What It's Like To Write For Demand Media: Low Pay But Lots of Freedom

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_its_like_to_write_for_demand_media.php

by dabent • 17 years ago

20 13 17 years ago

swombat2• 17 years ago

Is there any kind of possible career progression from doing this? I can't see any.

It's one thing to work like a dog for little money for some chance at success... it's another to do so without any opportunity for progress. That's what makes them a sweatshop, imho, whether or not you can work from your living room.

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

Some people aren't looking for career progress at a given point in their lives. For those writers/editors just looking to make some money, right now, with flexible hours and no strings attached, this may be exactly the arrangement they're looking for.

joe_the_user2• 17 years ago

Welcome to the twenty first century!

I mean, once a university lecturer drops off the tenure track, where is their career progression?

The web-sourced job world cannot offer a career track, it can only pay for the quality of content you produce now.

Indeed, what occupations today offer a career progression for many on their track? Any occupations that are offering this are in-line for being disrupted by web-sourced content.

electromagnetic2• 17 years ago

Well there's two potentials I see, one is that they actually give writer credit and the other is that they do revenue-share. These are two things other companies like this don't do.

If you're a good self-promoter you might be able to bump your revenue share considerably. However, if you're that good at self-promotion, you're better off putting what you're writing into your own blog and self-promote the hell out of that.

Again, if you want writer credit and aren't interested in non-fiction as a career then you're better off submitting short stories and hoping for a bite. There's plenty of markets out there and anyone with time to write endless articles are better off targeting these, as it will at least get your foot in the door (I know 3 short story sales to a SFWA approved market can get you into the guild, which then gives you more direct access to publishers and agents, allowing you to side-step the slush-pile).

Personally I don't hold much weight in these companies. If you want to make money from your living room, then good for you, however this isn't likely to move you or progress you. It's just a lot more honest than the other companies out there that don't revenue share and don't share credit. The whole idea is that ghost writers get paid more for being known less, but in these kinds of markets the opposite holds true.

_b8r0• 17 years ago

I know it's a horrible thing to say, but was anyone else distracted by the giant forehead on the picture?

swombat2• 17 years ago

This is a completely pointless comment to make and you wouldn't make it to the author's face. This would fall under the "uncivil" flag discussed in the pg thread earlier.

peakpg• 17 years ago

Where Freedom includes the right to 'unlimited unpaid vacation time'. Sounds a lot like some sales jobs actually.

pmichaud• 17 years ago

My wife, who has graduate degrees in Mathematics and Creative Writing, wrote for Demand Media while we were in a transition period between traditional employment and passive income. She knocked out advanced math articles 2, sometimes 3 per hour, making around $300 a day, which roughly works out to $72,000 a year.

That's twice the money she could've made as a full time academic starting out, for example.

It's not all roses, but for someone who can write and needs to make ends meet for a while, it's a hell of an opportunity to make a bunch of money pretty much on your own terms. It beats the hell out of flipping burgers.

OmarIsmail• 17 years ago

This is the logical extension and evolution of "user" generated content. The great myth of 2006 Web2.0 was the whole "if you build it, they will come". Well, it depends on what you build, and what they'll do when they come. For aggregator sites like HN, Digg, etc the content comes in the form of simple voting and discussions.

Voting is easy and solved. People will do it. Engaging in discussions is easy and solved. People will do it.

Writing useful content for a broader audience without too much direct feedback like you get with discussions... well, getting people to volunteer their time, effort and knowledge. That's not solved. Compound this with the necessity to write about "boring" topics and you have quite a situation.

I'd say the only two sites that have solved it are WikiHow, and Wikipedia.

Of course the demand for such content is there. People ARE obviously searching for how-tos, and general information and there's obviously money to be made from this traffic. So what's easier: figure out a way to get people to write these kind of articles for free or just pay a nominal amount such that it's worth the writer's time, and you're able to get a healthy ROI?

If anything, I see a business opportunity here. There are quite a few companies involved in this content generation space, and it's actually increasing as time goes on. Every single one of them appears to be reinventing the wheel in regards to writer management, pay, editing, etc.

I can tell you that a SaaS 3rd party system that plugs into a filterable pool of writers, editors and is easy to manage would do extremely extremely well. It could be a layer on top of Mechanical Turk, or a totally home-grown solution. Maybe use a bidding model. The details can be sorted out later, but something like this WILL get built in the next 12-18 months, if it doesn't already exist.

joe_the_user2• 17 years ago

Interesting,

How ISN'T Demand Media this?

patio112• 17 years ago

Demand Media only produces for their own properties, though. I think he is thinking more along the lines of http://www.textbroker.com .

I might see about exploiting them in the New Year, incidentally, for non-core content tasks for myself. I mean, my article on How To Create A Bingo Card can't possibly be worse than eHow's, right?

patio112• 17 years ago

The biggest secret of Demand Media is that they have managed to take advantage of the biggest mispricing of labor in the global economy: that the market wage for an American with a graduate degree is zero if she is also a stay-at-home mother. If Demand Media offers her what amounts to $6 to $8 an hour, she'll quite often leap at the chance. (The economics of this have been well understood by SEOs for a few years, but doing it on an industrial scale is a fairly recent innovation.)

electromagnetic2• 17 years ago

There's always been an opportunity for the stay-at-home worker in the writing market, however it's typically been a lot harder to access than simply logging-on.

However on-demand online work has the pay advantages not only to stay-at-home mothers, but anyone looking for extra money who has the ability to write well. IMO earning $8 an hour is certainly a better choice than taking a second job at a convenience store or somewhere when you're strapped for cash, especially if you have young children as day care and professional baby sitters can easily take $10 an hour, which sucks-out-loud when you're making that or less.

What It's Like To Write For Demand Media: Low Pay But Lots of Freedom

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