The worst seems to be over for us writers or, as we now repositioned ourselves, "content providers." We gave up and exited glutted areas such as covering the culture, the media, and celebrities. Sure that had been fun but now it's done. Those of us currently making a good buck have retooled our knowledge base and contacts to deconstruct matters of finance, including personal decisions such a choosing a stand-alone mutual fund versus an annuity, purchasing disability insurance, and to go with a fixed rate mortgage or an ARM with an unbelievable teaser rate.
So, it's been s shock that we content providers are still receiving offers to write as much as we want (code for "lots of assignments" are available if you play ball with us) @$5 a pop. Yes, five dollars, as even less than the price of a movie ticket discounted for an aging Baby Boomer like myself.
Yesterday, one of these deluded companies even engaged in the anachronism of ringing me up on the telephone. She gushed about how fine my samples were. At that point I should have pressed "end" on my smartphone. Flattery always means that the speaker is trying to pull a fast one.
The last time I fell for that was about a month ago when a security firm in Long Island contacted me about creating content for a blog they were going to establish in about a month. But first one of head spooks wanted my input on how he could position and package content for publication derived from some articles, w/o being nailed for plagiarizing. Shame on me I gave the ideas. How those ideas were praised. Never heard from the spooks again. Other content providers beware: The security outfit has posted yet another ad on Craigslist.
Yesterday's caller needed short biographies put togther of business executives. Piece of cake, she said. Will any content provider take this awesome assignment? Shame of them if they do. The @$5 will only stop when no writer buys in.
Now I have to return to my well paid gig of digging around the complex business of credit cards, both for personal and business use. In itself, that's a major issue: Should an entrepreneur use a personal card for business?
The temperature of the water used to fill the stand is not important and does not affect water uptake.
Posted by: christmas lights and more | May 02, 2013 at 10:50 PM
Yes, a big beef of mine, too! Lowballing clients who try to seduce you to take a ridiculously low-paid assignment with "promises" that if they like what you do, they will give you more.
Promises? Surely these are threats, not promises.
Posted by: David Ghostwriter | November 16, 2012 at 12:51 PM