Does this article about web content writing for AOL remind you of other industries?

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#1

[SIZE=“4”]AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out[/SIZE]

June 16, 2011 by Oliver Miller

I got the job through a friend. The job was this: I would write about TV for a section of the AOL Television website. In theory, this sounded great. In exchange for writing about “The Simpsons” and other TV shows, I would be making $35,000 a year (which sounded like a shockingly large amount of money to me at the time; and sadly, it still does). I performed this job for less than a year before I was fired. During that period, I wrote more than 350,000 words for AOL.

You’d think it’d be fun, wouldn’t you? Writing about “The Simpsons” and such for money. It’s every slacker’s dream job. And I was making $35,000! I remember that I crossed a certain threshold, soon after I got my new job: I stopped buying “Sensor” brand razor blades, and upgraded to “Schick Quattro” brand razor blades. This was exciting. The “Quattro” had four blades instead of the measly two blades of the “Sensor,” plus a sideburn trimmer on the back, plus it vibrated to supposedly aid the shaving process. This was the big time.

Some people struggle to write for their whole lives, and only dream of ever getting paid for it. And here was I was, Mr. Big-Shot-Razor-Blade-Man, getting paid a real salary. I could sit at home and write in my pajamas while eating take-out food; and that’s what I did. I was so grateful.

But this was part of the problem. We — by which I mean me and my fellow employees — were all so grateful. Which allowed us to ignore — or willfully overlook — certain problems. Such as the fact that AOL editors forced us to work relentless hours. Or the fact that we were paid to lie, actually instructed to lie by our bosses.

I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie. My job was to write about random, out-of-context video clips, while pretending to the reader that I had watched the actual show in question. AOL knew I hadn’t watched the show. The rate at which they would send me clips and then expect articles about them made it impossible to watch all the shows — or to watch any of them, really.

…Continued here --> http://thefastertimes.com/news/2011/06/16/aol-hell-an-aol-content-slave-speaks-out/

#2

Re: Does this article about web content writing for AOL remind you of other industrie

Are you hinting at our lovely little adul tindustry by any odd chance? lol

#3

Re: Does this article about web content writing for AOL remind you of other industrie

Is it any surprise to any of us that a big bad corporation wants to increase productivity while reducing expenditure? No, this is what corporations are designed to do. Am I shocked that AOL doesn’t care about employees? No, it’s a corporation! The cogs within it might care about their colleagues, because they are Human after all, but the machine they are a part of has no soul.

I’m sorry to say it, but he seems very naive.

But I do agree with his final assumptions to a degree. However, just as there have always been creative and worthy writers, there will always be decent and interested readers. Just because he hasn’t found them yet doesn’t mean the Internet is reduced to alphabet soup.

I believe he has confused the world of marketing and promotion with the world of literature, they are certainly not the same and they very rarely converge. I write for money 9 - 5 and I write for the love of writing in my free time. But knowing what I know about the Internet, it wouldn’t be difficult to make money from truly CREATIVE writing rather than marketing material. It’s just a matter of finding the readers, and for that you need the marketing.

I think he needs to accept the Internet for what it is, play by the rules and find a path to do what he wants while using/abusing those rules.
He says he’s still unemployed, yet he knows how to write a flawless article, and that IS rare on the Internet. He’s obviously not thought of working for himself instead of the big bad.

#4

Re: Does this article about web content writing for AOL remind you of other industrie

His closing paragraph, I think, sums things up perfectly:

[INDENT]The Internet has created more readers than ever before in the history of the world. And yet, perversely, the actual writer is more undervalued than ever before. Every news site that hopes to survive, The Faster Times included, thinks about whether their titles will show up in search engines. In the age of Internet news, Google “keywords” matter. …Regular old words, not so much.[/INDENT]

And yes — this has become the driver for us as bloggers / affiliate marketers, and beyond that I’d also observe it’s pushed the porn producers into becoming tedious mills. Note Kansas’ observation this weekend over BuddyProfits.

Steve

#5

Re: Does this article about web content writing for AOL remind you of other industrie

As mentioned in the other thread too though, it’s about niche and a larger audience. No surfer has seen everything.

I think people like us sometimes become blinded by the amount of content we see, and the same can be said for the author of that piece when it comes to his field. But the public are not IN the field.
People might have three or four sites they visit regularly because they are of value to them, they don’t spend their entire day on line in the same market, working like we do. Therefore, to us everything might seem saturated and done-to-death/boring, but to the average surfer it’s new.