My Worst Freelance Experience — Content Whale

My name is Muskan Purohit and I have been working as a content writer for quite a while now. From writing poems in my rooms to putting myself out there to monetize my art, I have had many experiences that allowed me the opportunity to work as a writer along with a variety of cultures and teams. I have had my share of bad experiences but this time, I am choosing to speak up about the worst work culture I encountered recently.

I have been freelancing for a while and I guide people as well through my experiences. Honestly, I was always scared of getting myself into this but I did it anyway something that I did alongside my research. Yes, I read immensely about people’s experiences on the same and learned from their mistakes. And I came across so many people who were scammed, overworked, unpaid and so much more which wasn’t very pleasurable. Something that I have learned over the years as a working student is that you have to set your boundaries to survive and this is me speaking up when my boundaries were disrespected.

My Connection With Content Whale

I joined Content Whale as a freelance content writer. I approached one HR because I saw their post on LinkedIn about a freelance content writing opportunity. Soon, I was contacted again, had a telephonic interview and I got it. But little did I know that the series of hopeless expectations and miscommunication had just started. I was promised a pay of 0.6 PPW and I was also given hope of 0.8 PPW with time. And I was told that I would get paid on the 15th of every month and nothing about the TDS was mentioned to me. Let’s unfold these issues one by one:

Issues Faced While Working With Content Whale

Not getting paid right

0.6PPW is already so less considering my work experience but I needed some work to do at that time so I took it up. And what was I paid? According to 0.5 PPW, they suddenly thought that my content quality wasn’t good enough (why hire me in the first place then?). I would have accepted this if I was informed about the same beforehand but here’s a timeline of my work: I started working with them in June, was paid for it on July 15th and I stopped working with them and my remaining payment was made on August 15th and this is when my supervisor (name not to be disclosed as he is just another employee) said that he is going to be a specific amount because I didn’t provide the quality he asked for. But I was open to editing while I was working with them and STILL, it took him 2 months to say this to me. Why couldn’t he mention it while I was still very actively working with them every day?

And since I stopped working with them in July only, they still didn’t pay me for the articles I worked on at the beginning of the month. They again suddenly said that one is supposed to be paid in the next month whenever they have worked. And I am honestly frustrated at the company’s policies and the ways they communicate them (they don’t). It was exhausting to be surprised with a new policy every time I asked for my payment like they wanted to make sure that everything made it harder for me to be able to get my payment.

Terrible Communication and Management

I was working as a freelancer because I didn’t have time to invest in a company but this agency sucked my blood in the worst ways possible. In the beginning, they were nice but as time passed, they decided to communicate things late and became unresponsive for days. I was constantly asked to contact the people from management back to forth when I had a doubt and some of my emails remained unanswered. And the worst thing they could ever do was not communicate the TDS thing. I was later told that 10% TDS would be deducted, no matter what the amount but in reality, it was just another way to exploit the writer. Because here’s a thing:

TDS is only viable only for a single payment of 30,000 or above. I don’t understand your reason for tax deduction for such a small amount, that is below the minimum TDS bracket. And provision concerning rupees 30,000 or above has a condition attached to it, as per which TDS shall be deducted in cases where the total amount of such payments exceeds one lakh in a financial year. I also posted a poll about it on my Linkedin and just one disagreed and the rest of the population just agreed that I was being exploited.

I was blamed for a mistake I didn’t even make

Every time I submitted an article, my supervisor said that he would look into it and there were times when I worked on editing the whole thing as well. But when it was time to pay, the money for some particular set of words was denied and when I spoke up about it, he didn’t hesitate to say that my content wasn’t good enough. Why didn’t he mention it two months before when I was still working with them? And he still dared to ask me to provide new content to get paid for the previous one only.

He said, “As a writer, do you think it is fair to be paid for something that is not up to the mark?” But I have been a writer from the heart for as long as I can remember. Before my profession, it was my passion and I know how hard it has been to monetize my art still, I had to let some random guy disrespect my work only because he didn’t want to pay me for what I worked for.

Impact On Me

I am a working student and I have to be sure about where I invest my time but working with Content Whale and that too as a freelance writer didn’t go well in terms of time management. I was overburdened with work, I was exhausted every day by having to constantly contact people to get an answer, which continued even though I stopped working with them, most importantly, I worked for money and I didn’t even get it.

I respect the efforts I put into work and I expect others to reciprocate that energy. And I don’t see anything wrong with asking to be paid right because I am not doing it for free. The skills and experience I have today have taken time so I should be getting the return of investment from it. This also took a financial toll on me because if I had known how the project would turn out then I would have simply just invested my time, energy, and efforts into something better.

Dear Content Whale

I am tired of approaching you but I am not gonna stand back from giving suggestions to you so here:

1. Please streamline the process of payment and contact the details correctly. Make sure your freelancers know the policies of the company and then, make a decision to work with you. And don’t expect them to not be shocked when you surprise them late with a new rule or policy.
2. The source of contact between the company and the freelancer must be kind and helpful instead of somebody who just tries to get the work done at that moment and acts inconsiderately throughout the process. They should be trustworthy and make sure that a freelancer doesn’t have to go back and forth for a response.
3. Be more transparent and that too at the right time. Because people were honest with me after I wasn’t a part of the team when compared to the times I was working with them. That is so weird.

I don’t know how to stop ranting about it because this has to be my worst experience ever and it has severely affected the confidence I had in freelancing or even in my writing skills. I have been deeply scarred as a professional by this incident and months of struggle because it was way too unexpected. The only aim of writing this is to make people more aware of this and be mindful of the mistakes they might make while working with them. I don’t mean to defame the company but to be very honest, they have lost all my respect for them because of how they handle freelancers and payments.

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