My Writing Journey — 5. The Monster From Down Under
For those of you following my content writing journey, here’s the story you’ve been waiting for.
While the heading sounds like something from a B-grade horror movie from the 1960’s it’s pretty apt.
Where we left the story last time, I’d been ghosted by the content mill in the UK.
Once again, it was Miss PJ to the rescue. If you’re not sure who I’m talking about, revisit my networking post.
She’d picked up an extra side hustle doing some editing for a content mill based in my home country of Australia. I figured this would be perfect, Aussies like other Aussies (most of the time), and editing was what I’d become familiar with.
So I went through quite an arduous application process via email and was introduced to Mr. HF. His title was ‘Content Coach,’ and he oversaw all the daily writing/editing processes. He was very keen to work with me and just needed the final sign-off from the company owner.
He’s since left the company and confessed to me that during his time there, he felt like he was her ‘whipping boy.’ So I’m going to nickname her Miss BW (boy whipper). Trust me, that’s tame compared to some that I dreamt up.
Miss BW agreed to take me on and even created a lovely welcome video, introducing herself and letting me know her expectations. I thought this was an excellent start and figured I’d finally found my place.
Oh, but I was so wrong!
For starters, the pay wasn’t great, and yes, I knew this going in, but I was also told it was ‘changing.’ She paid A$8 per article. Yes, that’s Australian dollars, and it’s per article, not per 1000 words. The articles averaged 1,500 words, and some were over 3,000.
One of the other editors commented that for the 3,000-word ones, she was basically working for free.
Even though the website said she’s been in the industry for over 20 years, she’d only had this content agency for less than a year, and she admitted to me that “we’re making things up as we go along.”
That should have been a red flag right there.
My biggest issue with how she ran the business. She was a fan of ‘the idea of the day.’
“Ok, so today we’re going to change the process and use these tools.”
Then the next day. “Oh, that didn’t go so well, so now we’re going to try this.”
Constantly changing practices doesn’t allow for quality work and gets very confusing. It also seemed that every change meant additional work for the editing team, but still at A$8 per article.
Her ‘lovely’ facade quickly dropped any time anyone on the team made a question or suggestion.
I received some very nasty messages from her via Skype, attacking me both personally and professionally.
“What the hell is going on over there? Are you spending too much time in the sun? Is it frying your brain?” This is an example of one of the kinder ones.
After a few months of this, the editors had a chat, and we all agreed that A$8 per article wasn’t enough and wanted to suggest we get paid per word as other editors do.
So, I put that suggestion forward to Mr. HF to put to her.
Her immediate response was “No.” And she instructed him to remove me from the editing team, and I was given two choices.
1 — “Get demoted back to writing” (how dare anyone call writing a demotion from editing)
2 — Check written articles for plagiarism and formatting only at $A2 per article.
I chose option 1, but in the end, I didn’t write a single word for her. I just quietly walked away.
Things were about to improve for me. Mr. EM has started his own agency and wanted me on board.
That entire story is coming up soon.
