Said opponents only ever focus on the negatives. They only ever cherry pick their data. I wanted to provide some hard proof that not only can content writing be extremely lucrative, but that they are in no way, shape, or form taking advantage of writers.

Absolutely correct that it is a fairly new market…only a few years old, in fact. While content mills have been around for longer than that, the major push has only been in the past few years. I myself only just jumped on the content mill bandwagon last year. While there’s nothing wrong with being tight-lipped about your best writing opportunities, I tend to lean on the side of Pat over at the Smart Passive Income blog. The kid made 203k USD selling an e-book on an architecture test (if memory serves), and everything he offers on his website is 100% free. He goes into explicitly detailed how-to articles. The way he described it, he doesn’t make enough money to give to charity, so his way of giving back to the community is by offering all of his advice for free. The best part about his site–and what inspired me to do the same here–was providing his monthly income numbers including a breakdown of how each number was arrived at, showing proof positive how the system can work.

While I’m not in his income bracket, the point of my experiment is to provide proof that yes, content writing can be lucrative. It can replace traditional querying, waiting, cold-calling, and otherwise. Many traditional freelancers want you to believe that the only way to success is the same path they trod, using archaic, antiquated methods. This is simply not true. As someone who writes primarily for global clients (90% or more of my work is from non-US sources) I can tell you for a fact that just because it’s done a certain way in the US does not mean that’s how it’s done in the rest of the world.

Cheers!

I might be a bit older than you, but I do recall that IE had a few competitors back in the day: Netscape, Mosaic, Opera, AOL. Competition is an absolutely terrific thing for society. It benefits the consumer, but it also tends to squeeze profits over the long run. That’s not a reason to limit competition, but it’s a really of doing business that entrepreneurs must anticipate. Case in point: virtually all popular browser are free. Some of IE’s competitors literally cannot give their product away!

I never said you were offering any sort of scheme or scam. On the contrary, I believe that you want to offer folks a genuine opportunity to help themselves. I tend to have a selfish habit of being very tight-lipped about my more lucrative gigs, so I’d commend you there. It’s just that I believe that we’re looking at a young market that has yet to settle.

As far as the longevity of the work…the same could be said of any job. One could argue that working for Microsoft is by no means a “sure fire” bet as can be seen from the massive failure of companies like Enron or AIG. Sustainability in any market is driven by supply and demand…this is common sense, and doesn’t need to be discussed.

10 years ago Internet Explorer was one of the only browser people had access to. Now we have Firefox, Opera, Google Wave, and several others. Are internet browsers less popular because there are more options available? Absolutely not. It’s true that competition has gone up, and there are less subs per browser than there were a decade ago, but as more and more people around the world have access to the interwebz the value of choice is more important than ever. That is the beauty of content: adding choice.

Right now, and for the past few years, content writing has been a fairly stable business, and one that is continuing to grow. Will it eventually level off? Possibly. I’d even take that a step further and say “probably”. The same could be said for any job. Eventually things change, and people have to learn how to adapt to new markets.

The point of this experiment is to prove how people can either make some extra cash on the side, or turn content writing into a full-time gig. It is also an experiment to prove a point; to provide actual numbers, and show that no, content writing sites are not “taking advantage” of writers, nor are they paying “less than minimum wage”, as so many content site haters are wont to state.

Neither is this empirical evidence. Just because I can make the system work for me is by no means proof that anyone can walk in. However, it is proof that it can be done, and that’s the key point: to provide inspiration to others and show more than just negativity.

I’m not suggesting any sort of “get rich” quick schemes. Again…I’m not selling anything. I’m simply showing hard numbers, proof that it can be done if you have a mind to do it, to offer the other side of the cake as a counter to the continuous stream of negativity from people claiming that content sites are the devil.

Thanks for your comment!

Let’s say that one of these content mills pays $20 a pop for 10,000 articles per year. What makes you think it would be willing to buy twice that many at same price? As supply increases and competition intensifies, prices will go down. That should happen unless the content mill toughens its requirements for submissions. Both of those outcomes would result in lower average pay for would-be writers.

The more articles there are floating around in the interwebs, the more their average value falls. They are competing with each other for relatively scarce ad revenue. Even your own articles are competing with each other, most likely.

One might argue that there is virtually unlimited demand for this content, but that strikes me as implausible. I find it unlikely that a how-to page that spends hundreds of thousands on content is going to multiply its budget with little assurance that it will boost ad revenue. I think this reflects the unsustainability of the content mill business model, but that’s another issue.

I’m glad that you’ve done well with this, and I wish you further success in that industry. I just doubt that it can be achieved en masse, regardless of the abilities of your audience.