A couple of weeks ago the AWL published a slightly less-than-enthusiastic account of the joys of working for a ‘content farm’ by Jessanne Collins, who calculated her work was making her about £4.40 an hour.
Undoubtedly, content farms need to be ‘gamed’ a little bit to get anywhere, which perhaps Collins’ own issues, “motivational in nature”, got in the way of. One person who has done OK out of the content farm lark is Jodi Jill:
When Jodi Jill was laid off from her position as an assistant at a car dealership two years ago, she took a number of odd jobs to pay the bills, from hawking oranges off the Venice exit on the 405 freeway in Southern California to fixing sequins onto costume dresses. She also wrote the occasional article for Examiner, the crowdsourced content play backed by billionaire investor Philip Anschutz.
Fast forward two years and Ms Jill, who was briefly homeless after being laid off, says she’s made just under $100,000 in the past year by writing exclusively for Examiner … So what does it take to make $100,000 a year writing for a content farm?