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Comment from Killer
Time May 19, 2010 at 8:16 am
Thanks so much for the heads up, Martin! I look to people like you to help warn us about such things, since I can’t check out every opportunity, being a freelance writer myself and needing to earn a solid living. I did see the Consumersearch.com but did not post it because of a couple of things I have experienced with big companies like these:
1. They want you to write for very little money, reasoning that you are getting huge exposure, which has a value in itself. Just look at AOLs job postings. They want to pay $10 for a $500-word, well-researched post. Of course, AOL is a Time Warner company, not NYT, so I could be mistaken on this one. I’d love to know how this turns out for you…
2. 25 hours research to write an article better pay at least $650 each. What do you think are the chances that’s what they are paying?
3. My intuition just tells me it’s not as good as it looks. Please let me know if I am wrong!
Thanks,
~Killer.
Comment from Martin Dodge
Time May 19, 2010 at 12:48 am
If you go to this site: http://www.journalismjobs.com/index.cfm
and you enter “telecommute” as a search term, it will return several telecommute writing jobs, although the job I tracked down on there:
http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=1168974
for an outfit called Consumersearch.com, did not appear as one of the jobs. Dated today, maybe it’s too new to have been listed? I don’t know. But this listing says they need a LOT of writers, presumably to submit reviews of… of pretty much everything. I don’t know where you’re supposed to get the stuff to test, but I intend to find out. Maybe I’ll get to test and keep a BMW.
Do you ever warn writers about scumbag companies? Student Network Resources frequently advertises for writers. What they have writers do is turn out term papers, dissertations, etc. for college students, usually on very short lead times. This is an unethical way to make money, and the guy who runs it, Mark, is a real sleaze. He pays $6 – $9/page, depending upon how technical the subject is, and he’s good at finding ways to cheat the writer out of his pay.