Content Mills and the Writer’s Life
It seems a never-ending cycle, doesn’t it?
Though I’ve been a writer for many decades, I only started venturing online with it in 2009.
I remember running across blog posts and articles talking about the newest places to go. Head over here and make thousands a month, they claimed. Do this, and you’ll get hundreds a week!
I wasn’t sure what to believe. I grew up before the internet was a thing. The information superhighway hadn’t been built and AOL was just a gleam in the eyes of the CD manufacturers.
Creating before the Internet Age
BBSes were my thing for ages. Remember those? I ran one of the biggest in my area and loved spending my days as the enigmatic Sysop ruling over my little nest. It was a lot of fun, and that’s where I got a taste for sharing my writing. It was only small groups of my choosing, though.
I was too afraid to try to do more than that.
Until then, I was looked at with many-a side-eye when I told people I was a writer. The mindset I was raised with was one in which people who are creative are never going to make a dime, and it’s a waste of time. Go to work, recycle your days, and then die a slow entropic death, doing the same as everyone else in the family.
Operating otherwise branded you “weird” and that tag meant different things back then than it does today.
I really wanted to be a creator, though. I spent so many days of my life putting stories together, many of which never saw the light of day. When everything I wrote was destroyed at the hands of an abusive hag of an ex-wife, well, I sort of gave up on any dreams of ever making anything from it.
That is, until I discovered content mills.
The nature of Content Mills
They’ve worn many masks and have changed in different ways over the years, but no matter what they’re called, the idea behind them remains the same.
If I remember correctly, Triond was the first I gave a shot to.
I was able to make a little scratch from the writing I put out, and even if it would equate to pennies an article, it was still more than I had made from my words before. It opened my eyes to the possibility that I could, indeed, be paid for writing, even if it wasn’t much.
Factoidz caught my eye next. They were a little better, I think, paying a bit more than I was able to gather from Triond.
I went from one to the next, seeking what I perceived as the best. Suite101, Textbroker, Hubpages, Squidoo… all of them caught me up in the dream of doing something with my life other than going to work and hoping I’d live long enough to see retirement.
When I finally caught the eye of a traditional publisher and offered a contract for books, I jumped on it and never looked back.
I’ve seen these different content mills come and go. Some of them faded away slowly, replaced by “Newer and Better Things.” Others are still around, though they seem to be on life support, barely scratching by as they try to force their writers to live with less and less.
Keeping backups from what you do on CMs is useful
Through it all, the one thing I’ve tried to do is keep backups of all of my writing. I’m obsessive about it, as you can imagine. I have lost everything multiple times before, so I have a lot of PTSD over my words and how precious they are to me.
If nothing else, keeping them around is a great way to reuse content. If I ever get to the point I run out of ideas (rarely), I can always go back and see if there’s something evergreen there I can make use of.
I wonder, though, with how much we dedicate to content mills, if we’re doing ourselves a disservice. We have to think long-term with our writing business, and realize that no company or website is altruistic.
They’re not altruistic.
They are there for their own bottom lines, after all. We might provide them the content, but they’re the ones who, in the end, profit from it the most.
Take Constant Content, for instance. You can make a good amount of money through them, but they take 35% of everything you earn. That’s a big chunk of change, and forces you, if you want to make a decent income, to charge much higher than you ordinarily would.
That leads to the problem of not having your content sell, because, of course, there are always people willing to take less for the same things.
It’s a difficult paradox. Either sell the stuff for much higher than is feasible, or pump out a lot more content to equal the same.
That can lead to burnout, though. The harder we work, the more apt we are to wake up tomorrow and say hell with it all.
Content mills are a lot like corporations who use you up, spit you out, and move on to the next. You’re there for them, and they’ll drain your talent dry if you let them.
If you really want to make a living from your writing, you have to work it like any business venture. Don’t put all your eggs into one proverbial basket. Diversify and spread your wings, whatever that means for your particular talents.
What are the options for that?
There are always options outside of Content Mills.
Some writers create courses, while others provide coaching. I think, though, at times those kind of things are more predatory than they seem on the surface.
Maybe your best bet is to keep writing articles and putting piles of related ones into books. I know a few people who have been very successful working on that method. It just takes a little editing to make sure everything is coherently vibing together.
Whatever you do, though, please consider what you want to see yourself doing a few years from now. Are you going to keep doing these 2–3 articles a day and hope someone will buy them through a content mill?
Or will you take command of your own destiny and work it all for yourself?
I’m not sure which direction I’ll be going with it. I am just getting myself restarted with it all after coming out of my hermitage.
I know I’ve already done the content mill thing, and I really have no interest in falling down that hole again.
Other things from me:
About me:
I am an author with over a dozen books and dozens of short stories published. I have experience with both traditional and self-publishing and love to discuss the pros and cons of both.
Why do I write? Because I am blind and live on woefully low disability payments each month. The government graced me with trying to live on about $700 per month, and I decided to start publishing because I also like to be able to eat.
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Thank you from the depths of my soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.
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