I sure wouldn’t want to work the lower paying segment exclusively, but I wouldn’t be so sure it’s an inevitable source of unhappiness for everyone.

There are people out there who do have the mindset and skill set to make it an enjoyable and profitable angle.

Most people, I would imagine, probably concur with your assessment. There are those, however, who don’t mind “writing as grinding” as a way to make a living.

Does this partial disagreement reach the level where some attention-grabbing name-calling is in order, or is this doomed to be another unnoticed civil exchange?

Carson

I appreciate your post. But want to respectfully disagree with one point:

If, on the other hand, the writer is commissioned to churn out 500 word articles that are factually accurate and conversational with a lowered expectation bar, it ain’t that tough.

Therein lies the rub. In a Plimpton-esque move, I’ve undertake a couple of low-budget article gigs to see what it’s like (and to generate material for this blog).

What I’m finding is this: it is “that tough.”

We’re writers. If we want to do this for a living, we’d better love to write.

I love writing well, and churning out enough words to hit a specified word count is miserable work – much tougher than struggling for the right words.

Making a few bucks is a good thing.

But writing beneath your talent is simply bad – especially when you project that kind of work over several years.

Writing low-budget articles seems like a painful way to move through a career.

I applaud Andy for seeking an alternative – and my original post was designed to help those stuck in a similar rut.

I’m a little surprised by the number of writers who seemingly do little more than scan Internet listings for low-budget work.

Few businesses thrive in that environment.

I believe that anyone wishing to make a career out of this needs to look beyond the “easy” stuff.

They should identify and seek out projects they want to write.

Otherwise, it’s going to be a long, long career. But maybe not a happy one.

Low-budget articles as filler or starting points?

Maybe. But it’s no way to make a living.

Now, on to the living wage question…

Let’s say Client X is paying a writer a mere 3 cents per word to write 500 word articles. $15 per article.

At face value, that doesn’t seem to be a good wage equivalency at all. On closer examination, though…

What if the writer could work for five hours, averaging a mere 30 words per minute over that timeframe. 5 hours x 60 minutes x 30 words/minute = 9000 words. That’s $270. Do that for 300 days out of the year and your making $81K gross.

But that’s impossible, right? That’s a helluva lot of writing on a daily basis.

Not necessarily. The reason why so many writers look at low rates and assume poverty is because they are approaching the work from a completely different mindset. They are thinking about how they slave over word choices for great sales copy. They are thinking about spending hours doing research, conducting interviews and outlining. From that perspective the rate is absolute crap.

If, on the other hand, the writer is commissioned to churn out 500 word articles that are factually accurate and conversational with a lowered expectation bar, it ain’t that tough.

And this, in my estimation, is where the question of fairness and rates tends to get muddled.

When Andy, you or I talk about writing and rates, we might not be talking about the same thing John Doe is talking about. He’s talking about content writing for would-be Adsense empire owners at a low per-word rate and less-than-The-New-Yorker-to-say-the-least expectations.

We can argue about whether that kind of work is really a good financial decision for buyers, etc. but there’s no question that there’s a market for it. I also think it’s fair to say that it can be a lucrative market for the right person.

I might prefer to stay out of that market, but I can use that kind of work to fill scheduling gaps and make a decent wage equivalency from it. That’s because I go into it knowing that “writing isn’t writing” and I approach it differently than I will a sales letter gig or a more involved ghostwriting job.

I think the rate question often gets muddled because we tend to make “writing” into a kind of generalized entity when it really isn’t necessarily that way.

All in all, I agree with your sentiments, but I do think it’s worthwhile to recognize that even seemingly miserable rates might be better than some think because the nature of the work is so radically divorced from that with which we may be better accustomed.

I have now written the longest blog post reply in history. Maybe that will get me some business, too.

Carson

Good luck!