracting clients, improving operations, and increasing the value for customers, be they publishers, corporations, or the public. There is something wrong with a publisher building a business on the backs of unpaid workers. Sometimes these are writers urged to look for "exposure." Sometimes it is unpaid interns (and even that might be understandable if they are in school and in desperate need of a little practical experience).

There are people trying to start companies on a shoestring and who aer looking for the time equivalent of investors who want nothing in return. The problem with wanting something for nothing is that generally you get exactly what you pay for. And then there are people like Arianna Huffington. The Huffington Post has just raised a third round of investment money: $15 million. That brings the total to ... $40 million.

As the Wired piece notes, a major challenge is "to sustain or increase its traffic numbers under a friendly administration." But there is another challenge. How can a publisher claim a "progressive" market position and the moral high ground, attacking "selfish" special interests when it wants to build a commercial enterprise using mostly unpaid help?

Though most of HuffPo's 2.5 million contributors are unpaid, the site still has a good deal of overheard (especially compared to the 1.5 man operation at The Drudge Report). Most of the money raised to date has been reinvested to hire editors, reporters and advertising representatives, according to The New York Times.

Look at that number again: 2.5 million contributors. Of course there is overhead. Web hosting companies cannot afford to write for free. Utilities cannot provide free power. Owners of buildings must charge rent to justify their investment.

Most of the money has been "reinvested?" It's called paying the necessary bills. Hiring reporters and editors? Maybe a handful, but how many? Five? Ten? Twenty? Even if it were 50, that would still mean that not "most" but "virtually all" contributors worked for nothing. So why does HuffPo think that contributors to the site, the very people that help make it possible, should be greatful for the chance to be read?

Huffington wants to grow the site and plans to use the funding to expand its local coverage and investigative reporting — two areas that may be hard to monetize. Scaling local content in a shrinking ad market will be tough, and hunting down scoops can be a costly pursuit, especially for a site that specializes in commentary rather than breaking news.

Ah, so the company - it is a company, not an individual, not a movement - wants local coverage. Undoubtedly for free, and probably hoping to take audience from local newspapers in the process.

Even notedly impoverished advocacy publications like The Nation manage to scrape up something to pay contributors. (Calvin Trillin has spoken of being paid in the "high two figures.") Couldn't Huffington manage even a Starbucks card with the cost of a latte on it? For those who tell themselves they are getting great exposure, remember that it is exposure suggesting that you can be had for nothing. (Or should that sentence have ended "you can be had?") Once a company sets its practices early on, it is very unlikely to significantly change the model, for those holding out hope that one day HuffPo will pay. But why should it? There is no reason to change your ways if the people on whose backs you ride don't stand upright and say, "No."

Navigating the New Terrain of Online Writing Compensation

Publishers are experimenting with new ways of compensating writers in the online world. Look at this article on a publisher of free dailies bringing on non-professionals to write online with compensation based on page views.

Clarity is looking to get hundreds of people (in 60 cities and 25 different categories) to write for them online, and these writers will get paid between $2.50 and $10.00 per 1,000 page views, Gawker reports.

This isn't an unusual arrangement, at least as a bonus, and Gawker itself uses it. But Gawker has been cranking down the figure because bloggers were too good at attracting traffic, and the company would have had to pay more than it had planned. And paying in such a manner without a ground level amount of compensation for doing the basic work is ridiculous, although I'm sure many writers will jump at the "opportunities."

Negotiation is going to get tougher, not easier, and you're going to need to pay attention and be careful that you don't agree to a harebrained scheme that some publisher declares to be "standard" on the web.

Gawker Pay? Gaak

According to Radar, Gawker has cut the pay schedules of its blggers for the second quarter running:

"We've broken the site budget," Gawker Media owner Nick Denton told the staff in an email yesterday. The only answer, from the company's perspective? To keep getting more traffic—but to pay the producers of that traffic less for each pageview. So for the second and now, according to a new memo regarding the pay rate for the quarter that began this week, third quarters of 2008, the company has reduced the rate of pay per pageview. Other Gawker Media sites, including Jezebel, also had their pageview rate cut.

It used to be that if a writer got a million page views a month, that translated into $7500. Given the amount of work it takes to get that much attention, the money seems short. But now it's even shorter, at $5 a thousand, or $5000 for that million page views.

So more ad inventory—actual pages served—should mean more income for the company—particularly since Gawker seems to be mostly increasing in pageviews not attached to any writer. At the same time, reducing the cost of the creation of that inventory also gets the company more of the income that is attached to a writer. Kicking down less money to the workers seems, at best, cheap.

How about predatory or exploitive? Those are pretty good words, too.

Writer Rationalization

As human beings, we often try to make ourselves feel better about our choices - a process called rationalization. It's not an occasional activity, but constant. Virtually every time you buy something, you make an emotional decision and then come up with rational-sounding reasons for having chosen what you did, because we all like feeling as though we are in control. When we rationalize, we really make excuses so we don't have to face how we really act. Aesop's fable about the fox that couldn't reach the grapes and so decided they were probably sour anyway (source of the term "sour grapes") is a perfect example. And when we rationalize, we lock ourselves into behavior and decisions. That's fine if the choice is healthy, but dangerous when it's not.

If this happens constantly, you might expect that it also rears its head in business, and you'd be right. Writers often rationalize, for themselves and for colleagues, why the low pay they take is acceptable, or why they had to accept the punitive contract terms, or put up with poor treatment by a client.

There are times that a business decision makes sense, and other times that a choice is poor, and you don't want to face it more directly. For example, maybe the 50 cent a word assignment really is so easy that you effectively make $60/hour. But you need to look a bit deeper. Is $60/hour really that good for the work you are doing? Billable time for an independent practitioner often goes far higher on projects, and if you ever wanted to gross six figures, you'll need to be billing more like $75-$100/hour, depending on how many projects you can actually sell and complete. And your calculation presumes that you're accurate about the time you actually do spend, and people often grossly underestimate the figure.

But consider the possibility that the business analysis might also be an excuse to not break into better paying markets or to find more upscale clients. The contract terms might not be something that actually concern you, or you might be saying that because you're scared to try negotiating something better. Perhaps you are an XYZ-type of writer, or you could be scared of branching out into a new area and prefer the comfort of what you've always done. Maybe that editor really is that good to work for, so you take a lower rate, or it could be that you're focusing overly on wanting to be liked and that distracts your attention from improving your business.

No one else can give you the answers to such questions. It could be that in a cold business analysis, your reasoning is sound. Only be sure that you at least ask, and that you scrutinize your own answer. We are creatures who often lie, to ourselves more than to anyone else. And there's one person who gets hurt when we do.