Is Demand Studios' USA Today deal a raw one for writers?

I'll answer the question in the title of this post right away: Yes. It is.

If you don't know, Demand Studios is paying its writers $20 for travel stories that will eventually end up in the pages of USA Today. This begs the question: Is this a great way for writers to get a byline in the national paper, or is it just one more sign that newspaper publishers enjoy screwing over writers?

I think it's the latter, unfortunately.

Look, $20 is simply a lousy fee for a USA Today story. The USA Today is a national newspaper. It should be paying writers $500 or more for travel stories. Instead it's worked out a deal with Demand Studios to fill its pages on the cheap.

To me, this stinks of a terrible deal for writers. I write every now and again for the Washington Post. I get paid a lot more than $20. My fear is that more big-time newspapers -- not the small ones that have always paid lousy -- will make similar deals with content providers like Demand Studios.

It's already tough enough to make a living as a freelance writer. We don't need papers like USA Today working to make it even tougher.

(And I, unlike most writers, actually kind of like USA Today!)

Clients: Remember what you're paying

Here's a quick post for anyone out there who hires freelance content writers: Remember what you're paying for the words you're getting.

What I mean by this is that you shouldn't expect New York Times prose when you're paying $4 for a 400-word article. It's not worth freelance writers' time to research such low-paying articles. To make such a job worthwhile, a writer has to be able to pound your $4 article in no more than 10 minutes. Even then, that's only $24 an hour, not a great wage.

So when you do order a $4 400-word article, don't expect breaking news, a jaw-dropping read or to learn something new. Expect something written off the top of a writer's head. After all, that's the only way for a writer to make even a lousy hourly wage.

My new success strategy at Demand Studios

I've been writing pretty heavily for Demand Studios for the past four months. The first three-and-a-half went really well: I concentrated on writing real estate stories, my specialty. I wrote mostly about loan modifications, credit scores, foreclosures, home equity loans and anything to do with real estate.

Then, about two weeks ago, something strange started happening. The good real estate titles dried up. I began stretching. After getting one rejection -- which happened because I tried a topic I knew little about and then botched the job. This was my mistake -- in my first three-and-a-half months, I rapidly got three in a row. This time, all three were because of odd copy editor requests.

This was frustrating. It represented $45 down the drain. Then there were all the odd rewrite requests. It seemed that many of the copy editors editing my real estate stories wanted to me to write stories that were worthy of my work with the Washington Post or Chicago Tribune. Sorry, for $15, Demand Studios isn't getting my best work. It's just not worth it.

So here's my new strategy: I'm only writing lists, and I'm only the writing the simplest of lists, stories that are nearly impossible to get rejected. So far, I've written about gift basket ideas, holiday meal ideas, low-cost laptops, traffic laws in Phoenix, the best birthday presents for teen girls, etc.., These stories take 15 minutes to write, which means that I can pump out four in an hour if I'm working hard. That's $60 an hour; not a bad rate. It also means that I can get my Demand Studios writing out of the way fast on an average workday. I try to write five stories for Demand a day, or $75 worth. (I only write $15 stories.) When I get them out of the way, I can spend the rest of my day writing for my private-client content jobs, newspapers or trade magazines.

So far, I've been at my new Demand Studios strategy for about a week. It's gone quite well. The biggest challenge is finding these easy list titles. But if you're patient enough to wade through them, you'll find things like "romantic gifts for adults." That's as easy a $15 as you're likely to make.