Are You a Sweatshop Writer?

Yesterday, I logged into Craigslist and came across this little gem of of a job post:

I am looking to hire an online content writer to write 400-450 word articles for $1 each. I will send the writer 5 articles a day, equalling a total of 35 articles each week, and the articles must be done on the same day. I will pay when the articles are accepted by the client via Paypal, which will take about 3-5 days. When I receive the article, I also get all rights to that article…

I expect each article to be free of grammatical errors, and to be written in native English.

And please, please, don’t all apply at once.

There are many types of clients and jobs out here. Some clients want real quality work, and they don’t mind paying a fair rate or allowing the writer to take a little extra time to turn out the best results possible.

Others jobs, like the one above, are content sweatshops.

Sweatshop writers are not meant to create anything of value; instead, their hastily written articles are designed to bamboozle search engines and lure unsuspecting, would-be customers. Sometimes these articles are no more than keywords lazily lumped together.

Of course, the Craigslist job poster above wants more than your standard content slop; he expects “each article to be free of grammatical errors and written in native English.” I’m glad he has some standards, but considering the dollar-per-piece stipulation, his high demands also make him sound like a bit of a douche. Writing takes time. Editing–really editing–takes extra time. Does this guy honestly expect a writer to do all of that for a dollar a pop?

Unfortunately, in this economy, someone probably will take the job, and be glad to get it. I wonder how many people actually responded to that ad with interest. Two? Five? Ten? Lordy lord, I hope it’s not more than ten.

When I first got into the freelance writing business, I was occasionally tempted to take gigs like this. Luckily, my husband was there to advise that I steer clear; after all, he’d say, if you’re willing to write for peanuts, that’s what you’ll get.

“But,” I would argue. “I’m new at this. I can’t afford to be too picky.”

“Sure you can’t,” he’d reply. “There are good clients out there. But you’ll never find them if you’re always working terrible jobs.”

I admitted he was right. New to the game though I was, I learned to avoid content sweatshops.

Fellow writers, hear my plea: However desperate your situation may be, please, please, do not accept jobs like this.  Clients that are not willing to pay a fair price for your services are not worth your time.

“But,” you might argue, as I once did. “Who’s to say if a price is fair?”

Fair is minimum wage or above. That’s fair.

If we all agree not to settle for a dollar per article, clients will pay more if they want our services badly enough. But we must stand strong.

Luckily, at least one person on Craigslist understands what I’m talking about. Scrolling down the page, I soon noticed a much more entertaining post:

I will pay you $1 American for every horribly researched, poorly written 400-word article you can produce for my content mill. If you can type 40 words per minute — without stopping for silly things like research, proofreading or going to the bathroom — you can make $6 an hour! (Payable via Paypal at least 10 days after we’ve published your work, which we will then own and reuse, over and over again, forever.) Please help us make the Internet a cesspool of useless information intended solely to trick Google into sending people to sites where they can buy stupid crap.

(YES IT’S A JOKE. BUT AREN’T ALL OF THESE CONTENT WRITER ADS?)

Thank you, anonymous poster. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Make Our Day

Lots of couples share hobbies.

This morning, Ted and I added a new one to our repertoire.

A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses (one well-dressed young woman who speaks like a grade school teacher, and one stocky young man who quietly stands well behind the front stoop) have been coming to our door off and on for the past six months. I probably could have nipped this in the bud a long time ago by politely telling them we weren’t interested, but apparently that’s not my style. When they first came I told them that we weren’t religious, but that they were welcome to leave some literature for us to look through. After all, I go online all the time and read up on religious arguments, so it seemed counterproductive to turn away one that was staring me right in the face–and at my own front door, no less.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses must have interpreted my curiosity for actual interest in their specific brand of religion, because they’ve stopped in at least twice since to follow up. For me this was becoming old hat, but this morning was the first time that Ted was also home for their visit.

There probably aren’t too many husband-and-wife teams on our block that go to the door together in situations like this. Indeed, the Jehovah’s Witnesses seemed a bit put off when they saw that they’d be dealing with two of us at once.

This time, the well-dressed young woman was accompanied by a well-dressed older woman with a thick accent (maybe Russian?) and a persistent smile.  When we asked why she believed in god, she first pointed to the complexities of the galaxy.

“Isn’t it impressive,” she said. “That there are millions of stars and planets in the universe, and yet they don’t crash into each other?”

“I can give you a very good scientific explanation for that,” Ted replied. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Well, um.” The woman appeared taken aback. “It wouldn’t change my mind.”

And that’s a pretty accurate microcosm of the entire conversation.

In the end, of course, no minds were changed on either side. But I’m proud to say that we never asked the Jehovah’s Witnesses to leave; they eventually ended the conversation because they were “sweating” (most likely this was from the summer heat, but I draw some pleasure from the possibility that they may have been sweating it out over our intensive, tag team theology match).

So, along with puzzles, bike riding, and watching Dexter, “verbal sparring with the Watchtower Society” can now be added to the list of things we do as a couple.

If the Jehovah’s Witnesses decide to come back, I think next time I’ll invite them in for a cup of tea…

Love, Marriage, and Facebook: How One of Those Things Can Apparently Ruin the Others

Recently, I came across this personal story of a marriage that fell apart when a wife rekindled a long-lost love on Facebook. According to the unnamed author:

Last February, [my wife] called me at work in the morning to ask if I could meet her for lunch, and I agreed…We met at our favorite lunch spot, and she told me her news. She had reconnected with her high school sweetheart and had fallen so in love with him that she could not help herself. Suffice it to say, I was devastated beyond words.

Considering the breakup of an eight year marriage, complete with the loss of the seven-year-old twin boys he now only sees every other weekend, no one could blame the author for feeling just a tad bit bitter.

But take a few minutes to read the whole piece, and you’ll find that a sense of anger and bitterness towards the wife–the one who actually chose another man over her husband–is conspicuously absent. Instead, social networking bears the brunt of the blame:

…I am bitter toward Facebook and will never subscribe to this home-wrecking evil! Facebook is the accomplice that assisted in disintegrating my family. Whoever said Facebook does not break marriages, and people do, well, “they” were dead wrong, as far as I’m concerned. Facebook in my opinion is hazardous and toxic to any love relationship, and my only regret is that I didn’t insist that my wife ditch her account as soon as she opened it!

Harsh words there, buddy. I’ve been on Facebook for just over three years–longer than the length of my marriage–and I’ve yet to use the site as a tool for cheating. My husband is also on Facebook (as a web designer, he’s all over the Internet) and call me naive, but I don’t see any cause for alarm.

It’s not that these concerns have never crossed my mind. Just yesterday, I clicked on my husband’s Facebook page and saw that his high school girlfriend had recently posted on his wall. The message was completely harmless (of course, if this girl DID want to want to make a move on my husband, it’s unlikely she’d post about it publicly), but I’ll admit to a fleeting moment of insecurity and suspicion. After all, this girl and I have a lot in common: we’re both writers, we’ve both worked as English teachers, we’re both small, cute girls with dark eyes and dark hair.  So why would my husband want to be with ME when she’s basically the same person–and she’s got the nostalgia factor? What’s the sense in that, I ask you?

What if my husband and this girl were still burning for each other after all these years?  Would Facebook really be the worst of my problems? Sure, I could demand that my husband stay off all social-networking sites, and I might be able to eliminate all clear, convenient paths to his old flame.  But is it really in either of our best interests for our marriage to stay together, just because his high school girlfriend hasn’t dropped into his lap?

To say that Facebook is most responsible for the end of a marriage is to say that the people involved are no more than wind-up toys, set into motion by outside circumstances, absolved of all accountability.  Are we, as a culture, so weak in our marriages that we can’t be blamed when attractive members of the opposite sex throw themselves at us? Or can a person not pledge, from his wedding day onward, that building a life with his chosen spouse will forever take priority over sowing his wild oats with a flashy new(or old)comer?

I have pledged that.  Ted has, too–and I believe he meant it.

The author’s wife, however, had a very different set of priorities, and it would take some serious tunnel vision to blame Facebook for her negative choices. The author himself admits that his wife, “had never really stopped loving her high school sweetheart,” and goes on to add, “I guess I was just her consolation prize.”

And yet, Facebook is the true villain here. Really, guy? If Facebook had never existed, you’d be happy to go on being the consolation prize?

Perhaps, if the author had insisted that his wife “ditch her account as soon as she opened it,” she might have stayed in a lukewarm marriage with her second choice husband. Either that, or she might have left him for being overly-suspicious and controlling. Infidelity within marriage is an old concept–as old, apparently, as blaming the failure of a marriage primarily on outside sources. Perhaps this is easier to face than the realization that one’s marriage wasn’t all he or she thought it was in the first place.

Of course, I’ve only been married about two years, so only time will tell if Ted and I can truly avoid road bumps such as these. In the meantime, would anyone out there care to sound off? Is Facebook really to blame in this case? Or was this marriage doomed before the wife created her Facebook profile and password?

Quit Whining and Just DO It, Already!

I’m a complainer. Luckily, my husband is not.

When times get tough, I have occasionally had the tendency to sit and stew for a little while. When a copy job falls through or a client demands an additional, completely unnecessary rewrite for no additional pay, I might resort to an intense, one-person brainstorming session of “Uggghhh…why does this happen to me?” And then, “I don’t know what to do.”

When I bring my husband, Ted, in on these sessions, they typically become shorter. That’s because he always responds with, “Well, do SOMETHING.”

And I always wonder why I didn’t think of that.

Ted is not one to beat around the bush, play games, or sit around thinking of reasons NOT to accomplish his goals.  On the first day we met, for example, instead of coming up with some lame excuse to ask for my phone number, he came right out and asked me for a date. I knew right then that this was not a man who would watch his hopes and dreams slip away while he sat whining about what to do.  On that day I not only scored a date with a great guy, but also learned an important lesson about plunging ahead and going after the things I want. Pretty good deal all the way around, I’d say.

Ted and I have been working together off and on since we first began dating over seven years ago. At that time I was an English major working in an artsy, low-paying theater job—the kind that a person should only do out of love. I, unfortunately, did not love the job, and I soon found that working a hated job for very little pay is just a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

I was also a writer. I knew I had talent, but I had no idea what to do with it. I also knew about the Internet, but had never put it together that all those websites actually had to be written by someone.

Ted was the first one to clue me in on this. He had a couple of small design projects going, and needed to dress the pages with web content.

“Someone’s got to write it,” he said. “And you’re a great writer. Why not you?”

“Why not me,” I agreed. And we’ve been a team ever since.

As one might imagine, it’s not always easy to work with a spouse. Many people prefer to keep their personal and professional lives separate. Luckily, Ted and I have never balked at the idea of running a business together. Ted is an accomplished web developer and designer; I am an ambitious writer and proofreader.  As in real life, we compliment each other well.

In writing this blog, I plan to explore and discuss marriage: the concept in general, as well as ours in particular.  And I plan to examine, specifically, the perils, pitfalls, and pleasures that arise when working with one’s spouse.

As with any marriage, I’m sure there will be smiles and tears. Loud laughter, but sometimes loud arguing as well.  An ordinary couple has plenty to both celebrate and fight about; when you also work together, you add a whole other element to an already complicated situation.

Us in a nutshell: one dreamy, passionate complainer, and one cynical, stubborn go-getter who never could stomach wasting time on bad ideas.

As I said, we compliment each other well.