Erik Sherman's WriterBiz

Another Writer Mill: Atlantic Publishing Co. (APC)

2009-07-03T08:01:00.004-04:00

I seem to be on a kick of discussing professional wastes of time, which I'm calling writer mills. These organizations bring in writers, grind them for whatever word juice is available, and pay a pittance. Now there's another to add to the list: Atlantic Publishing Company (APC).

Recently I've mentioned Helium and Demand Studios. Both share some telling characteristics and give insight into the institution of the writer mill:

The pay makes burger flipping seem like glamorous high-rolling.
The only way to really make money is to let quality fly to the winds, because you almost need to end the assignments before they start to make a reasonable dollar per hour figure.
They constantly advertise for new writers, suggesting the deal is so bad that they cannot keep people around for long.
(Bonus Characteristic) They have executives scouring the web, looking for potential criticism and trying to counter it.

On the first three points, APC seems to be lining up as a classic writer mill. The company advertises fairly frequently. Here's the copy of an ad on JournalismJobs.com (though the ad is set to expire on July 29:

Atlantic Publishing is looking for writers in various fields to write books on subjects such as: Building, Cooking, Farming/Animals, Gardening, Arts/Crafts, Recycling, Internet/Technology, Business/Investing, Real Estate, Finance, Parenting, Pets, Publishing, Education, and Self-Help. This position is a freelance opportunity. The payment varies from project to project. Writers are not required to reside in Ocala, FL, work may be done anywhere in the United States. If you are interested please contact Amanda Miller at amiller@atlantic-pub.com with your resume and writing sample.

I was curious at one point this year and replied to one of the ads. Here's what they said in an email about their projects:

Because we have many manuscripts that need to be rewritten, and each are in different stages of writing, the amount of work that needs to be done will vary. Some of the material in the manuscript may be useable [sic] or the book may need to be rewritten completely. Some sections may just require you to revise information to make the material up-to-date or reorganize. We would like to hear your comments on the manuscript, how much work you feel needs to be done, and how you can contribute to the book.

On the low end it's supposed to be copy editing, and the upper bound is full rewrite. Given that range of scope, what do you think they might pay? Here's the answer:

Upon acceptance of your bid we will e-mail you our freelance author agreement ( work for hire), and research material to complete the work. Typical time frames run from 30 days to 90 days for completion, we pay upon acceptable stages of completion, we check all manuscripts against proprietary plagiarism software, and we typically pay from $500.00 - $1,600.00 depending on the scope of the work involved. Many of our authors have completed several manuscripts for us. We give you full credit on the cover, in online databases such as R.R. Bowker, Amazon.com, B&N.com, and recorded CIP data in the library of congress.

Oh, goody -- credit. And a full typical $1,600 to completely rewrite a flipping book on a work for hire basis (though technically books don't quality for work made for hire under U.S. copyright law). That even makes a publisher like Adams Media, known in the industry for its relatively low fees, seem like a spendthrift. No wonder they check manuscripts with plagiarism software, because they're barely paying enough for a chapter. Why does any writer mill think that people will slave away for laughable sums? Because they get enough inexperienced ones to do so and know when they leave, dejected and squeezed, there will be others whose credulity and eagerness to "get into the business" will leave them vulnerable.

The only point I couldn't verify was the bonus characteristic of whether their executives also troll online, looking for anyone that might question their practices. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Demand Studios Responds

2009-07-02T09:35:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I posted a criticism of pay rates at Demand Studios, calling them "nothing more than intellectual sweat shop piece work." I received a comment from Jeremy Reed, senior vice president for content at Demand. Because I didn't want this to be buried, and also wanted to directly address his points, I decided to treat it in a separate post. Here is the entirety of his response; my points will follow:

I want you to consider this argument.

I freelanced for too many years in my twenties. As a writer just out of college and with no (or few) clips, I hustled to get as much writing experience as possible and as many bylines on different topics in multiple publications. I did not make a lot of money, but it did lead to a good career in publishing.

Looking back, I came across a number of parasites and just generally bad people along the way in the freelance world. There were many publications that paid nothing. There were many publications who checks arrived months late or never. There were many publications I pitched tirelessly for years w/o ever having any article see the light of day. There were many publications with untrained or tired copy editors who butchered my content and sometimes even added wrong facts - but kept my name on the article. Those are just some of the bad experiences - there are plenty more.

We can argue whether or not we are paying a fair wage at Demand. It is a valid point. But, consider all the other time sucks and hurdles Demand cuts down or removes: 1) You don't have to pitch, if you remain qualified you can grab work at any time, any hour; 2) you get constructive feedback on every article you write. We invest in making the writer better because it also makes good business sense; 3) we pay every single Friday for all work done through the Wednesday of that week -- yes, that means you can get paid as early as two days after turning in work; 4) we've offered the chance to get your original work - video and text - published on LIVESTRONG.com, Trails.com, GolfLink.com, and eHow.com -- both also third parties like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and 5) we are smart about how we've built this so you can expect more work (and have) as opposed to less work from week to week.

I do agree it is not for every writer or even for certain ones at different points in their careers. But, it does fill a need for a writer who wants a steady paycheck, who wants to get better at their craft, and who wants unlimited amounts of work at any hour of the day.

Thanks for considering my thoughts. I only took the time to write because I respect the points you made.

Best,
Jeremy Reed
SVP, Content at Demand Studios

Now I'll address the various points in his post:

I freelanced for too many years in my twenties. As a writer just out of college and with no (or few) clips, I hustled to get as much writing experience as possible and as many bylines on different topics in multiple publications. I did not make a lot of money, but it did lead to a good career in publishing.

Certainly when you have no experience, you need to get some, and I understand that you see yourself as having a background in freelancing. But to assume that a new freelancer cannot make money is an invalid assumption. Yes, you need a few clips to get started, but as those in the business know, you can almost immediately start moving up the value chain, to use some business-speak. Each piece you do goes to leveraging your knowledge, talent, skill, and craft into better markets. To that end, low-paying and low-prestige markets have to go to the wayside quickly. These are the simple mathematics of the business.

Looking back, I came across a number of parasites and just generally bad people along the way in the freelance world. There were many publications that paid nothing. There were many publications who checks arrived months late or never. There were many publications I pitched tirelessly for years w/o ever having any article see the light of day. There were many publications with untrained or tired copy editors who butchered my content and sometimes even added wrong facts - but kept my name on the article. Those are just some of the bad experiences - there are plenty more.

Yes, there are many bad, incompetent, insensitive, and untalented people in the business. One of the best ways out of such experiences is to generally move up the value chain as quickly as possible. The more people are paying you, the more they value you and, paradoxically, the better they tend to feel like they need to treat you. Markets that require more capable reporting and writing cannot afford to develop a bad name, or they risk alienating the writers they need to create the content that will attract the proper reader demographic and advertising that follows.

We can argue whether or not we are paying a fair wage at Demand. It is a valid point. But, consider all the other time sucks and hurdles Demand cuts down or removes: 1) You don't have to pitch, if you remain qualified you can grab work at any time, any hour; 2) you get constructive feedback on every article you write. We invest in making the writer better because it also makes good business sense; 3) we pay every single Friday for all work done through the Wednesday of that week -- yes, that means you can get paid as early as two days after turning in work; 4) we've offered the chance to get your original work - video and text - published on LIVESTRONG.com, Trails.com, GolfLink.com, and eHow.com -- both also third parties like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and 5) we are smart about how we've built this so you can expect more work (and have) as opposed to less work from week to week.

I am glad that you acknowledge the criticism of low pay. However, your arguments as to the benefits of Demand Studios are actually incorrect, for the following reasons:

When you are paid little, you must do much more work to try to keep afloat. This keeps you from putting proper attention into marketing that can help you move up the value chain. So, effectively, you become an indentured servant or a worker who must live in company housing and shop at the company store, because you don't make enough to walk away.
Pitching ideas is one of the key ways to establish additional value to publications. Yes, it's nice if someone hands you a story topic, but it's far better to create your own and develop your own market. That way you are less dependent on the kindness of strange editing. Or something like that.
The best feedback generally comes from the best publications. Given the rates you pay to copy editors, you aren't paying enough to get the amount of attention required for really solid insight into copy. And given the volume of articles in which you traffic, your in house people cannot have the time, either, to provide really useful feedback on any kind of a consistent basis. Either your entire operation is based on massive volume, or you're marking up the work of writers to an unconscionable degree. Given the markets on which you seem to focus, I strongly suspect the former. And so the entire operation is trapped by the need to churn out copy. In effect, it also lives in company housing and shops at the company store. There are no resources to improve things.
You say you invest in making the writer better, but that is also contradictory, because you only survive through writers getting starvation wages - and given the rates I've been hearing, and you seem to acknowledge them - I'm not indulging in hyperbole. You can't afford for the writers to improve to the extent that they can make a living elsewhere.
Quick payment is nice, but given that you lose maybe 2.5 percent value for each month delay, even a three month wait, which would be 7.5 percent, still leaves you far ahead if the assignment is paying at least 10 times more than Demand Studios will pay. That would still leave the writer making 9.25 times as much, including the time value lost.
When you talk about the chance to have work on a number of sites that apparently are your own as well as third party sites, that's a variation on the "do it for the exposure" argument. As I've demonstrated in the past, working for exposure is foolish. You need exposure to the right markets (that is, editors who might pay), and that comes in the greatest degree from the highest prestige publications in your given niche. Exposure value is roughly directly proportional to pay, and the better paying markets don't have to mention the exposure value because it is an added benefit.
Of course you are smart in how you've done this, because you're getting copy at dirt cheap rates and presumably selling it at a good mark-up. But smart for you isn't smart for writers.
To say that this fills a need for writers who want a steady paycheck is disingenuous. It's not a steady paycheck, which would mean guaranteed work, like a job. It's a steady flow of absurdly priced work that leaves you stuck where you are. In business and marketing classes I've taught to writers, I've seen people get stuck in this way at even 25 cents a word, and that would be a huge step up from your rates.
Unlimited work doesn't exist, because people have limited time. Better to do one piece well than to rush through and do crap jobs on ten pieces for the same amount. You have more time to think, to market, to live. And, to avoid the anticipated argument, getting $300 for a single article is still chicken feed.

I do appreciate Mr. Reed for having written, but I simply could not allow it up as an unchallenged comment. Such arguments need to be clearly deconstructed so writers can see what it is they are being asked to do.

No Demand for Demand Studios

2009-07-01T06:59:00.002-04:00

You've probably seen the Demand Studios ads on such places as JournalismJobs.com and Mediabistro. They want experience, they want productivity, they want ... trust fund babies. A thread on Mediabistro's forum is worth reading for comments like this:

I had the same experience when Demand launched the Livestrong site. They asked for cycling and/or medical experts. I was offered work: 10 articles, $300. I wrote back asking if that was a typo and nope, it was not. Not worth it, and at least to me, the low pay puts into question the quality of the site.

A thought that might proceed through the mind of a skeptical journalist could be as follows: "I don't know the poster, so how do I know the observation is accurate?" Good question. I did a quick search on JournalismJobs and found a copy editing ad that mentioned rates. Although I can't guarantee that it will be up indefinitely, I can quote some of what I found:

We are looking for dedicated editors who can deliver quality work in a timely manner and are comfortable occasionally communicating with writers. Some fact checking is also required.

We will only accept candidates with 5 years of demonstrated editing or copyediting experience with a newspaper, magazine or book publisher.

This is a part-time freelance position and all work is done online. While your schedule is flexible, we do require our editors to commit to working a minimum of 12 hours per week, every week.

We pay a flat fee of $3.50 per article, with most editors averaging $20-$25 per hour, paid on a weekly basis via PayPal.

The copy editor must have five years experience, do some fact checking, and receive $3.50 per article. To make even $20 an hour, you'd need to do between five and six articles an hour. That's ten minutes per ... what, maybe 300 to 500 words I'm guessing? From times I've edited and had to hire copy editors, the going freelance rate I found was between $45 and $55 an hour. If the writing rates are equally bad -- and why wouldn't they be? -- the editing must be painful and far closer to mass rewriting.

This type of rate is nothing more than intellectual sweat shop piece work. I'd be surprised if the business owners don't laugh over after hour drinks at the gullibility of those who actually agree to such terms. The scary thing is, this is still better than what you might get at a place like Helium.

[Note: Demand Studios responded.

The Stupidity of Lashing Out

2009-06-30T09:15:00.000-04:00

You feel an editor treated you roughly. A review of your novel angered you. A "competitor" gets some notice by a market that seems indifferent to your work. What do you do? If you're like novelist Alice Hoffman, you lash out publicly, in this case on Twitter. And if you do, unless you have a sizeable and unreasonably loyal following, you're burying yourself.

In Hoffman's case, she took particular offense at a Boston Globe reviewer's view of her latest book:

In a series of Twitter posts, Ms. Hoffman fired back with her own opinion. “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

There was only a story in the New York Times because the subject was high enough profile. But it doesn't take such a strong media lens to inadvertently damage yourself. I've seen writers go on at length about idiot editors, unappreciative clients, uncooperative sources, and all manners of other things on various forums.

Guess what? Also on those forums are editors and people in a position to recommend you, or not, for work. This is about the worst type of PR you can create for yourself, so why do it? If something is bugging you, complain to a close colleague or two. But even then, remember that conversations can be repeated, often inaccurately, and emails can be passed on. Better to forge ahead on a new project, close a sail, send an invoice, or do something else productive.

Developing a Nose for Honesty

2009-06-29T18:50:00.001-04:00

Warning, there be moralizing here.

Earlier today, I wrote for BNET Media an article titled, Why Is the Press So Freakin' Credulous and Dumb? In it I mention a story about the magazine Paris Match being thoroughly hoaxed by two students who staged a photo essay on student poverty just to show how unquestioning the mainstream press is.

“We pushed the clichés to the limit. We thought the whole thing was so hackneyed that it could never win … We wanted to call into question the inner-workings of the attitude of the kind of media which portrays human distress with complacency and voyeurism,” they said.

I also relate a story debunking that I did last year. (Some regular readers may remember it - an article claiming that Thomas Edison had a rival murdered.)

My point was and is that too many writers and editors are so hungry for a "good" story that they're willing to buy into anything. And that is true. Those wanting to avoid being hoaxed might like to review my 16 tips on verifying information. But there is something even more serious at stake. No technique can help if you are essentially determined to get ahead no matter what the cost. Even when you know better, you will make the wrong choice. Look at Bernie Madoff. A friend said to me earlier today, "He could have invested in savings bonds and still done better." And he knew it, only he was too driven by his desire and by his fear of consequences.

Sometimes writers considering some course of action wonder if they are crossing an ethical bound. The most important rule of thumb, far above the 16 aforementioned tips, is that if you find yourself asking whether you're doing something questionable, chances are that the answer is yes. It could be slightly changing someone's sentence to claim as your own, making up something in a story, poaching another writer's ideas or sources, or even giving a glowing review to a book you've never read. Such actions eat away at the soul and are often eventually uncovered, much to the embarrassment of the perpetrator. The ethical path may sometimes not be as financially rewarding, but you do get the benefit of being able to sleep at night and confront your visage in the mirror the next morning. And, similarly, you have to begin trusting your own nose. When someone has the aroma of the ethically challenged, trust your own reaction. At worse you're unnecessarily on guard. At best, you avoid stepping into a mud bath.

"Free" Author Using Wikipedia Without Attribution [UPDATE]

2009-06-24T10:15:00.001-04:00

In a story that restores your post Postmodernist faith in irony, Wired editor Chris Anderson, one of the supporters of giving away chunks of content free and then making money selling a small group of people something else, extensively used Wikimedia as a source in his book "Free" without attribution.

Anderson told us, "this is my screwup... I feel terrible about it." The lifted work was "mostly historical asides and nothing central to the book." But history is hardly simple to document, and it would seem a book on free products would be significantly diminished without its passages on the famous "free lunch" of the 19th-century saloon, or the origin of the phrase "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

Anyway, what's the big deal? After all, information wants to be free, right? Oh, and you can buy Anderson's book in many places. The list price is $26.99. Can we get a discount for the stuff he, uh, appropriated?

[UPDATE: Ah, but wait, there's more. Much more. Plus a side case of someone accusing The View's Elizabeth Hasselbeck of plagiarizing.]

New Journalism Models and Spot.Us Public Funding

2009-06-22T07:50:00.000-04:00

There's a recording of an interesting discussion, including my BNET colleague David Weir, about new business models for journalism. Another participant was someone from Spot.Us, a site at which the public can suggest stories and journlaists can seek community funding for reporting projects. It's an intriguing approach. A reporter can pitch a story and see whether people will pay money to see it. If you, the writer, get the funding and do the story to eventually place it somewhere, you pay back the money you were fronted and the contributors get a refund. If you can't sell the story, it becomes something available under a Creative Commons license, making it open for distribution. Looking at the site, I noticed one story about sustainable school lunches for which the site had raised $120 out of a target $380. Another story had raised $920 out of $1000. This is a site that is definitely worth checking.

Contract Review: Cyberhomes

2009-06-19T10:35:00.000-04:00

Someone sent a copy of a Cyberhomes.com contract to me for review. As always, remember that I'm not a lawyer and that this isn't legal advice. Also, please remember that contracts change, so if you're looking back at this from some future date, it might not completely apply. Also, I'm only mentioning the clauses that I think either raise questions or might need explanation.

1. Engagement of Services - This is a contract for ongoing work over a one year period, so if you sign, don't think that you'll be negotiating better terms on a second piece.

2. Compensation - It's payment on acceptance, which later in the contract appears to need to come in writing, either email or mail. So you'd need to be sure you get an editor to explicitly say this. Only then can you invoice. Payment is 45 days after invoice.

Grant of Rights - Clause 3.1 states that they get "the worldwide, non-transferable, perpetual right and license to publish, display and distribute any Works (in full or any portion thereof) submitted by Contractor under this Agreement in all forms of media (including, but not limited to, all electronic media, whether now known or hereafter created and whether owned and operated by Client or not)." But notice that it does not say exclusive rights. I read this as saying that it's implicitly non-exclusive. Also, you see that they include the ability to let others "display on third party websites and third party printed publications." So they can either resell your work or even let others use it without pay, whether on the web or in print. That means you can't offer any sort of exclusive rights licensing to any other client of the same material. They can also use the material as promotion for the site, using your name, bio, and image "provided such promotional materials present Contractor in a fair and professional manner." I'm wondering if they could portray you as a "site writer," creating more of a sense of affiliation than there may be.

They have the right to edit your work - a pretty normal thing, except that it opens a back door to paying even later. "In such cases, payment will not be processed until such revisions have been submitted by Contractor and approved by Client." So, even though it says pay 45 days after you invoice and you can invoice after you have something that's approved, it's essentially not approved if there are edits, and who knows how long those could take to get to you?

Finally, for this clause at least, they acknowledge that you own all other rights - of course, because you didn't sign them away - but they want you to credit Cyberhomes.com any time someone else reuses the work. This has become an often-seen practice that is ridiculous. What if the other publication doesn't want to do it. If you can't get this struck, which is by far the better thing to do, because you shouldn't have such conditions on your own intellectual property, then add that you will use "best efforts" to include it. That way, if another client says no, you haven't lost the sale.

4. Representations and Warranties; Indemnification - The warranties section is actually one of the most reasonably constructed that I've seen, and I don't think you'd need to change a word. There is a problem in the indemnification: "arising in whole or in part from any breach of Contractor’s representations or warranties hereunder." If a problem comes only in part from a breach of the warranties, why should the writer take on all of the financial burden? So strike "or in part".

5. Independent Contractor Relationship - It's fine to say that you are responsible for your own taxes, but not to make the time table on which you file taxes part of this contractual arrangement. What if there was some form you forgot to file? (It takes federal, state, and local into account.) So scratch that part.

6. Confidential Information - I'd want the following language stricken: "Breach of any of such obligations under this section will result in irreparable and continuing damage to Client for which there will be no adequate remedy at law; and, in the event of such breach, Client will be entitled to injunctive relief and/or a decree for specific performance, and such other and further relief as may be proper (including monetary damages if appropriate)." You don't want someone to have the automatic ability to get an injunction, as this is a pretty extraordinary type of remedy. Let them convince a judge.

10. Governing Law - For a long time I've advised against wording that allows automatic recovery of legal fees for the prevailing party of a legal dispute. Some recent experience on my part and discussion with a lawyer now has me thinking quite the opposite. It's far more likely that you'll be the one suing, and so you want to make sure that you get your costs covered. However, there is the danger that if you brought an action and lost, you'd then be liable for their costs.

Exhibit A - Under the "Deadlines and Submissions" section is a requirement to provide source contact info with an article. That would be fine, except they say they'll keep it in a database of source contact info and make it available to anyone they have writing for them. So, if you value your source relationships and arne't interested in making them available for potentially multiple contacts from the publication that might get annoying, you might think twice about doing anything for this site.

Author Reveals Kindle Book Sales

2009-06-12T10:18:00.000-04:00

People have been wondering about actual sales of e-books on the Kindle. JA Konrath was kind enough to do this in significant detail. A few things jump out:

His publisher released a couple of novels. One was at $1.99 each and sold over 10,000 copies in a month. But publishers get 35% of the sale, which would be around $7000. So you can figure that the author's take would be between roughly $700 and $1000. Another title was listed for free. As Konrath is releasing some out-of-print books at very low prices to encourage more readers and is focusing on copies moved, not profit, it sounds as though the publisher did the same.

The publisher actually promoted the books on Amazon, which means that the net for it is likely next to nothing, reinforcing the "get audience members" view.

As previously mentioned, Konrath is selling some of his out-of-print titles, earning $2781.35 in just over two months.

From the little price testing that he's done, at least on the low end there doesn't seem to be a lot of sensitivity, and I get the sense that charing a few dollars per title might work.

With the way things work, for self-sold work, authors set the price and Amazon pays 35% of that, and then might further discount. So raising the price increases your take per copy, and even then Amazon might sell at a lower price to move more units. Effectively, you end up getting a bigger chunk of what the company actually takes in.

Genre seems to trump the strength of the work's listed description, which to me makes sense. To specify genre is to effectively describe the size of the potential audience. Even a killer description of a book of poetry is going to be limited to attracting people who would buy poetry.

Some authors who have never traditionally published are doing as well or better than Konrath, who has had seven book in print.

Publisher releases "vastly" outsell author releases, because the publisher can get better placement from Amazon.

Being active in the Kindle and Amazon social network features and in newsletters seems to be important to success.

If you're a book author, don't depend on this summary and do read his blog entry, becuase there are other things to learn from it.

Round-Up of Google Book Settlement Criticism

2009-06-11T15:08:00.000-04:00

The Department of Justice is showing increasing interest in the settlement between Google, book publishers, and the Authors Guild. And the way debate is shaping up in the publishing community, what had seemed a PR stroke of genius for Google — make use of copyrighted material, wait to get sued, settle, and seem like a hero — seems more likely to turn into an expensive and messy public black eye.

At BNET Media, I have a short summary of the issues.

Brant Pubs Under Fire For "Not Paying Anybody"

2009-06-11T12:35:00.000-04:00

Brant Publications, which produces such titles as Interview and Art in America, has been the brunt of some major criticism by people who’ve claimed that they weren’t getting paid. Now there is corroboration from Glenn O’Brien, who, up until recently, was the company’s editorial director.

Here's the link.

Questions to Ask Helium to Avoid Hot Air

2009-06-09T05:56:00.001-04:00

Michelle Rafter's blog had a couple of guest posts about content aggregator Helium. Tim Beyers warned writers off writing for Helium and Helium new member outreach manager Barbara Whitlock said that writers should.

Being the sometimes practical and often cranky man that I am, I just want to know about the money. Helium announced that it had paid writers more than $1 million since its inception, and half of that in the last six months. That may sound attractive, but the real question is something I like to remember by the clumsy acronym HMWEM, or How Much Will Erik Make?

You see, when it comes to connecting writing and making money, I'm not interested in a good story. I want to see numbers on the page. Looking a bit further into Helium's press release on its million dollar mark, we see the following:

Since 2006, writers have posted 1.25 million articles on 125,000 topics.

Over 1,000 writers have earned more than $100 from their work for Helium.

"Top earners" have made more then $5,000 "in a matter of months."

Let's do the math:

The average story will make 80 cents.

There's no indication I can find about how many "top earners" they have. But according to one mention on helium, there was one person who made $5,000 in six months. He averaged an hour a day, according to the release. That's 30 hours a month for six months, or 180 hours. So, he managed $27.78 an hour in revenue. But apparently there is no other big earner mentioned. Could he be the only one? Also, how many articles did he have to write?
On a "bulk sale" of content, some writers got $5. When you read this in context, it makes it sound like $5 was the high end.

According to the site's press page, there are more than 100,000 writers on the site. So, at the tops mathematically, it's an average of $10 per person.

I understand that Ms. Whitlock wrote, "Helium isn’t a substitute for a full-time job, but it can be combined with other freelance gigs to provide additional revenue. Plus, the freedom to also write what you want is appealing for many." But when put to the HMWEM test, the answer still sounds like nowhere near enough to justify the effort.

Aftermarket Journalism

2009-06-08T14:40:00.000-04:00

I posted something on BNET that I thought readers of this blog might find interesting:

I’ve heard many people insist that the future of traditional news media is to work with aggregators like Google, because they represent a new model of delivering the news. Recently, I noticed a blog post by Jeff Jarvis, which was about the auto industry. Although it may seem off-topic on first thought, it actually isn’t, and the flaws in his argument about cars explain the underlying problem with the “embrace Google” argument.

Rest of the article

NPR's Totenberg Drops Quasi Q-Bomb

2009-06-02T10:44:00.002-04:00

I was surprised when I heard this over the weekend, so ended up writing about it on BNET Media:

There was great linguistic irony on the most recent NPR Weekend Edition Saturday. In an interview with host Scott Simon, legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg said that racism charges leveled at Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over a remark about white male judges would not “queer” the nomination. In discussing a question of whether attitudes are biased, Totenberg used one of the more emotionally loaded words in the English language.

Here's the link to the piece.

Testing a Free Web Plagiarism Finder

2009-06-01T05:39:00.006-04:00

I'm guessing that the combination of "plagiarism finder" and "free" will light up the eyes of many who read this blog. I just learned of a new service called Plagium. Using Yahoo search, it can take a string of text longer than will work in usual search engine front ends and look to see where on the web it might appear. I tested it with one paragraph from an article I had written for a magazine. Plagium turned up copies not only at the company's web site, but at Entrepreneur.com and Allbusiness.com. (Apparently the magazine sold the piece to Gale Group - yes, folks, the problem with magazines selling without permission to the database companies has not gone away, even if that long-standing class action effectively appears to have. Make sure you're registering your copyrights.)

I ran part of the paragraph through Google, which found only the Entrepreneur.com appearnance, and not the one at Allbusiness.com, so even in that one short experiement, Plagium appears to be the better choice.

At first I didn't enter the entire article, but just the one paragraph, thinking that looking for too great a section might identify potential copyright theft more easily than a long block of material, as someone might not have used the entire piece. But then, what if someone dropped the one graph I searched for? So I had Plagium search on all the text, which turned up the same instances.

So I tried something a bit trickier. When a piece I did on Wi-Fi hacking for the New York Times Magazine first came out, a good number of people posted it on various discussion sites, though I didn't know where it might appear any more. So I tried entering the submitted draft, and not the final copy-edited version. The only hits were - at the New York Times. So, Plagium will pick up examples that are close, but not exact.

Then I entered the exact text that the NYTM ran. Suddenly I had more hits, though the added ones were generally a few paragraphs with a link. If you prefer, you can choose to provide a URL for your article's location, rather than copying over the text. I think the latter makes most sense, because you reduce the number of false positives from other things that might be on the page.

Your search generates a graph in which potential infringements are bubbles on a timeline; the larger the bubble, the more likely that it is a copy. If you register with the site, you can have it look for new instances of the article over time, which suggests a smart set of steps:

Write and submit the article.

Finish edits.

Put the article into Plagium.

Find the uses of the article as they happen.

Clearly this can't be your only tool, but it seems like a good one and, at least for now, is free. (Though there is a Donate button, which might be wise to actually use.)

If you're interested, here's a comparison that the site PlagiarismToday (I can't get over that name) ran between Plagium, a paid infringement service called Copyscape, and Google itself. In this case, Google seemed to do far and away better, but the author says that there seemed to be a lot of duplication.

6 Lessons From Using Twitter

2009-05-28T07:25:00.001-04:00

I've been experimenting with Twitter over the last six months (@ErikSherman) and have learned a few things:

Every form of social media has its own way of working. Don't assume that what you've seen work on one will necessarily work on another.

If you can figure out the rules for a given type of social medium (and many who pontificate over what works and what doesn't don't actually know, so far as I can tell), it might work for you. But what you want may have to come indirectly. For example, endlessly tooting your own promotional message on Twitter (or anywhere else, come to think of it) quickly gets tiring for the audience.

Generally, what works involves providing things of interest to an audience and some of your personality, within reason.

You don't have to live on Twitter to use it. Smart judicious use is much better than a torrent of mistakes.

If you're going to post links, do so using bit.ly or some other URL shortening service that will let you track clickthroughs. You want to try seeing what works and what doesn't.

Clickthroughs can be low - really low. As in 1 or 2 percent of the people
seeing a message. However, they can at times be much higher. I recently got over 900 clickthroughs to one of my articles in a single day. That is far beyond anything I had seen before, and I don't have a huge number of people following me. I attribute it to a topic that interested many, a headline that had some life to it ("Stop the Facebook Valuation Madness!"), and adding appropriate hashtags.

If you're active and say things that people find interesting, you'll get more followers. In the last six months, I've gained 525 followers without following the "official rules." For example, I follow only a fraction back (and say so in my profile) and don't thank everyone for following when they do. Yet I think my approach of following what interests me and trying to post things that will interest others is working, because that way the messages are essentially about them, not me. And I want to develop an approach that could work should things continue to scale.

Why Readers Deserve No Journalism

2009-05-21T09:35:00.000-04:00

There’s been a buzz in journalistic circles about media economist Professor Robert Picard’s claim that reporters deserve low pay. Although he makes some good points, his line of argument is largely flawed. I posted a detailed response at BNET Media that you might find interesting.

Dan Baum on Magazine Proposals

2009-05-18T06:59:00.003-04:00

The Renegade Writer has a good interview with former New Yorker writer Dan Baum. Much of the talk is what it takes to write for the bigger name magazines,and if you want to get into the likes of Wired, Rolling Stone, or Playboy, it's worth the read. So are some actual proposals that Baum used, both successfully and not.

I would take some of the things he says with a grain of salt, and not just because the New Yorker wouldn't renew his contract. In the proposal about a Mexican government official, he noted that the New Yorker never responds on ideas it doesn't like and he mentioned John Bennet, who was an editor there for years. However, when Bennet was on a panel I moderated on narrative nonfiction, he mentioned that any editor should tell you whether an idea was potentially interesting or not within two weeks, and that if they didn't, the writer should touch base. Personally, I had received a rejection or two from Bennet, so know that the New Yorker will say no.

Second, he says that length and detail are key to get assignments. But I remember getting an assignment from the New York Times Magazine from a query that ran a few graphs in an email. I think the lesson is get in the detail that will grab the editor, but that amount can vary.

Another interesting point is that he talks about a 5,000-word LA Times assignment paying $5K and being work for two to three weeks. If it's closer to three, suddenly those big, time-consuming assignments may not sound quite so appealing, unless they pay significantly better than a buck a word. Clearly some of these big name magazines pay a lot more, but you also have to consider how many you can get in a year. Baum says that he can't get work these days. The lesson is that planning a writing business is more complex than "I'll write for the biggies" or "I do big-name consumer" and probably requires more project diversity than ever before.

Seven Tips on Using Twitter Hash Tags

2009-05-11T05:22:00.002-04:00

I'm no expert in Twitter, but I've learned a few things in the last few months, and one thing is the importance of learning how to work with hash tags. When you see something like #topic, someone is flagging the post for people who might be interested in "topic." Hash tags can become a powerful way to use Twitter, whether you're looking to promote your work, find sources, or even just get a sense of what people are discussing. So here are some pointers that you might find helpful:

If you're promoting something you've written via Twitter, be sure to add all the relevant hash tags you can think that might apply (and that fit within the 140 characters). That will get the post in front of potentially thousands of people who might be interested.

Don't assume that all hash tags will work. You want to search on a hash tag before you use it, to be sure that it's in general use. On the Twitter site, point your browser to search.twitter.com and type in the hash tag (remembering the # in front) and see what comes up. If nothing does, you know it doesn't make sense to waste the characters on that one. If you're using a software app like TweetDeck, then take the appropriate steps to search on the hash tag.

When you've found a hash tag that gets attention, start going through the posts, not only to be sure that you're directing your message appropriately, but to see what other hash tags people use in their messages. This will generally suggest other tags that you might consider yourself.

If the topics you cover vary, then keep a spreadsheet or word processing document with potential tags to use. If you're working in few enough predictable areas, group them together, so you have the hash tags for a parenting story or the ones for your pieces on scuba diving.

Check out hashtags.org. You can look at trends in hash tag use, see who is using them, and even find a directory of hash tags. The trend info is not only useful for marketing, but for looking at the state of the virtual zeitgeist, which then becomes fodder for topics you might pitch or for evidence to an editor that something is cooking and that an article on the topic might be just the thing to assign.

Confused about exactly what a tag is supposed to mean? You can use Tagalus or Hashtag Reference might help. They let you search to see if there's a definition that's been assigned to the tag and, if there isn't one, you can create one.

Be smart about how you incorporate hash tags. If you're using the term in your post, include the hash there instead of repeating the term and wasting characters. For example, you could write "read a good #book" instead of "read a good book #book".

Poor Mistreated Ancient Roman Authors

2009-04-22T17:40:00.001-04:00

This is just a link to a piece that should bring a wry smile to your face if you've ever complained about the publishing industry. It's at least as old as ancient Rome:

Like Martial, most Roman writers knew that the profits of their writing ended up in the pockets of the booksellers, who often combined retail trade with a copying business — and so were, in effect, publishers and distributors too. At best, the author received only a lump sum from the seller for the rights to copy his work (though once the text was “out,” there was no way of stopping pirated copies). Horace, the tame poet of the emperor Augustus, made the obvious comparison: booksellers were the rich pimps of Roman publishing and authors, or even the books themselves, were the hard-working but humiliated prostitutes. He refers to his slim volume of poetry being “on the game, all tarted up with the cosmetics of Sosius & Co.,” his publishers. Not that Horace did so badly from his writing. In the absence of royalties he was, like most of the best-known authors in Rome, taken under the wing of a patron. In fact, Maecenas, Augustus’ unofficial minister of culture, set him up in a house.

Definitely worth a read.

Are Print Ads More Valuable Than Online? It Depends

2009-04-21T05:41:00.000-04:00

Given the number of "studies" I've seen that claim to show the "superiority" of print over online, I've gotten a sense of desperation on the part of publishers. (And given their financial results and dropping ad revenue, no wonder.) The latest has some interesting data:

Among Web users, nearly two-thirds (63%) of banner ads were not seen. Respondents' eyes "passed over" 37% of the Internet ads and "stopped" on slightly less than a third, McPheters & Co. found.

In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled. Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value.

Here are the major findings from the press release issued by the market research firm that undertook the study:

Within a half hour, magazines effectively delivered more than twice the number of ad impressions as TV and more than 6 times those delivered online.
Though TV doesn't deliver as many ads per half hour as do magazines, net recall of TV ads was almost twice that of magazine ads; magazines in turn had ad recall almost three times that of Internet banner ads.

85% of Internet ads served appeared on-screen and could be identified by brand.

Among web users, 63% of banner ads were not seen. Respondents' eyes passed over 37% of the Internet ads and stopped on slightly less than a third.

For Internet ads, almost all net recall could be attributed to ads that were seen.

Internet video ads appeared much less frequently than banner ads, and their exposure skewed heavily towards young men. When they did appear they were twice as likely to be seen as banner ads.

In my experience I definitely avoid looking at banner ads. But there are some enormous suppositions and biases here:

The report does mention online vehicles other than banner ads, but only mentions video ads as appearing less frequently than banner ads and skewing heavily toward young men. But that is one of the most desired demographics for marketers. And, apparently, it didn't seem to measure text ads, which are surely the most prevelant form of online marketing today.

Recalling an ad is not necessarily the same as ad effectiveness. Consider the famous example of the hilarious Alka Seltzer ad series from the sixties. They had huge recall, but the company dropped them because no one remembered the product, just the humor. Also, if you find an ad irritating, is there any transference of that feeling toward the manufacturer?

Although it may be in the study, I don't see any mention of the intent of the ad. Was it meant to sell product? Recall doesn't show whether people buy, or even if they become more inclined to favor the mentioned brand.

Where is the audience spending its time? Even if magazine and television ads are more effective in a more extensive way than recall, is that the medium that consumers prefer to consume? If they read news and watch video online, then placing ads in print and on television starts reaching a smaller audience.

That last point has another implication: cost. Print and television ads cost more to run than online ads. So how much does it cost to acquire and maintain a customer? That must be part of the equation, particularly when budgets are constrained.

And now for the really big point, in my opinion. Conde Nast and CBS Vision (described by CBS as a new research initiative to explore changes and opportunities in the media marketplace) sponsored the study. I've generally found that sponsored studies almost always mean that the results are only released when they support the underlying goals of the corporate sponsors. For example, can you imagine a drug company backing a study showing that a cheap alternative to an expensive prescription medicine was superior?

But publishers and broadcasters all claim to be interested in online as a medium. (Disclosure: I cover high tech for BNET, which is owned by CBS Interactive.) But this clearly delivers the impression that the sponsors are interested in having older media -- which deliver more ad revenue and profit -- shown to be superior to online. In other words, it's the old dog at the media companies trying to kill off the upstart medium, with the Internet still a business toddler compared to print and broadcast. How are the media companies ever going to make the transition they say is coming if they do everything in their power to defeat it? This is why tech companies like Google and Amazon, which are big in online advertising and media, are likely to be the real winners in the media wars. They aren't spending significant resources and time trying to debunk the very businesses they say they are anxious to establish.

Using Twitter for Non-Hype Reasons

2009-04-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

If you're a working writer and not already using Twitter, you should really consider trying it - not for the ooooh-I'm-gonna-get-famous reaction that many seem to have, but for some solid reasons:

You can have useful conversations with peers. I just tried the weekly Twitter gathering called #editorchat and found it interesting, and noticed that Wall Street Journal senior technology editor Julia Angwin will be a guest host this coming week, 4/22, from 8:30pm to 10pm eastern. (Learn more about it at the Editorchat blog.) There is also a chat called #journ2journ for journalists and an occasional one called #queryday, during which book agents and editors (one of my favorite book editors, Michele Wells at McGraw-Hill, was active in the last one) will offer tips and answer general questions about what makes pitches and proposals successful. A little investment in time can deliver valuable information not easily garnered any other way. For example, do you know how comparisons between a proposed book and existing titles differ from how new/previous comparisons of scripts and concepts comparisons are used in the movie industry? I do, now.
Promoting a Twitter presence seems to be much easier than promoting other types of online activity, like a blog, if you're interested in building an audience. For example, I find myself with 345 followers since mid-December -- not a remarkable number, but given that I haven't lifted a finger to gain attention other than putting my Twitter link (@ErikSherman) in a Twitter journalist directory and on my BNET profile, it's also not bad. Consider how long it might take for you to get 345 subscribers to a blog for perspective.
Twitter does not have to be the time sink that many assume it automatically is. I spend a few minutes a day posting links to stories that I've written and that I think will have some wide interest, pointing to interesting tweets from people I follow, or simply posting some strange thought that comes to me, and occasionally check what others are posting. That isn't a reason to use it so much as an explanation that what may seem a barrier doesn't have to be.
This becomes an easy way to keep in periodic touch with a number of colleagues and gain some of the interactivity you might have if working in a newsroom and tossing remarks over the walls.
You can learn of things that otherwise might not have come to your attention. (Here's one that I had retweeted, meaning a link passed on from someone else: the financial reality of being a New York Times top 20 bestselling author.
This I pass on from having heard it from other journalists, though I haven't used it myself: you can find sources by looking for people with particular backgrounds or in specific situations.
Depending on who you follow, Twitter can be, as they say in my neck of the woods, wicked amusing. If you avoid the people overly intent on promoting themselves and focuses on those who let some of their personality and humor through, you can get see some great insights and get a few laughs in the process.

It's definitely worth trying, and free to boot. During this week I'll be posting a Twitter tip or two that I've learned -- and if you have any yourself, please email me, and I can put unique ones together into a separate post.

What Makes a Good PR Pitch

2009-04-16T00:55:00.000-04:00

I got involved in an online discussion of PR pitches. Here's my take on what PR people ought to know about how to construct a pitch. For those who might come across this and don't know me, I’m a working freelance journalist, both blogging an in print, and used to work in marketing years ago. A good 90 to 95 percent of pitches I receive are atrocious and suffer immediate deletion. I almost never find something of value in a pitch because they are so rarely put together in a useful way. Here are some suggestions:

Write no more than a paragraph. If you can’t get the basic idea across in that space, you either write badly or, more likely, don’t understand what you’re pitching. A journalist can always ask for more information. This also keeps a pitch from droning on.
Try to put yourself in the journalist’s shoes and consider what is actually newsworthy, not what the client thinks is newsworthy. You work for the client, but you have to interest the reporter. If you don’t have an angle that I would actually consider as a story - an angle that focused on how I write and what my readers are looking for - then you’re wasting your time and mine. For me, at least, an effective news hook is almost never “my client wants to announce something.” Like any good marketing, it has to be all about the audience, not the sponsor.
Cut the buzzwords. They are unnecessary.
Only pitch when there’s something to pitch. Don’t ask me to read a release that you created as a billing exercise.
Don’t send big attachments without asking first.
If you write a release, use the old inverted pyramid construction from traditional newspaper and wire reporting. First graph has the basic news. Additional graphs expand it. Don’t try to come up with an enticing lead and leave the journalist in suspense for several graphs. I can’t tell you how many times I trash releases because someone is making me spend my time teasing out what is essentially a sales pitch. I generally don't have the patience to even follow long enough to find the actual message.
Never call me unless you know me particularly well and I’ve said it’s OK. Don’t send me a tweet, don’t send surface mail (unless I know you and said it’s OK) - just a single graph in an email. You might be surprised at how effective it can be.
If you’re sending something cold, simply don’t expect a response. I always respond when I’ve got a pitch out on Profnet or HARO, but often lack time to compose answers to all the pitches that I *haven’t* asked for.

Hope someone out there finds this useful.

Measuring Your Business II

2009-04-14T08:30:00.000-04:00

I've written before about metrics, or the use of measurement to better run your business. If you already calculated your lowest hourly rate, track cash flow, and follow the other numbers to know what is happening, it may be time to start looking at less obvious but still useful things to measure. This is probably easiest to point out with an example.

In some recent online discussions with other writers, I've noticed that many point to soft benefits, or gut feel reasons they make given decisions. For example, with a nod to my minor rant yesterday about low pay, people give many reasons for taking such assignments. Aside from the see-how-much-I-make-an-hour argument, there are other common reasons that writers give:

A client is "nice" to work with.
The client brings me assignment topics and I don't have to query.
I find the work interesting.
I have a book out and am doing a free piece to promote myself.
I'm building a reputation that will pay off in the future.
I'm building an audience.
I'm getting a foot in the door on a new area of work.

Any of these can certainly be a factor in your decision of whether to work with a given client or not, because I'd hope that a writing business would be about more than just money. However, it's possible to bring in numbers and analyze at least some of these rationales more carefully.

Take having a client come to you with an assignment, saving you from having to query. This is certainly a benefit, but one that can be calcualted. You know from experience that it would have taken X hours to get the work, between researching an idea, creating a query, and doing the assignment dance. (And if you've never calculated this, it might be worth your explicitly adding up all time. You might be surprised, either at it being less or more than you expected.)

If you multiple that time by your calcualted billing rate (the amount you need to bill to make the money you need), then there is a cost savings of $Y. That means you can coldbloodedly compare the cost of the time saved and the discount $D that a client wants. So long as $Y is greater than $D, you are making more money for your time than you otherwise would have and opening more time in your schedule for something else, like approaching prospects about work. In fact, if $Y is big enough compared to $D, you might be able to even discount off your normal billing rate and still come out ahead financially. On the other hand, if $D is greater than $Y, then you know you're making less money than you would have had you invested time into a query. This lets you make a more informed decision as to the client's value to you. Your gut decision might be smart, or you might be doing something that feels right but that doesn't pan out when examined dispassionately.

This is why smart business executives focus on getting the information they consider necessary to make decisions. It often is only 10 to 12 factors, but it helps them know where the company is going.

In a similar vein, if you are a book author, you can work with a publisher to track book sales and look for an obvious uptick after a free article. If you haven't sold enough books as a result so the royalty more than makes up the time you spent preparing the article, then your marketing tactic may not be paying off. I say "may not" because this gets complicated. The benefit of increased sales is partly the ability to get future book assignments, so more sales today might help you tomorrow. And some will argue that you don't that the article won't attract more sales over time. Nevertheless, if the sales are up enough to help with selling a publisher on you, you're probably going to also see a significant increase in royalties, as both are directly correlated to the number of copies sold. And if the article is to act as a direct response medium, then the bulk of sales will happen within a short amount of time. If you find yourself arguing that you can't know for months what the full impact might be, I'd point you to a story my mother told me of the Truman-Dewey election, and a television commentator who, in the face of mounting evidence that Truman would win, kept saying, "But we still have to hear from the rural districts."

When considering whether to take a low-paying assignment ($L) because you like the topic or the editor, you know what a normally paying assignment for you would run ($N). Look at the difference between $N and $L ($N - $L = $D); that is the amount of revenue that you would have received for a regular assignment, but that you are giving up. Now you can decide if the opportunity cost is worth the pleasure, because you're now paying $D, by lowering your revenue, to take it.

You take a low-paying assignment to gain expertise in a topic that is new to you. Again, you can look at $D, the difference between what you are getting and what you would ordinarily get. Only in this case, you are opening a door to new areas of work. If those new areas at least meet your normally billing, then you've increased the potential number of clients. That provides a number of benefits. One is spreading your income among more clients and reducing your reliance on any single one. Maybe the share of your revenue that the average client represents goes from 15 percent to 10 percent. Should a client go under, that's 5 percent less income you need to immediately make up, making the investment in the low-paying article a cheap form of insurance.

Is a client high maintenance? You can measure the amount of time you spend versus the revenue you see. Take all the revenue and divide it by all the time the client takes up (including your ranting about the client to online forums, your colleagues, or those ever patient four walls of your office) to find the effective hourly profitability. If that number is greater than or equal to your normal billing rates, then keeping the client makes financial sense. (Though replacing the client with one that is less enervating can keep the profit while increasing your satisfaction, which might be even smarter.) Time spent chasing down money and the time value lost in late payments are other numbers you can consider.

In short, although I agree that some aspects of a business, like measuring the long term effectiveness of a marketing tactic, may not easily reduce to figures, there are many times in running your business that using numbers can help. And those numbers can help you avoid assumption-based decisions that can, at times, end up hurting you.

Why Low Pay Is Bad Pay, No Matter What the Hourly Rate

2009-04-13T05:15:00.000-04:00

I recently saw another discussion on a writers' board about pay rates and whether it matters for periodical writers how low the amount per word is so long as you can do the work fast enough. That argument may be fine for the occasional piece, but it doesn't hold up over the long run for a few reasons.

I've written about one of the reasons before, the overhead inherent to obtaining, scheduling, and managing assignments, comparing long assignments to shorts:

But say that you are accurately monitoring your time. Why not then do a lot of shorts to make your income? Because there's another consideration - the time for marketing, billing, and overhead. If you make $500 for a short, then four of them pay as much as one 2000 word article paying $1/word. The amount of writing time might even be comparable. However, figure that a 500 word piece really needs two to three sources to come across as sold. You're now booking 8 to 12 interviews, versus the 6 or 7 that might be all you need for the longer piece. That means more time interviewing and scheduling your time.

You're also going to spend about as much time writing a query for a short as you would for a longer piece, plus you have to generate the ideas and pitch editors. So your marketing and sales time has just quadrupled. If you make a lot of your income from shorts, then you're probably spending many more of your hours marketing, interviewing, managing your time, and billing (and collecting). Now you see the real drawback - not the hourly rate, but the time you must invest to do enough shorts to make a living.

Instead of shorts, substitute low-paying assignment and the point is even more applicable. Not only is there the overhead, but, presumably, you still have to do a credible job on what might be running 1,500, 2,000, or more words.

That leads me to my other major point, which, I'm sure, will tick off some people. To make money at a low rate, you generally have to cut corners. You don't undertake the extra interviews and research, put in the extra draft and polishing, nor do the other things that let you create better pieces. I know this because much of the language I hear from those who tout the high hourly figures of their low pay rates is how they "knock these assignments off."

If you're depending on speed to make a good hourly rate to make up a bad word rate, then you'll have to cut corners eventually. That's because the client doesn't value the higher level of work enough to pay for it, and you can't provide it without subsidizing that work out of your own earnings pocket. But if you do too much of this, then all of your clips are of those 1,000 word pieces with one or two sources, which are probably not going to get you the higher paying work because it's not just about how well you write, but how well and how thoroughly you research and report. On those occasions when I assign and edit, I wouldn't consider someone whose samples were filled with pieces like that, because I assume that the person isn't willing to make the effort to do something better. In the past, I've found that when someone has spent time wanting to quickly get articles done and get out the door, they start to lose the work ethic necessary to produce higher quality results.

For those who want to disagree, start by asking yourself how many sources you use for a normally reported piece (not a Q&A). The lower the number, the less you bring to an article, and no amount of clever writing can make that up. And those who stress that they make money with low-paying assignments should look at two figures: their annual income and the percentage that these low-paying assignments represent of their total assignments. All the writers I know who make reasonable amounts of money (enough to support you and your family if necessary) focus on higher paying work and not rationalizing why low pay is really not that bad.