A Content Mill I like: Interact Media

During my freelance writing career I have signed up to several content mills, content creation companies – call them what you will. I am a fan of not having all your eggs in one basket so I opened accounts with a number of different companies to try to ensure a steady-ish stream of work.

Since first signing up, some have fallen by the wayside either because they never seemed to have any work or because it was just too complicated to write the articles for the amount they were paying. There are a few though that I still check out regularly and one I do like is Interact Media.

Working at the Content Mill

Whenever I read about content mills on the web, I get this random picture in my head of an old Monty Python sketch where four Yorkshire men compete to see who had the worst childhood. Their claims range from having to work at the mill for 14 hours a day for tuppence to working there for 29 hours a day and having to pay the mill owner for the privilege.

The claims about content mills are similar. The pay is low and the work is hard. The detractors say that if you are silly enough to sign up to work at a mill then you will be consigned to writing trash for peanuts.

The Beauty of Bylines

I used to write for newspapers. Proper newspapers that were printed on paper and sold in shops and gave bylines to reporters when they wrote stories.

In fact, at one point I was the only journalist on the local newspaper that I worked for in the UK. As a result my byline was on nearly every page and even my mum got bored with seeing it. Up until that point she would phone me when she saw my byline in a paper but during this gig she would search through and point out the few bits I hadn’t written.

My first, and still my favorite freelancing job, for a website covering early childhood education also gets me a byline on most of the things I write, but most of my other work so far had been ghostwriting.

After seeing my name in print for so long the idea of someone else take my writing and doing whatever they like with it without ever crediting me has taken some getting used to.

Blog Block

About a month ago, I set up this website with the aim of promoting my freelance writing. I spent ages playing with the different layouts before picking favorite and more hours trying to come up with a cool name. I wrote my about page, added some links and some writing samples and then I looked at the blog tab. I’ve been looking at it ever since. I thought it would be easy, I thoughts would just click on the tab and start spouting forth in a brilliant way. Instead, I had blog block.

Whenever I thought about my blog, something held me back. It was as if I was scared of writing anything because it might not be good enough. They say a blog should be personal, but when you write for a living your blog also becomes something people may judge you by. It could score you work, but equally if you put a comma in the wrong place or have an opinion on something that a potential client does not agree with it could lose you a job.