My content writing journey — 1. The content mill from hell
There are a lot of ‘journey’ posts here on Medium and various other sites about content writing. I hope my story will save other people from making some of the mistakes I made.
It all started in May 2019 when I was looking to supplement my income by finding an online side hustle. An innocent-looking Facebook ad was looking for native English speakers to write in various niches. So, I replied, not expecting much.
The next day, I got a reply asking me to write a 500-word test article, so they could ‘assess’ my skills. It was pretty straightforward, “5 things to do in New York City”. Having been there, this was very easy for me. So I knocked it out and submitted it, feeling slightly more confident.
They replied not even a day later, welcoming me to the team. They offered me a very generous (I kid you not) $5/1000 words — that’s 0.005c per word. I should have done my due diligence and researched things further to realize that this is about the lowest you’ll ever get paid as a writer.
Anyway, I was excited to have been chosen and was given my first assignment, which I still remember today; it was an Amazon product review, “The Top 10 Ice Tea Makers”. Two thousand words on a topic I knew nothing about, due in 72 hours. Here was my baptism by fire to content writing.
In my first month, I earned $50.94! I was on my way, lol.
What was really great about that company (back then) was that they were just starting out. It was owned and operated by a young, dynamic, entrepreneurial couple. When I joined, in addition to the two of them, they had an ops manager, an editor, one admin staff member, and a small handful of writers.
A few articles later, the editor wanted to step into another role, and I was asked if I’d like to edit. At the even more generous rate of $2/1000 words, yep, 0.002c per word. Editing sounded fun, and as an English teacher with a Communications degree, I felt very comfortable in this role.
Things were going really well; I became part of the inner circle, and we were one big happy family. The owners even visited me in Thailand, and we cemented the bond.
The company started to grow, more people joined, and the owners began to feel overwhelmed. He asked me in confidence if there were any ways they could improve the business. So I listed for him a couple of things that writers had raised with me.
What came next was a complete shock.
I woke the following day to a barrage of voicemail messages from him. He was screaming, yelling, and cursing me for pointing out these things. I was so surprised; he had asked me for the input but clearly didn’t want to hear it.
The viciousness of the messages left me with no option. I quit on the spot!
And that was the end of my content writing career. Or was it?
To be continued……
