People used to say that content was king. Amid the recent upheaval in mass media, Time Magazine recently demoted content to a pauper. But an article in the current issue of Wired makes me think Time set the bar too high. Content — or at least content creators — may be headed for serfdom.
The story is about Demand Media, a privately-held Web company that will earn $200 million in revenues this year producing thousands upon thousands of content bits using a combination of algorithms and freelancers.
The algorithms sift through search terms to anticipate what people might want to know; determine whether there is a glut or surfeit of content in that regard; then estimates the likely revenue-potential of that content through pay per click advertising.
Human freelance editors turn these machine-generated leads into topics that are posted on a work board (Wired author Daniel Roth says, “It’s the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot.”) Freelancers claim the topics. Short how-to articles may be worth $15. Brief videos $20.
As the article says, Demand Media has discovered that “online content is not worth very much.”
Surely that bodes ill for content creators.
Content creators need to boycott wholesale below-minimum-wage parasites like Demand Media. Being worth something is, to some extent, a choice.
Pretty dismal view of my chosen profession! But day laborers have not squeezed out highly skilled specialty workers from the construction market. In the same way, I think there will always be work for the writers with more refined skills.
While anybody can certainly create content, can they create quality content that sells? And even if they can create passable copy, there are so many types of writing that will still need to be done that I don’t see the profession as a whole becoming as least-common-denominator as you fear.
I think the key to survival for writers, as with any profession, is to keep honing skills, remain diversified enough that not all your eggs are in one basket, and keep educating yourself on cutting-edge trends and techniques.
I don’t worry about the so-called “content providers” who will write for $15 an article. Quality will tell – it always does. I’m moving away from writing, except for some of my favored clients, but I know I’ll always command a decent rate. Why? Because I not only possess the ability to write fairly well, but also can take a complex topic and write it in a manner that makes sense to the reader. Those $15-a-story copywriters? Well, I can tell they were hired by the web equivalent of the Dollar Store — and so will the website owner’s customers and clients.
Interesting article. I think we’ll see a hybrid approach to online content.
I’ve worked with a mix of content providers and freelance writers over the years. There’s a definite need for bulk content from providers who can turn out keyword-rich copy fast and on a budget (for landing pages, etc.), and there’s also a need for feature-style writing at times.
While I do agree that content companies like DemandMedia (and many more) will continue to prosper, online editors usually keep a list of dependable freelancers on hand over the years.
And hey, let’s give the writers working for content providers some love too. Everyone starts somewhere. There is no lack of space of the Web (yet), so it’s good to have a little bit of everything