Grow A Backbone. Ditch The Content Mill And The Overlords Making You Miserable.
Unless you enjoy life as a whipping post — or if you’re method acting to fully understand Stockholm Syndrome
But — money is money! It’s better than nothing. It’s certainly better than nothing. But is that the standard you hold yourself to?
I’ll be frank: if better than nothing is the standard you stand by, consider this a wake-up call. Better than nothing is one way to whisk your self-worth into oblivion. There is, however, one thing that is worse than nothing: nonsense.
Are you curious about where the nonsense is lurking? I’ll put an end to this lingering question once and for all: content mills.
Accept the pay you think you deserve.
Is your work worth 0.02 cents per word? Or are you one of few elites who earns an overwhelmingly insulting 0.03–0.04 for your loyalty and excellence?
Good for you. After working for a content mill for a few weeks, you’ll have more cents in your swear jar than your PayPal account.
Come on. I don’t care if your writing is so bad that it makes me want to freshen my reader’s palette by reading the product information on shampoo bottles. Even if your writing makes no one feel anything at all, is absolute trash, or worthless, there is one single guarantee I can make: you’re worth more than 0.02–0.04 cents per word.
Now chin up. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. To the contrary, I see your potential. And I also see that you’ve decided that imposter syndrome can’t be cured — it must be replaced by a different psychological fallacy — Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps? I see you.
But, you have bills to pay.
I know it’s hard to believe. I’ve been in your footsteps. My own confidence was trampled into a heap of flaming shame by my first and last content mill overlord: Adam. Like you, the appeal was irresistible during a slow month. Bills were coming and my anxiety was increasing.
“I just need something steady and reliable,” I thought. When that juicy mill gig caught my eyes I rationalized it. “Wow! $30 for 1000 words. If I do X amount of articles a day, I’d make a lot of money.”
So I applied and was quickly assigned to my supervisor, Adam. It started off nice. I got some easy assignments about semi-interesting topics. I was making that steady money, though I ignored the voice in my head saying, “This amount of words per day will result in carpal tunnel.”
But I was receiving praise! The pellets of income they plopped into my PayPal from time to time were enough. Adam was telling me I am an excellent writer. That I have a future with their company , though I had no intention of climbing the content hill ladder and break their cardboard ceiling (glass is too expensive).
He even dangled some salivating potential prizes in front of my eyes. If I stay with them and make $10K, I will get a new laptop. Or if I really show them what I’ve got, that I might get a raise to $0.04 cents. Is this employment or is this a radio show’s sweepstake competition?
Yep, I’m inching closer to a full-blown cash tornado.
Now these little sprinkles of dollar store glitter were enough to put a sparkle in my eye. I’ll do what it takes. I’ve got nothing else to do.
I was writing with vigor, athleticism, and all of my might — like a never-ending “choo choo” à la Thomas the Steam Train. “Blood, sweat, and tears” became more than a maxim, but an inner wartime mantra coupled by “This too, shall pass,” in my most vulnerable moments.
The voice of my high school sports coach even sneaked into that brain of mine. Counting down strokes like she would during ergometer tests that dictated our ranking on the crew team. Giving up wasn’t an option.
Day in day out Adam pushed all of the wrong buttons. The Slack message board where our communication took place became a digital pit of doom I was genuinely afraid of. I had to go outside, daily, and do breathing exercises before getting to my desk and facing a litany of insulting messages.
The ones that made me consider buying an in-home punching bag set-up and boxing gloves were quite simple in nature:
10am: “?”
11:15am: “???”
12:30pm: “?????”
Instead of telling me what he was concerned about, Adam would send me series of question marks. If left unanswered for more than one hour or so, anger started brewing inside of Adam. At the same time, the more question marks I saw, the deeper I internalized that I had been mistaken. I’m a horrid writer after all.
Adam was relentless though, and started leaving more question marks under Trello board assignments and in Excel sheets. He was infiltrating from multiple angles.
“Why can’t you get it within our deadline?”
A common complaint from Mr. Adam. The real answer to this question? I’ll happily inform you:
The game is rigged.
What started off with easy assignments, writing about communication styles or wedding rings, turned into an ominous void of infinite word counts and medical device descriptions. Deadlines of 24 hours, in reality, were shorter than that in Adam’s world. 24 became 18 — then 12, until question marks of grand concern rolled in around hour 5 or 6 after an order had been assigned to me.
That’s where I really started to shrivel. Complaints about my faults and weaknesses as an independent contractor and my writing became every day realities I had to brace for before checking my devices after waking up.
I was living in a pure state of anxiety. I had no face to associate Adam with, so my head created its own rendition of a “scary man” that chased me in my dreams and took a front seat to my brain the second my day started.
After two months of pushing well over 5,000 words a day, that carpal tunnel voice I had ignored had manifested into physical pains. My wrists, arms, and shoulders experienced nerve pangs, and that’s when I had enough.
Sweet escape.
I said goodbye to Adam who continued to send me question marks for weeks on end. I’m not returning, but a lesson was learned.
As I dove back in to my freelance life without living in the overlord’s shadow, I could see clearly again. I began pitching jobs that interested me and landed some interesting clients and projects that paid me properly. Compared to what I had just experienced, nearly anything was a sigh of relief.
So here’s my plea to you: if you’re shackled by a content mill, and have rationalized your situation thoroughly, you need to reassess. It’s time to take your skills somewhere else.
