I decide to take a ten-minute break to check my feed reader and now I’m compelled to write a blog post that I don’t really have time to write.
My motivation: Why Writers Should Avoid Third-Party Article Brokers, by Angela Hoy of Writer’s Weekly.
Her basic argument is that people shouldn’t write for third-party content brokers because (a) some of them don’t pay well and (b) some of them have ripped off writers. She also doesn’t like the idea/fantasy that someone is getting paid $500 and then only giving the writer $5 of the take.
That’s the reasoning that supports a title like Why Writers Should Avoid Third-Party Article Brokers. I’m amazed.
Based on that very same logic, no one should ever write for an individual client, either. After all, some people don’t pay others a great deal and some of them actually screw writers.
For that matter, her reasoning would also support the idea that no one should ever write for a traditional publisher. Angela Hoy knows better than anyone that those publishers can rip people off. She runs a regular “Whispers and Warnings” feature designed to out the bad guys and she never seems to have a shortage of targets.
If you don’t write for third-party brokers, you don’t write for individual clients and you can’t trust publishers, what can you possibly do? Oh, I know. You can self-publish. Isn’t it convenient that Ms. Hoy just so happens to run a POD self-publishing company! 
I don’t know if that was part of her motivation for the article, but it’s hard to resist noticing how nicely it fits. Anyway…
The only way her argument could possibly have any merit is if she had some credible evidence that third-party brokers were more likely to be evil than people working in traditional publishing or individuals/companies directly hiring writers. If she has that evidence, I’d like to see it. I don’t think it exists. She has some anecdotal reporting and says that she’s hearing these stories more often. That’s not enough for me.
Even if she did have evidence that content brokers were statistically more likely to rip people off, she’d also need to demonstrate that it was hard for the kind of intelligent writers who visit her site to differentiate between probable thieves and honest brokers. I trust her readers to spot the bad apples.
Full disclosure: Part of my business involves assembling teams of freelance writers to produce content for those who need it. That makes me a third-party content broker. My company is currently merging with another established content broker. I’m not going to speak for my future partners or anyone else in this business but I can tell you that:
(a) I’ve never asked for a “free sample” from anyone,
(b) I treat everyone involved in the projects with respect and am clear and honest about pricing up-front,
(c) everyone who’s worked on an Ad Astra Traffic project has been paid in full and
(d) that my margin on these jobs is significantly less than most people would ever guess. I don’t make $500 per unit and then get the orders filled at $5 a pop. The margin is usually between 15% and 20% and that’s not unreasonable. After all, I hustle up the work, handle quality control, manage client interaction, and bear the risk in case the client doesn’t pony up.
I do think that Ms. Hoy would object to some of the rates offered on these projects. Of course, arguments regarding lower payment rates extend outside of the content broker argument. I also think she’d be quite happy with the rates offered on other projects. The rate debate is a different question altogether.
Now, we did have an incident with a client who didn’t settle an account in a timely fashion that resulted in a sticky situation. I contacted those writers, explained the situation, eventually paid them out-of-pocket and gave the ones who suffered a significant delay a cash bonus for their understanding. I felt miserable about making them wait and apologized profusely. That incident led to some changes in how we handle project booking, as well. In 99% of cases everyone has been paid on the front end of the predicted date range for payment or before.
Meanwhile, people who follow this “avoid the broker” advice will miss out on an opportunity to score work they otherwise couldn’t touch.
Right now, I’m taking a break from a job that involves the production of approximately a quarter of a million words worth of web content for a major client.
Does Ms. Hoy think that these people want to hunt down a team of writers one at a time? Does she think they want to manage a gaggle of freelancers on an individual basis? Does she think they want to put someone on the payroll exclusively to manage that end of the project? To pay them all individually? Of course not.
They came to me to do it. They wanted someone to run the project… Someone who knew how to assemble the right team, train the team up to specs, evaluate quality, provide project input and guarantee completion. They wanted a single point of knowledgeable contact. They come to third-party content brokers to do that.
And here’s the kicker… I’m not the only broker they’re using. I know they have at least one other vendor who’s consistently handling two million words per month. We’ve served another client who is the head of SEO for one of Europe’s premiere digitial marketing firms. We’re not talking about “Get Rich Quick with Spam” ebooks here. Their clients are recognized blue chip companies whose names you’d recognize.
But Angela Hoy says you should avoid third-party content brokers because some of them are bad guys.
Avoid restaurants because one of them failed a health inspection?
Avoid Ford vehicles because they made the Pinto?
Avoid POD publishers because some do lousy work?
Of course not.
You should make smart, reasoned decisions to avoid the nefarious souls who are out there, but the need to exercise good judgment shouldn’t scare anyone away from opportunity.
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I guess every business in the world is evil, because EVERY business is a third party broker.
Seriously. That’s what businesses are. A business exists to provide a service to customers. Employees of said business are working THROUGH the company to perform their tasks. Anyone who has ever been an employee, either contract (freelance) or full-time, has worked for a third party.
Safeway is evil because they sell groceries to customers, and the people working at Safeway are being ripped off by the grocery store.
An ISP is evil for exploiting the staff on its payroll to provide Interwebz to people.
I could go on.
Very interesting response to the original article, which I also read this morning. I always feel that the underlying objection is to the rate, and not to the method.
I think you’re right. That probably is what motivated the WW post in the first place.
To me, that’s a completely different issue.
It’s one thing to say, “Don’t work for peanuts.”
It’s another to say, “Don’t work for a content broker who pays peanuts.”
“Avoid Content Brokers” is another story altogether.
We can all have the usual knock-down-drag-out about rates, but to cloak it in those terms is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst.
Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, the underlying logic of the “argument” is beyond weird to me.
I’ve been reading Hoy’s page for years, and I agree that it’s the rate that is the major problem. She’s a strong advocate for more highly paid work. Her argument is that the rates go down for everyone when so many writers will work for low (or no) pay. I understand her reasoning, but from what I’ve read, fast writers can make good money with reputable content brokers.
T´s last blog ..Writers and Mistakes
T- That is a consistent theme running through much of what comes out of WW.
If she wanted to rehash the rate debate and make substantiated claims about the payment terms used by most third-party brokers, she could do that.
To write an alarmist piece that goes past rate questions and uses an unrepresentative example of outright theft by “someone” once upon a time isn’t right, though.
I agree, Carson. Her intent is good, but it does get tiresome to hear over-generalizations about content work. Let me just clarify that while I do pop in to look at WW, I’m not an ardent supporter–I disagree with her on a few points, but I do appreciate her desire for us all to be paid more. The slam against content writing is just a way to get a new angle on an old topic. I believe that whenever we use global terms (”all content writing is bad,” for instance), that’s a failure of logic.
T´s last blog ..Writers and Mistakes
I appreciate your points. I understand the “rate debate” and agree to a point that the more writers willing to write for almost nothing, the less most will be willing to pay for writers. But that doesn’t always ring true, and there are many variables. At any rate, it’s always better to make your point clear, rather than hide a rate debate under complaints of shady dealings by brokers.
Your business sounds fair and reasonable, by the way.
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I have to agree with the point that Ms. Hoy was making. Some so-called third party brokers on Scriptlance, Craigslist and the like put out ads asking for writers to apply. When they finally accept these writers, they are scammed out of their articles and the freelancer finds their work on the web or elsewhere later. Believe me…when I first started freelancing it happened to me, more than once. Luckily, I didn’t find my work on some content website or what have you. I don’t submit to third-party brokers myself. I find my clients on my own.
I will not undermine reputable third-party brokers for what they do. I just haven’t come across any reputable ones. I wouldn’t be upset by the article. Ms. Hoy clearly supports her position and just because she is a POD self-publisher her point of view should not be undermined either. Her perspective is not about the price writers get paid or thinly veiled bias. Theft of copyrights by so-called third-party content brokers happens daily.
Melissa-
1. You’ve come across a reputable article broker now. Thanks for visiting.
2. The substantiation to which you refer is the mere assertion of a serious problem and even if that were true, there’s no evidence to suggest that third party brokers are any more likely rip off people than other groups. Her “Whispers and Warnings” column is consistently chock full of non-brokers who screw people, isn’t it?
3. Glad you find work on your own. I don’t understand why that would somehow de-legitimize the utilization of brokers to handle content procurement or working for one, though.
Look, if she wanted to do a “watch out for the people who run scams like this” article, that’s one thing. Using non-representative anecdotal evidence e as a justification to publish a headline warning writers to avoid content brokers in general is quite another.
I think here point of view *should* be undermined because it’s nothing more than alarmism.
I use two reputable content brokers in conjunction with my regular client work and fiction sales. One is Pure Content out of the UK, and I use Demand Studios fairly regularly. I make 30-40 USD an hour with the former, and 60-75 dollars an hour with the latter.
I don’t consider either to be oppressive, low paying, or illegitimate. Hoy’s comments are continually based upon a biased and uninformed opinion. She has absolutely no clue what she is talking about. Blanket statements do far more harm than good. She is rapidly losing credibility due to the fact that her privatized witch hunt has become something akin to zealotry. It’s no longer thought-provoking in any way, but rather a testament to how truly frightening zealots can be when their minds have been clouded to reality.
T.W. Anderson´s last blog ..To post daily, or not to post daily
Love it Carson, you’re actually suggesting we writers behave like the adults we are
I’m sooooo tired of website authors telling writers they shouldn’t work for $5 or $2 or whatever. Sure $100 is better, so is $100,000.
And yes I encourage writers on my site to raise their rates when they can… I treat my readers like adults.
Okay, some full disclosure from me too… years ago when the $3 article pay got started I too was horrified. I was the guide to freelance writing over at about.com back then and vowed never to publish a job that paid less than $10 – until I got an email from a women who told me how much positive difference getting $2 and $3 per article made to her family.
That got me off my high horse in a hurry.
Thanks,
A
Anne Wayman´s last blog ..Friday Fun For Freelance Writers
When I was researching numbers today while I was making my week 3 results post, I pulled some interesting numbers.
The average median wage for 2nd quarter 2009 according to the Department of Labor was just over 18 dollars an hour.
That’s right folks, 18 bucks an hour.
If you take the highest paid middle management job out there, the max is around 50k a year for middle management. That’s 25 dollars an hour. For a full time, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year job. I make that working half the hours (I rarely dip below 50 dollars an hour anymore, although there are specific days when it happens). This is my third year as a freelance writer.
Upper management makes on average 60-80k a year. When I plugged in the max (80k) a year for upper management…that comes to 40 dollars an hour.
While I understand my current writing experiment is only using a 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week “control”, the overall goal was to show how anyone, regardless of experience, can come in and make 50 dollars an hour minimum for their time. While it is not the same as an 8 hour day, the fact of the matter is for the effort involved, you can easily write solely for content sites for 4-5 hours a day and make the same amount of money as the highest paid middle management individual in the US.
I rarely, if ever, dip below 50 dollars an hour on average. Most of the time I average between 50 and 55 dollars an hour for the work I do, but that is averaged out between jobs that pay around 40 dollars an hour and jobs that pay significantly higher. I never work more than 4 hours a day. I’m a lazy sod, what can I say
But the point is…how the frak can anyone claim that third party content brokers are oppressive, low paying, or exploitative in any way (see evil) when they allow individuals like myself to make upper management wages without ever having to spend time in college, without having a high school diploma, and without ever stepping out of my house, writing an email, making a phone call, or doing anything other than writing a few words on paper for a few hours a day.
Unbelievable.
T.W. Anderson´s last blog ..To post daily, or not to post daily
This discussion, combined with my own writing experiment, has really rocketed my interest in the hard numbers behind the average wages across the nation, and writers like Hoy who love to make blanket statements about oppressive rates and the “evil” third-party brokers.
I just put up a post on my own site about the fact/fiction behind exploitative rates, and the simple fact of the matter is…it’s complete fiction. 100 percent fiction.
Using the example posted in the interview by Deb regarding Demand Studios’ average rate of pay (15-30 dollars an hour), the lowest paid employees are making more than double the national average for minimum wage, while the higher average employees are making more money than the highest-paid middle management numbers in the US (50k a year, or 25 USD per hour, as per the DOL and various other sites).
How can third-party brokers like Demand Studios be evil when they allow their writers to make a minimum of double the federal minimum wage, and on the upper end of the average, make more than the average middle management employee? Furthermore, when individuals like myself can come in and make 60+ dollars an hour (20 dollars above and beyond the average upper management wage of 40 dollars an hour for 76k a year), the balance is skewed even more….in FAVOR of the content brokers.
Content brokers are not evil. In most cases they provide a great service for a lot of people. Think of someone living in Mexico, for example, who can come in and make 15 dollars an hour on the bottom end. For them, that is the equivalent to middle/upper management wages in their country. How fast and how well a person uses a content broker is entirely up to the individuals in question, but again and again we see a clear picture that these brokers are not harming anyone…in fact, they are performing a global service of jobs for a wide variety of people.
T.W. Anderson´s last blog ..Exploitation of Writers: Fact or Fiction