Worst Writing Job Ever!

[cathleengarvey]

Hello all, I'm a newbie and pretty chuffed to be here among professionals and was just wondering what was everyone's worst writing job when they first started out?

I sent my first articles in to CC and a lot of them came back for revision so I decided to get some experience before ed booted me off the site. I bid for a job on getafreelancer and it was horrible! I was writing 500 words for $1 and after 2 weeks work made a grand total of $18 after my employer claimed his clients rejected most of what I wrote. I Googled the supposedly rejected articles and found them all on the web under different names! I'm also still waiting to actually receive payment!

I have now come crawling back to CC and vowed to work on my submissions. I have sold 3 articles here so far and made more from those than almost 30 articles I submitted elsewhere. Also the topics I had to write on were soul-destroying, 6000 words on dental insurance!!!!!!

Anybody got a worse story than mine?

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[Celeste Stewart]

Yikes! That's horrendous. Welcome back to a place where your writing is valued!

My worst writing job was one of my first, straight out of college. I wrote short articles for a "magazine publisher" only to find out the company was a scam. Yes, the magazines where published, but the company was sending bills to companies for ads that they never placed. As soon as I found out (within a few days), I quit.

[Debbi]

GAF was my first experience writing for the web. I was fortunate enough to choose a buyer who was honest at least, paid every Tuesday and never rejected anything I wrote. But after two weeks of writing 500 words for $1, I decided I'd rather starve than work myself to death for pennies. I looked around a little harder and found CC and that was the end of GAF. I still can't support myself here but becuase of CC I have found other writing jobs and am now solvent! such a gerat sharing supportive community of writers

Welcome! Heh, I guess I still owe GAF a $5 referral fee. Puh!

[cathleengarvey]

Thanks for the replies guys, another gaf survivor!

Online writing really is a hard work, thank god for CC!!

[SuzanneBosworth]

GAF? ........ SHRIEK! ARRGGHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhAAAGGHHHH yes another survivor here. I think my worst was starting out writing for a guy (for practically nothing of course) and getting on fine, and then a business partner comes on the scene and starts telling me my grammar and spelling is all wrong .... what??? Now, I have to explain that he is talking to me in fractured english and his emails are a mess of grammar .. of course, what he wanted was to try and bully me into accepting less than the three forkfuls of watery gruel they were paying me. Not a chance, mate. To be fair to the first guy, he was really embarrassed about the way his business partner had talked to me and he did ask if I would carry on working with them once that particular job was finished ... but I declined with great regret .. ahem ahem.

OH!!!! I forgot to say. I always ask for a down payment and before the job started the first guy kept trying to make excuses about Paypal not working and could I start anyway, and I'd say I'm so very sorry but no I can't .. more excuses ... oh dear we have to get a new credit card but can you start straight away .. can you wait for payment ... in the end I said, dear guys I'm so sorry you're having such difficulties with payment, but unfortunately as it says in our contract I cannot start the job without the initial payment, so I'm afraid that without that I shall have to withdraw. I hope you find someone good to work with you .... and then BAM suddenly they coughed up. LOL!! sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh

Thank heaven for CC .. I feel reet at 'ome 8-]

[Evelyn]

OK, somebody help me out here... What is GAF? People are always abbreviating "other" writing sites, and I rarely know what the abbreviations stand for. (This is probably good because I've never been screwed over by those sites.)

[Debbi]

GAF: getafreelancer (though I see it is resolveing to freelancer.com now?)
AC: Associated Content (sometimes up-front pay but mostly revenue share)
DS: Demand Studios (mostly flat fee $3-$15, weird titles, inconsistent copyeditors)
TB: Text Broker (low pay)
EL: E-Lance (you are on your own there!)
Helium (revenue share, articles are rated by members)

I'm sure others can add more. I have only looked at TB, EL, and Helium but not submitted anything there. Each site has its pros and cons but CC has the highest editorial requirements, the freest work environment, the most supportive community, and the best pricing opporunities that I've seen.

This week I am scouting out AOL's new SEED site and wisegeek. It's fun to try new writing venues, but I just keep coming back to CC.

[EricScott]

I tried Seed a few months back. As a test I wrote 4 articles. They only bought one. I picked titles that I knew I could submit here in case they didn't sell (the writer retains full rights if Seed does not buy the article). I submitted to Seed right after they were featured on Good Morning America and supposedly got thousands of new author sign ups. So, maybe there was just a lot of competition at that time. So far two of the three articles that got rejected by Seed sold on CC.

All in all, Seed is not a horrible place to write, but I'm content at CC.

[Celeste Stewart]

The problem with Seed is that there terms of service state that THEY get to select the license type. Technically they can opt to buy your article for a limited exclusive license (ie no upfront pay, revenue share only). Though I haven't heard of them doing that, it is in their terms of service. So theoretically you could submit an article for a $60 assignment and have them say "Great, we love it. We'll take it for a limited exclusive license though (and not pay you anything up front)." Again, I haven't heard of them doing this yet, but that bugs me. I've subbed a few but no luck yet. Fortunately, they've just declined each article so I've been able to use them elsewhere. I'd be annoyed if they exercised the limited exclusive license option though. Big time annoyed I haven't given up because I like the potential I see there (if they do away with that pesky clause). Time will tell.

[EricScott]

I agree with Celeste that the possibility of getting a limited exclusive license is a problem with Seed. I almost wanted one of mine to get bought for this type of license just so I could see how much can be made with page views compared with the page view payments from AC and DS. I wrote one article for just performance pay on DS. I make about one cent a day! Wow! Then at the end of the year they pay me for the page views but deduct $1.00 as a processing fee since I didn't reach the threshold of $10.00. I'd much rather write an article here, price it the way I want and let it sit until someone buys it.

[Debbi]

I don't see how revenue share makes anyone anything. I have some articles up on AC and after a week I have a grand total of 18 cents. Even if it continued at that rate (and it seems like the articles get a big rush on the first day and then go to 0), that wouldn't even be $10 a year. I don't know what DS' revenue share plan is, but it's probably something similar. Still I hear of people who make $100 a month or more from revenue share and I have to think they have hundreds of articles up there. If I had hundreds of articles here, I bet I'd make more than $100 a month!

I obviously did not read SEED's terms closely enough or didn't think about the implications of their licensing structre. The two articles I've handed in were fun ones I didn't have to do any reserach for. If they don't buy them, I'll put them elsewhere. One is a personal narrative so won't work here and the other is for kids which doesn't appear to be a good market on CC. That one I can use on two of my own sites.

DS is having some issues right now with a new influx of copy editors that don't seem to understand the guidelines so I am steering clear for a bit. I should be writing up a storm for CC but I kind of got out of the habit and am having a tough time getting back in the saddle.

[Debbi]

Awwww, SEED declined my first submission. But they sent me a very nice (probably a form) email, saying they liked what they saw and to keep submitting. I have a couple of other articles there so will see what happens. I imagine the competition is pretty fierce.

On the wiseGEEK front, I received an invitation to write four "test" articles for them. I agreed to give it a try and am waiting for the assignments. I love having so many options

[Debbi]

Update on wiseGEEK. wG accepted my first batch of three test articles. Yes, not only do you have to submit two writing samples before you can even start writing anything, you have to submit three batches of three articlees each to be reviewed. They do pay you for the submissions even if they don't publish them (not if they're plagarized or so horrible they're uneditable) so you're not losing any money but still.... After having been trained into the DS way of all actionable verbs and speaking directly to the reader, wG asks for "flexible language" and all 3rd-person. It's a huge adjustment, but that's what a good writer does, right?

Gah, CC is so much easier! I write what I want in the voice I want to the audience I want and then price it as I want. The only thing that keeps me from concentrating on CC is that pesky once-a-month payment. I wonder what keeps CC from implementing that. Seems like all they have to do is just duplicate what they do once a month every two weeks.

Also, why doesn't CC have to give out 1099s? Maybe if they're outside the US, they don't have to?

[Elizabeth Ann West]

As far as I know they are outside the U.S., hence the no 1099.

[isande]

The worst ever was also one of my first freelance assignments, when Textbroker first opened. I signed up and was rated as a level 4 writer. They have five levels of writing, each of which qualifies for a different rate of pay, but I've never heard of anyone being rated higher than level 4.

I did a few extremely low-paying but very small pieces for Textbroker at first -- product descriptions and that sort of thing. Then I saw a level 4 assignment that paid a "whopping" $8 or so, to write a piece for a drug rehab center's website. I wrote what I thought was a pretty good article, following the instructions, and had it sent back for revisions three or four times by the client -- each time making it worse (IMO) to meet this guy's expectations. The client was also extremely rude. In the end, I wound up submitting a version that sounded like it was written by a sleazy used car salesman -- and he loved it! That was the last time I wrote for Textbroker.

Not the worst job I've ever done but definitely the worst writing job. The worst job overall was taking calls for the "Saves" department at MSN. You know -- the people you have to talk to if you want to cancel your service, but whose actual job is to try to convince you NOT to cancel. We were expected to "save" 50% of the callers. It was incredibly cheesy, too. As soon as a caller said they wanted to cancel, we had to say (in a hurt and baffled voice), "Why do you want to leave the MSN community?"

I transferred out in less than a week, although I did enjoy the freedom I had in Saves (compared to the Tech Support department I had come from). We were allowed to do almost anything to retain customers, including going to somewhat ridiculous lengths to fix problems preventing them from connecting to the Internet (this was dial-up service). I actually had a guy pop his case open and reseat his new modem once -- yep, it worked, and he didn't cancel But the vast majority of the time, calls were from people who had perfectly legitimate reasons to cancel their service and I felt like a sleazebag trying to manipulate them into keeping their account open.

Peggy