Stop Accepting Low Paying Gigs as a Writer

Stop working your ass off for nothing…

Many writers get excited about starting their careers and are eager to make a living with the craft. They find sites online which pay for your writing. These sites seem attractive to a new writer. The problem with this is that the payments you receive are so low that you can't live on the wages. We refer to them as content mills.

Some of the popular ones include UpWork and Fiverr. I have been writing online for several years and worked through many content mills that are now closed, such as Squidoo, BrightHub, Helium, and InfoBarrel. All of these sites had one thing in common. The money you made was minimal.

Content Mill Example — Fiverr and $5

The basic price on a site such as Fiverr is $5. You could be the best writer in the world, but the buyers are, for the most part, only interested in paying you $5 for a basic article. It doesn’t matter how much research you have to do, how long it takes you to write it, for how much editing it requires. They will only fork over $5 because that is the basic rate on Fiverr.

You will beat your head against the wall at this price, and no writer should be paid a measly $5 to write an article. The work that you put into writing is worth more than $5. It’s worth more than $10 or even $15. A basic 500-word article should be paying you at least $40 to $50.

You Have Value

Think about what happens to that article once you write it. In many cases, it will be sitting on someone’s blog. The article that you wrote could make hundreds of dollars over time. If it is a comprehensive piece, it can earn that blogger even more money over time.

The article you create for a blog has a lot of value.

You should be compensated for creating that value for the person’s website, blog, or for whatever reason they’re using your content. You will end up burning yourself out and not making anything if you continue to accept low wages for your work. You are worth far more than you realize.

Every site online needs high-quality content. Companies need this content to stay competitive. They cannot grow their business without a constant stream of quality writing, so customers keep coming back and buying from them. You are the source of that content. Many businesses don’t have the time to write articles on their own and hire you for your services.

Burnout and Nothing to Show for it

When you continue to write on low-paying content sites like Fiverr, you end up hurting yourself. I know this from personal experience. I’ve made quite a lot of money on Fiverr over the years. I’m telling you as a writer you should not work there. When I analyze how much money I have made compared to the amount of work that I did, it is not worth the effort. On some days, I was cranking up between five and ten 500-word articles. There were days when I did even more.

Imagine doing this for days on end with no sign that the work is going to let up.

You are constantly busy writing, and while this improves your writing skill, you don’t make any money at it. A lot of the time, I was completely overwhelmed. I kept writing because I thought this is what was going to bring me success. All it ended up doing was make me hate turning on my computer every morning to write about content that could care less about.

I can’t count the number of times I wrote articles on insurance, dating sites, marketing, and so on. I would write these articles constantly. There were times when I did receive a couple of higher-paying jobs because the buyer wanted more, but these were few and far between.

Your mental health will suffer if you continue to write for such low rates. You will lose your self-worth and probably find yourself seeping into a depression as I did. I can’t count the number of articles I’ve written for these sites, and I regret doing that. I’m here to tell you to get off these sites as soon as possible. Do something else with your writing because you are worth way more than you think you are.

Taken Advantage Of

You’ll be taking advantage of these sites, especially if you’re a good writer. If there is a buyer out there who discovers that you can write 500 legible words at a high-quality, they will constantly come back to you. The problem is, they’re not going to want to pay you more than $5. If you are lucky, they may pay you $10. They’ll give you the same story that their blog is just “a beginner’s blog” and that they “can’t afford it.” My favorite one is when they come to you and ask you for a discount rate on ten articles. There is nothing more exciting than writing more for even a smaller payment.

They think because you have written some high-quality content that they’re going to get a bargain out of you.

This is a clear indication they are taking advantage of you and your skills. A lot of writers fall for this, and I did several times. I was focusing so much on the money and not my career as a writer. The money I was making was so minimal that I would probably have had more luck picking up pop cans on the side of the street and returning them to the depot. Continuing to write these idiotic $5 articles all day long is not what you should be doing.

Once you’ve written for a while, you might think you can raise your rates. I did this after receiving hundreds of positive feedback. I thought, “now I can make some real money.” The answer to that is that I didn’t make any real money. No one purchased my gig because my price was above $5. It didn’t matter that I had great feedback and so many wonderful positive comments. No one cared because they only wanted cheap articles. Buyers do not care about your writing career or the fact that you need to feed your family. These sites are not there to help writers.

Conclusion

Writing is a valuable skill.

The content you create has a hell of a lot more value than what a lot of us are being paid. You should not accept jobs that offer you such a low-wage. If you do have a gig on Fiverr or any other site that is paying you this low-wage, you should consider doing something else with your time.

One reason I like writing for Medium is that I can write when I want, and it will sit here for however long this site lasts and continue to make me money. I can also engage with other people on the site and grow my career a lot better than I can through a site such as Fiverr or another site that offers such a low payment. Stay off the low paying content mills. Grow your career in writing here on Medium. This is a much better platform. Once you have a following, you can then branch out with your own blog and do other things with your writing.

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