Moving Forward
I’ve actually gotten some pretty good news the last few days. Just when I thought I was going to toil away at Google’s least favorite content farm forever and ever amen, I got myself a new client and what I call a w2 job. Seems like a lot of work for working from home, but it’s really not.
My very first telecommute job was lame. Their software needed updating, so it wasn’t equipped to handle that much Intranet traffic. And getting help from a SSM was damned near impossible. They had so many people to supervise and some of just got ignored. We were left to find our own solutions to the problems. A little more direction would have been helpful, but too late to worry about that now. I’ve moved on to another one, which I start next week.
I’m starting the job for my IC client next week too. Passed all the necessary skills tests (that trigonometry course really did come in handy in my real world) and now start the training. I didn’t think I would need to go through all of that to get this position, but they wanted to make sure they were getting someone with enough intelligence and OCD to get the job done. I was so fucking happy when that job rolled in. I’m not going to lie. I’ll be thrilled to put that on my resumé — my real one. Not the one I use for this persona.
I thought for a little while that I should combine my personas and maybe take a little bit of each of them to add to my list of accomplishments. As Lizzie I’ve done some good writing. At one point, I was actually on the way to really making it. That was before I went left when I should’ve went right, which doesn’t even matter now. Now, I’m a lot more focused and I’m getting more back in the game. I know how to keep the shit off my shoes and the fleas out of my hair.
I was thinking about writing one of those “How to Make Big Dollars Online” manuals that some of these lying, scammers are offering up for $30 a pop. Mine would only be $15. I’d hype it up and encourage all the newbies to buy it. Inside I’d put instructions on how to scan a dollar bill and blow it up poster size. How funny would that be? The newbies are getting these ebooks and webinars to find out information that they can get on a million websites for free. Why aren’t they utilizing Google and doing this?
The sales pitch is always someone showing someone else what’s in their best interest. It’s always “I make $5,000 a month!” and “How to Get Rich by Blogging”. So, dummies see “$5,000″ and they see “Rich” and they think “At home” and bam! Hooked. There’s nothing in any of these books that can’t be had for free. The authors of these books got the fucking ideas for free. Their technique for making money online? Writing ebooks and hosting webinars to tell people how to do the exactly same things they’re doing. I hate people like that.
I’ve been trying to stay away from that mindset. I haven’t stayed away from the idea of posting my own advice on my own blog. I may not make millions a month, but I can consult them on other things to help them be successful. Impart my warnings to them. Help them watch out for the liars and the cheats. I realize there are plenty of people who are offering this wisdom, but I can be a little different.
At any rate, I’m off to prepare for my new w2. I’ve got to do a blood test and get my i9 notarized. Then I have to do my hair. All of that so I can sit in my home office to make some money. I’ll have plenty of time to write, though, and am even thinking about reapplying for BellaOnline (I did like writing for them). We’ll see how it goes. First bit of advice: Have yourself a spot to do your work.
Stop Whining About Panda
It’s been a long time since I’ve written here. I haven’t really felt the urge to update this blog until now because, well, I allowed content mills to suck my writing soul away. “Write this. Write this way. Keywords! SEO! Pageviews! But, nope, can’t get you much money for that.” Ah, the joys of picking the wrong path. So, I hung up this blog. I’d rather not write than to write soul-sucking garbage for $5 a pop. I made way more money waiting tables.
So, why am I logging back in now? Because I have something to say again and the only safe place for what I have to say is in an environment I control. It’s not nice and it’s probably going to chafe someone’s ass.
By now everyone who has ever written content to attract Google spiders, PageRank and ad revenue knows about Panda (or Farmer). It’s just another way for Google to prevent companies from profiting off of their algorithm. The last time I mentioned anything about Google making changes to their algorithm, Google had changed their rules to prohibit unfollowed paid links. There was a huge outcry by bloggers who were working for companies who were profiting off selling links. Some even compared Google to terrorists. I thought it was absurd. I still think it’s absurd.
Now it’s content farms and those writing for them that are feeling the pinch. Google decided to change their business model to better benefit their own shareholders. Their search results were getting hijacked by companies looking to profit off of ad revenue. Those companies recruited low-paid writers to churn out content around which ads were placed. These companies aren’t trying to help googlers who are looking for information. These companies are hoping that googlers will come to their site, see shit content and then click one of the ads on the page. Then they would be nice enough to share a little bit of what the ad agency (including Google) pays them. They hung their hat on someone else’s business model without actually partnering with that other business. People got sick of the shit and started looking for other ways to search. Google changed their own system to benefit those people. Too bad so sad, content mills. But even more sad for the content creators.
I used to write for Associated Content back in the day. I wrote a whopping 13 articles and made all of $62 for all of them. I guess if I’d have promoted myself better and threw up even more articles, I would have made a lot more money. But that wasn’t what I was hoping to do. I wanted to be able to be given an assignment, write that assignment, get paid and move on. Maybe write more if I was good. My mistake back then was thinking I was doing good by getting in on the ground floor by joining a content mill. I was going to get the “exposure” and “practice” and blah blah blah. The sparkle didn’t last long in my eye when I discovered I’d have to learn SEO, online marketing, keywords, etc. I didn’t then, and I don’t now, want to write for the Google robots. I didn’t want to research which keywords were going to generate the best ads.I wanted to write something that people wanted to read. Actual people with eyeballs and brains. I didn’t care what the topic was, as long as a real person found it interesting or informative. Real people get real sick of reading keyword optimized content. They know what’s up and they don’t stick around to see what else the author has up her sleeve.
The people who comment on those articles at AC are normally other AC (Yahoo! Contributers…ha!) content providers. The pennies add up over time, especially if there are hundreds or thousands of articles in an AC portfolio, but the audience was dependent on the AC community and Google. And the writing there is done with Google in mind first and readers/users second. I understand ads pay for the sites and the writers and whatever else. But there are sites (that I regularly visit) which provide genuine, unique content written for readers first, search engines second. They do well because the company does the promotion while the writers write. Of course, those sites don’t just hire anyone who signs up and submits a 400 word sample. Hmmm.
I wanted paid up-front if that’s what I had to do. I didn’t want to whore myself for pageviews. So, I moved on. I gave up on all of that. I’ve gone a whole new way in my career path and that’s fine. I liked the community of AC back in the day, but the focus on keywords and SEO there was a drain too. So, I left. Just like that. Two days ago I popped back in for a look-see.
Once again there are multiple threads lamenting how evil Google is and threats of class action lawsuits. There are content providers whining that Google is hurting their paychecks and targeting them specifically. It really is ridiculous. I don’t want to copy anything from there or target anyone specifically, but seriously, people. Think. What does Google owe any of these content producers? Did they contract with them to write these keyword optimized articles? Who’s really at fault that their revenue stream is drying up? Is it Google, a company that never agreed to pay the writers, or the company who based their business model on ad revenue generated from another company’s traffic?
Think.
My two favorite whines are (there are others, but two is all I’m going to discuss in this post):
- Google is guilty of egregiously targeting writers with the specific intent of hurting them.
- Google is monopolizing search and causing writers to lose money with their vindictive algorithm change.
Google is targeting writers
This is funny for obvious reasons. Google execs are worried about their own bottom line. Their bottom line is being threatened because their search results are compromised. Their search results are compromised because content farms are throwing up a bunch of made-for-ads crap. The writers of the made-for-ads content are collateral damage in Google’s fight to keep their own search engine relevant. People don’t want to read the kind of articles that attract the highest paying advertising.
This is how I explained it last night. Imagine that the mill, in this case Yahoo! Contributor Network, is a jewelry store and Google is Walmart (which also happens to sell jewelry). The jewelry store contracts with a few folks to carry sandwich boards advertising that they buy gold. Now, these contractors don’t get paid unless they stand on Walmart’s property and get people to look at them. Walmart puts up with this until they start losing customers and then bans the sign carriers from their property. The jewelry store only pays if the carrier can stand on Walmart property. Who’s fault is it that the carrier lost their revenue stream: Walmart or the jewelry stores?
I can go further with that example. Imagine that the jewelry store required the carrier to be inside of Walmart and that people actually look at the sign before payment is made. So the jewelry store figures out that the carrier needs to stand in the entrance of the store for the best chance of getting their sign viewed. Walmart allows this, but people are getting pissed at having to look at all that junk before they can go inside to find what they need. Walmart decides to stick the carrier in the back of the store instead of outright banning him from the store (these sites are still in Google search, you know). The carrier doesn’t get as many people looking at him, so his pay is cut. Who’s fault is that?
Why is the carrier still working for the jewelry store? Why is the carrier that irate at the company that didn’t contract him to stand in their store?
Google is monopolizing search
This infers that Google is somehow creating a situation where users are required to use their service. In some way, Google must have created a situation that causes people to have to use their search engine. When did that happen? Google only holds power over the people who depend on it’s algorithm for a revenue stream– content writers, SEO experts, sites specifically designed to generate profit from advertising and companies who have no other revenue model but the advertising revenue from pageviews. Average users make a choice of which search engine they are going to use. They overwhelmingly choose Google. They aren’t forced and, in fact, they are given a choice by their internet browser (Internet Explorer defaults to Bing and still people choose Google).
Google is popular because they created an excellent search experience. They’re so popular that the name of their company has become a verb that means “searching online”. The only monopoly they have is their popularity. There are other options and people who don’t search with Google aren’t going to be penalized in some way. But people like them, are familiar with them and prefer to use them. Why should Google jeopardize that so some misguided folks can get a revenue sharing payment?
Google changed their algorithm and decided that some sites just aren’t as authoritative as others. They heard their users protesting against the garbage in their search results. They heard that because their users were leaving. They altered the way they do business in response to that. Guess what? That’s good business.
My advice to anyone who writes for revenue share sites and has found their paychecks cuts to almost nothing: Adapt. Find another way to run your business. Demand that the companies with which you actually did contract change their business model. Start your own content site– with your own advertising and your own content. And stop whining.
Yes, it hurts. Your money is drying up and your “mentors” had you believing those paychecks would be coming in indefinitely (I believe the jargon for that bullshit is “evergreen”). They’d been doing it for years, right? They wrote all those articles explaining how they did it. They showed you those articles and you soaked them up. Those articles for which they got paid per 1000 pageviews, by the way.
Think.
And adapt.
