Content mills: are they worth your while?

Content mills are springing up like mushrooms after rain. But are they worth the average freelance writer’s time and energy?

My opinion, for what’s it’s worth, is that if you’re beyond the total beginner level, you should avoid them like the plague. They won’t teach you good habits, and your career is built on the habits you acquire.

Research for example, is one GOOD habit you won’t acquire if you write for content mills.

Since I think research skills are vital for a freelance writing career, I agree with the writer of Writer Beware Blogs!: Guest Blog Post: Content Mills–Why Aspiring Writers Should Avoid Them who says:

“(Writing for content mills) does not teach you to research. A lot of good-paying writing assignments call for extensive research. I recently wrote a $650 article for a regional magazine about all the stimulus money our state got and how it was spent. I wrote a $1,500 article about where Seattle’s trash goes and what happens to it. I’m doubtful that anyone cutting their teeth on mill stories will ever be able to write stories like these.”

ALL good writing requires research, so you need to learn how to do research, preferably sooner, rather than later. I’m horrified by the writers who do all their research online, and never walk through the doors of a library, and never learn how to interview a source.

Bad writing habits are hard to break

Once you acquire a bad habit, it’s hard to train yourself out of it. Genre novelists, for example, find it hard (almost impossible) to go mainstream. They acquire certain habits, and because those habits are unconscious, they can wreck a career.

Many years ago, I was at a romance novelists’ convention, and one of the speakers, an editor at a mainstream publishing house, gave a hugely funny presentation on what happens when a romance novelist tries to write a mainstream novel. (Not particularly humorous for the novelist in question, of course.)

If you’re a beginning writer, and are desperate for money, there’s nothing wrong with writing for content mills. If nothing else, you’ll learnt how to focus, and complete assignments. Once you get that basic grounding however, move on. If you stay too long, you can wreck your potential as a writer, because you’ll acquire too many bad habits.

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