TANSTAAFL- why content sites are a waste of time.

I am here to rant on content sites, this time. You know what I mean, those sites like, ehow, or writersonline, or elance, where people write random stuff and are paid pittances for it. Its been a while since my last post, and once again, I am off topic, but since I am as broke as a bent bicycle, and cannot even buy advice on how to make a better blog, I don't care. Interestingly enough, my motivation to acquire money is what brings about my writings on this. Since I am effectively stuck at home at the moment, I thought that writing for a content site was just what I needed to bolster my non-existent funds.  Little did I realise the multitude of problems I would have, and find, in my quest to make money online.

The first problem is that these sites are all free to join. At first glance this is a good thing, and also, unfortunately, completely necessary- why would prospective writers pay to gain access to a market where the availability of work and payment in not assured? There is no good reason, everyone knows it intuitively, its why the most obvious way of telling something is a scam on the internet is if it comes with a price tag. More on that later. However, the inherent problem with making entry free is it lets in the raccoons and weasels along with the dogs. There are thousands of people that simply want to make a quick buck out there, and I am one of them, and there is no real way of stopping people without any real skill or dedication to quality from putting themselves out there and purporting to be what they aren't. How does the company running the show attempt to mitigate this massive influx of posers, and non talented frauds, and promote quality? Lots of ways, but the bottom line is none really work. A site can use "tags of quality" on "good" users, it can show a potential contents providers resume, or a host of other ways, but this is the internet, complete with the blessings and curses anonymity provides. People can pose to be whoever they like, and no amount of vetting the way it is usually done will weed out close to half the undesirables.

Note I said "as usually done" in the last paragraph. I said this because believe it or not, its is not even in the average freelancing agencies interests to actually provide quality that customers might desire. This is because your average run of the mill freelancing agency DOES NOT MAKE any kind of real money on whether or not customers are satisfied. The interaction between the prospective employer and employee is where the money changes hands. Whether money was paid for a good job done or a bad job done, does not matter, because the agency doesn't really profit. The agency makes its money the same way everyone else does on the internet that doesn't have something material to sell: ads and traffic. They make money from the amount of clicks and people who access the site, not from the value that is inside. There is no reason to peruse actual resumes of people the site lets in, checking the references of the applicant and exercising due diligence, because this would be prohibitively expensive to hire people to do such a task. Instead, it is far more in the interest of the firm to try and attract as much traffic from basically everywhere as possible. The company makes its money from the market, not the actual content in the market.

The second problem is much simpler and easier to phrase: there is nothing new under the sun. The how-to you are writing, on an obscure subject, the proofread, the FAQ for a site? Someone, somewhere, has made something that if not completely interchangeable, comes close enough that with a few adjustments a low paid hiree could replace it. And they do. Thousands of people out there are that low paid hiree, tap-tapping their way to a couple more dollars, while trying to find their way to a lot more of them. The availability and low standard floods the market, firmly grounding all prices, without regard to actual quality of service provided. It doesnt matter how good you can write or present or show off your chops in real life, here it's the internet, and everyone has their two cents on display. This becomes a bigger problem when you actually find a task that might actually be lucrative:with hundreds of other competitors. How is one to succeed in such stringent competition? It gets worse when you consider the lack of credibility of claims made online, so even if your claims of competence are valid, potential employers have difficulty telling it from many other applicants, making the process more of a random crapshoot than the job market already is.

The bottom line here is that content sites in their current form are a bad move for all concerned. Content sites cant deliver reliable services, or profitable contracts, for either punters or providers. On the internet, as in life, there aint no such thing as a free lunch. Certainly, there are people who their living with what they do online. But the money hardly ever comes from content sites. Wealth online, as I see it, comes to people who put in some work, to people who build up a popular blog, or invent an audacious new type of forum, or way to deliver things online. Wealth online goes to people who looked and learned, who thought up a new scam, who implemented something clever, who built up value. Wealth online doesn't go to those who did small, comparatively unimportant tasks for other people for 50$ through someone else's site, while fighting for the job with 50 others. Thanks for reading, see you soon