Content Farming is bad yo

A decade ago I was one of those stereotypically indecisive college kids, switching majors three times, and never having a clear idea of what the heck I was going to do with my life. (At the time I was working every Friday and Saturday night as a busboy/barback at an Irish pub, but I figured I'd probably need to find something a bit more lucrative after graduation if I ever hoped to pay down my student loan debt.)

I did have this vague notion that writing could somehow be a part of whatever I ended up doing. My favorite part of school was writing research papers -- diving deep into a topic, uncovering bits of knowledge that were hidden away in libraries and the far reaches of the internet, and then weaving all the pieces together. 

So after college I applied for every writing job I could find, and wrote stories for sites like the soon-to-be-defunct Examiner.com in order to build up my portfolio. Eventually I landed a freelance gig with a massive media company/content farm, which offered me all the 500-word articles I could write at $15 a pop. 

Here's how it worked: I (along with thousands of other freelancers) would log into an online portal where I could choose from a long list of article titles. Once I had an article in my queue, I'd have a week to write it, otherwise it would return to the pool and other writers could grab it. When I completed an article, I'd submit it to an editor, who would either accept it straight away (cha-ching) or send it back with a list of suggested changes. 

The topics I wrote about were ridiculously diverse. One day it'd be "The Best Wiffle Ball Bats," the next day it'd be "Intel Pentium 1 Specs," and the day after that it'd be "When to Prune Elm Trees" (answer: once every three years, preferably in the spring, in case you were curious).