Making Money Through Internet Writing

Making Money on The Internet and Through Our Writing — Where Do We Draw the Line?

The desperation many of us have to earn and succeed leads us to do things that are not helping us in our effort to create a writing life.

A lot of people now are freelancing online. There are numerous opportunities to earn money on the internet but many are specific to people with specific training or skills. One of the most common types of online freelancers you find today are writers. Writers have always looked for ways to make extra cash and despite the greater opportunities for publishing now that we have the internet, the need to supplement our income is no different than before.

I have a number of friends who are writers and like me, they are always looking for some easy side hacks that might bring in a few extra bucks. Personally, I like evaluating websites and services the best since it is easy work and pays okay. The problem is that even though there are usually dozens of new tests to complete each day split between computers, smartphones, and tablets, not everyone will qualify to complete them. There are screening questions that determine who meets the criteria.

The frustrating thing is that on the days that I try to complete some of these tests, it is rare that I qualify for a single one. So while the tests rarely take more than about 10 minutes to finish, it may take an hour or more to get through the screening questions.

When talking with several writer friends about this, they had similar responses. The general sentiment was that you should just try to answer the screening questions in a way that makes it more likely for you to get accepted even if you are lying. So, for example, although all three of them are Caucasian knowing when asked about race in a screening question, they all answer Latino. When I point out that could be messing up the results I was surprised by their answer which went along the lines of:

“Well, if it’s just me, given they must have thousands of participants, it won’t make a difference. And if tons of people lie that way also, then again one more isn’t going to affect anything.”

With surveys, along with the practice of saying whatever you need to in order to be accepted, one of my friends remarked, “The trick here is to realize when they ask if you’ve ever used a product or visited a store that if you answer yes, it’s likely to open up a new series of questions for you to answer. So if you answer no it will save you a ton of time and you still get paid the same amount.”

As a former researcher, I was a bit horrified by this attitude. I tried to gently point out that these researchers were paying good money to gain information about their product, service or website and dishonest answers could lead to faulty decisions based on inaccurate information costing the company a lot of money.

The reply I received from all three of my friends was that it’s very difficult to make a living writing and so if some “fibs” help them with a side hustle that takes very little time away from their writing and pays, well, it’s a dog eat dog world out there.

For companies, one of the major dangers of paid user testing evaluations or online surveys is that people have an incentive to lie and cheat in order to take more surveys and earn more money. Participants might lie on their demographic profile to qualify for more surveys. They might open different accounts and profiles with the same company to qualify for different types of surveys, they might rush through multiple-choice surveys randomly responding to finish quickly. By lying and cheating on online evaluation research or surveys, participants will make more money, even though the company will end up with useless data.

I think this mentality is not found in side hustles these days, but that it has leaked over into the way we approach our writing. In part, one thing that may have contributed to this is the trend of writers quitting their day jobs to become full-time freelancers which has led to a crisis of income so to speak. When we make this move, we are certain that we will make plenty of money to support ourselves, if not right away, then over time.

There seem to be two groups of new freelancers from what I’ve observed. One group reads articles written by writers who make a large sum of money through their work and who write about how they’ve done it. These new writers figure that all they have to do is follow the advice and they can bypass all the time and effort it took for the established writers to get where they are. Why re-invent the wheel? they think.

The second group is somewhat more realistic and they understand that it will take hard work and learning the business to succeed. They often figure it will take a year or so before they are earning enough to support themselves.

The problem is that for both groups it is a foregone conclusion that they will be able to support themselves with their writing. The reality is that more often than not this doesn’t pan out or if it does, it takes far longer than they have anticipated. When they continue to work month after month seeing relatively little return, they start looking for tricks and hacks to earn more. Unfortunately, this seems like what is happening more and more on Medium.

Many writers are writing articles that are easy to create since they are based on information that we’ve known for years. Some are writing the same articles as others with some minor alterations. There are those that are just plain plagiarizing articles from elsewhere on the web, believing that since there isn’t an automatic plagiarism checker on the platform that they won’t get caught. Still, others are continuing to write clickbait articles.

Then there are the people who clap without ever reading the article in the hopes that those they clap for will return the favor. There are Facebook marketing ploys, backroom deals of overtly trading claps for claps, and there is outright bullying regarding a mandate that everyone should clap the maximum for every article they read.

The mentality that was expressed by my friends about lying on other types of online endeavors seems to be at play here as well. Whatever will make an extra buck is fair game, because, hey, we’re starving writers.

Unfortunately, this is turning Medium into a site that has distinct tiers. The first includes the articles in the group of Medium Publications. The second is the group of articles that find their way into other top publications that aren’t Medium sponsored. Then there are the rest of the articles that are either in lessor publications, individual publications or published on personal walls.

This means that there are top rate articles in a dozen or so publications that will earn far more and gain a much better following as they are publicized by Medium and always make the front page. Those who can’t get published in these publications will see far fewer earnings and engagement and continue to try to figure out what tricks it takes to them.

So instead of focusing on content, these articles will focus more and more on what has already proven to be successful, watering down the uniqueness and quality of what is published outside of the Medium publications. We will see even more of the same title with similar content. If you don’t see this as a problem, try looking up “Self Care Isn’t Selfish,” and see how many articles there are on Medium alone, many of which are just rehashed.

It seems as if the desperation of writers to make money both in order to support themselves as well as sometimes to use as an indicator of how skilled they are is leading us to lose our edge.

I’m not sure what the answer to this problem might be. Maybe encouraging people to keep their day jobs, or at least maintain some part-time employment until they have figured out whether or not they can make a go of it as a full-time writer. Or perhaps it might be useful for writers to collaborate by creating teams that have people with different skills so as to be able to take advantage of a variety of income streams.

One thing I do think is important though, is for us to continue this discussion in an effort to increase the opportunities to earn and grow as writers for all of us. Joining together will help us learn from each other, support each other and discover new ways of improving our writing lives both now and in the future.

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had work featured in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press & Zero Fiction among others. Her poetry has been featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost among others. She is Editor for 1-One-Infinity, The Partnered Pen & One Table, One World and is Editor in Chief for Promposity & Mental Gecko. She is also the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications.

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