Working as a freelance writer isn’t all free drinks and suitcases full of cash. Actually, it’s neither of those things pretty consistently. What it is is a lot of work and the occasional perusal of ads from folks seeking professional writers, and many of these ads are rage-inducing. I’ve begun keeping a running list of words and phrases that will immediately cause me to back out of your ad and assume you are the worst.
Rockstar. When folks mention needing a ‘rockstar’ freelance writer,what they usually really want is someone who is willing to work with poor or absent direction, to tolerate insane demands and low wages, and somehow magically guess what the client is thinking at all times. The other side of this, of course, is that any problems are naturally your fault, for not being Rockstar enough.
Consistent Work. Translation: We pay peanuts but there are so many of them you might just scrape by. As long as you ‘consistently’ work 18 hours a day.
Plagiarism/Copyscape. Warning against plagiarism tells you immediately that this client is suspicious of the supposed value a writer brings to their business. They will probably also demand that you run your work through Grammarly, which is the same as asking your cat to proofread your work. Which I’ve done, when very drunk. I do not recommend this.
Simple/Easy/Straightforward. If they’re already gaslighting you on how much work is involved in the ad, just think how it’ll be when there’s live work to be done!
Unpaid. Whether its a sample project, a training period, or the job itself, if there’s no payment involved, they can go screw.
Revenue Sharing/Paid per click. It’s amazing that this still exists, honestly, but I’ve been fooled for a few seconds by decently-crafted ads that lead you down the primrose path to the dreaded revshare or PPC model, where you don’t get paid anything unless the article you’re writing gets enough clicks and traffic. Since it’s not my job to be an unpaid marketing guru for your site, that would be a hard no.
This is an evolving list, of course, but for the moment these are things that will make me nope the fuck out of any writing job. My life goal is to get to a point professionally where I turn down any job that doesn’t pay me in single malt Scotch. #careerGoals
Also, “great exposure” ways means we pay you nothing. And “I have this best seller idea and need a writer” means I’m offering 50% of nothing.
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I enjoy listening intently to people telling me their great idea and then saying very enthusiastically “You should write that!” But then, I’m kind of a bad person.