Freelance Writers and Writing For The Web
Lori Widmar, fellow freelance writer, member of the forum and blogger eloquently speaks out against selling yourself short when writing articles for the web.
Many of the ads we see for x number of articles for $1 and $2 a piece are apparently to help entrepreneurs create websites selling private label articles. These are sold either on a one time basis or by subscription to web masters who are trying to get decent search engine placement.
I suppose this makes sense for webmasters who can’t write… but the question I have is what about the reader. If, for example, you subscribe to a service that provides 25 new health related articles a month, the chances are at least several, and potentially many other websites will subscribe to the same service. Which means there will be duplicate articles on every site… or close to duplicate.
I know google frowns on duplicate content… I got badly nicked in search engine placement when I moved from About.com to my own site because About retained many of my articles until the new guide went live. I understood that would happen and decided to simply ride it out. My hunch is the search engines will develop some way to detect this duplicate content and before long we’ll see the end to this kind of thing.
Lori’s right – you deserve to be paid a decent amount for your writing.
Write well and often,
Subscribe to Abundant Writing News
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Business of Freelance Writing
4 opinions for Freelance Writers and Writing For The Web
Alicia
Jun 6, 2006 at 7:35 am
I have been doing a lot of thinking over the same situation (writing articles for such little pay). I started out doing that, because I needed some credentials and basically just to get my feet wet before branching out, but now that I look at it, it makes me furious.
Yuwanda Black
Jun 8, 2006 at 11:42 am
I owned an editorial staffing agency, Inkwell Editorial, in NYC for 8 years and publish InkwellEditorial.com and InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com. I was a freelancer for many years, and still take on freelance writing projects.
I say all of this not to self-promote, but to let readers know that I have personal and professional experience in this arena.
While I agree with the author in principle, I have to say that this is an individual decision. What I mean is, every writer has to decide what’s in it for them (the old WIIFM principle).
If you are using your article writing to promote a product, website, etc., then it’s worth it to give the content away or sell it cheaply.
However, if you are making your living from selling the articles themselves, then by all means, don’t do it for less than you think you deserve.
I wrote an article which expands upon this topic. It can be found at this link: http://inkwelleditorial.com/ArticleBank/10-8-03.htm.
Great blog by the way!
Anne Wayman
Jun 9, 2006 at 10:41 am
Alicia, most of us started at low pay… we outgrow it…. Yuwanda Black has a good point too… and the linked article is a good one.
Lisa Robertson
Jun 23, 2006 at 5:14 am
I think that the comments made by Yuwanda were true. I am a starting out freelancer and just learning. This is an important topic for us, since most who are new to this field don’t know this information. I often wondered about the prices and places to look for work. The link is also inforative and gives great advice to newbies.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: