Wordmongering 101: Content Mills
Here's the fundamental core of the wordmongering lifestyle: the content mill. These are glorious, exploitative places where you can churn out SEO optimized crap and be paid a pittance for it. If you've ever wanted to feverishly write for hours about dog sweaters or different types of mangoes, this is the work for you.
There are a lot of content farms out there, with varying payment options and reliability. The foremost, perhaps, is DemandMedia, which churns out those terribly unhelpful eHow articles, among other things, and pays its writers fairly well - $15 - $30 an article, but don't expect to get paid frequently or even consistently unless you're very lucky or very good. Their content generation plan is very specific - there are not always articles available and their editors are more anal than my professors ever were. I was hired and told that my articles weren't up to their quality standards, twice. Still, if you can find a niche and don't mind bending over backwards to meet bizarre editing demands, you can make a good bit of cash working for Demand.
Textbroker, as you might be able to tell, was part of the inspiration for this blog. There's no bones about this one - textbroker pays by the word, and bases your pay rate on the quality of your grammar and writing. Very meritocratic. It's unglamorous, and you need to write a lot about very boring stuff, but the transparency is nice and there is almost always something to write about.
The star system determines which jobs you have access to, and how much you get paid. Most writers start at 3 Stars and earn a pitiful $.01 a word, 4 Star writers earn a still pitiful (but comparable with other content mills) $.015 a word, and 5 Star writers earn an enviable $.05 a word, which is insulting to a career writer, but almost luxurious for a freelancer.
Constant Content has a slightly different business model, in that it allows you to place articles you've written on their website for potential buyers to review and purchase. If you're a prolific writer in your very specific area of interest, this might just be what you need - you put your article on the website, and if someone likes it, you get paid.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of payment, and since you've probably turned to wordmongering to pay the bills, it can be a bit stressful to try to make rent with Constant Content. Still, if you have a little breathing room and want to write about something you like for a change, this is a very good option.
Scripted is the creme-de-la-creme of content mills. They have a shinier logo, a more communicative editorial staff, a better payment model and a lot more transparency. Unfortunately, they still don't pay all that well, but it's the best you're likely to find at somewhere between $25 and $40 for a 500 word article. There are also very few articles available to bid on, and you have to apply to each distinct specialty with a writing sample to have access to jobs in that area. The barrier to entry is fairly high and the payoff is a little low, but Scripted makes you feel a little less terrible about yourself at the end of the day.
This just scratches the surface of available content mills, but there will be more wordmongering posts to follow up. You can decide for yourself whether or not this is a good use of your time - if you can find someone who will pay you a real wage for your writing, don't even look twice at these sites. It's competitive out there though, and even Charles Dickens wasn't too good to write by the word.
