My Rewriting Experience: Do Writers Profit?
Recently I procured a writing job that has really sent my wheels spinning. The job consists of rewriting online articles so that the article owners can reprint them without incurring any duplicate content penalties from Google and other search engines. These “articles” are mostly very short, 250 to 600 on average, and cover a wide variety of topics such as dating tips, double chins, dehumidifiers etc. There are quite a few article directories that publish short articles on a daily basis covering just about anything imaginable. Below are some of these sites:
Ezinearticles.com
Goarticles.com
Articlesbase.com
This article rewriter gig has proven very laid back because I can write as little or as much as I want (solid work for insomniac writers). However, some of the articles are so poorly written and offer such little value that I have felt I am contributing to the dumbing down of society. However, I realize these articles are mostly serving an entirely different purpose than attempting to offer quality information. This reason is a definite sticking point but as a writer you could contribute well-written and more informative articles that could potentially create a more appreciative audience.
While some of the articles are not in depth and very poorly written (Myself and others can only do so much in rewriting them) they serve the purpose of establishing authority and backlinks for these people’s online endeavors. The company I write for pays me per sentence and the resulting product is a short article that over time will bring Internet traffic to the article owner’s site(s) and therefore create ongoing sales and a long-term residual income for them. Meanwhile I receive a one-time payment for my work. My question is, who is the smart or at least more informed one in this scenario? I suppose it depends on who you are, what you want and how much you know. For immediate profit the other rewriters and myself are sitting pretty but in three or six months when the article owner is making many or at least a few individual sales that greatly exceed my single one-time payment then who is making the better or more valuable long-term investment of time? This is not to say that you can’t do rewriting and write your own articles if immediate money is a priority, which it of course is for so many including myself. Of course if a writer knows little or absolutely nothing about Internet marketing then chances are this opportunity will never be had. However, I wonder if writers knew they could put their writing skills to use creating articles that would point visitors towards a site that sells a quality product if they would some writers pursue this possibility?
Why don’t writers, create several websites selling some sort of commissionable product (there are literally thousands of products to offer through Clickbank.com or LinkShare.com) and then write a gaggle of these short articles and build their own side or eventual main income? Does this mean we should not continue writing stories, novels, poems etc. or that somehow we are no longer pure writers? If the product(s) you are selling is something you believe in and have some personal experience with why not write enlightening articles about it and make an ongoing profit off of it?
There is of course quite a bit more to being able to sell products online but being able to write well is in my opinion a huge part of the puzzle. I constantly hear that it is so difficult to make money as a writer so why not expand our horizons? As a creative writing, MFA or potential MFA graduate does something like this appeal to you? Let me know in the comment section, I am curious to see the responses.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
