For Freelance Writers, Content Farms Aren’t a Thing of the Past

I’ve been a professional writer since the very early 2000’s (as in January of 2000). I moved to full-time freelancing in October of 2010, and part of what kept me afloat was writing for content farms. If you’re not sure what a content farm is, rather than giving you an online explanation, I want to tell you what I know of them.

Content farms, in the beginning, were all about quantity over quality – they paid writers the least amount possible for quick-turnaround of work, and they didn’t care if it was well-researched, as long as it was readable and not plagiarized. Not all content farms were created equally, but for most of them, pay was timely, and you could do as much or as little work as you wanted to. As Google began adjusting its search algorithms, it flagged sites that were rushing out subpar articles. That meant some content farms closed their barn doors, while others found ways to keep things working.

These days, content farms are less noticeable, but they still exist. Without naming names, the best way to find today's content farms is to look for the business buying up all of the .com sites so they have platforms on every subject under the sun. I worked for one of them for five years – until I was recently let go due to subpar performance because they moved me to a site where I didn’t have experience in the covered topics. That’s one of the M.O.s of today’s content farms – they like to set their writers up for failure. Why? Because people willing to accept $21 an hour for writing easy articles are a dime a dozen – it’s okay pay when you compare it to similar companies.

So, here is my story.

I have worked with content farms on and off for years. Most of them no longer exist. They were the ones who paid like $10 an article – but you could bs your way through those articles and pump out dozens a day. In 2021, I snatched up the opportunity to work with a company with many websites – they’ve at least tripled the number of sites they own since then. $21 an hour for 40 hours a week worked for me – pays better than retail management. I was hired into a site different than what I applied for, but I had a great editor and quickly moved up to editing (which was a $2 an hour bump in pay). Mind you, there are no increases in pay, so you’ll always be making this same amount, no matter how long you stay with the company. The unfortunate part was that I was writing on content I had no interest in or experience with (gardening and home remodeling, mostly). I snatched up whatever articles leaned more to my interests (like decorating your home with crystals).

Luckily, after a year or so, one of their other sites that fit my experience more opened up space for editors and writers, and I did both there and with their sister site for a bit, until they forced us to only work for one site (they’d flop on this over and over). Unfortunately, I switched to per-word writing (8 cents a word) just before work dried up. I was stuck because there were no open hourly spots. I ended up stepping away for a little over a year. Mostly because I was burned out from all of their nonsense. I didn’t write in all that time. Got a job outside the house.

I came back to them last year, since they had an opening for a travel site – and I love domestic travel. I was having a blast … until the hours available fizzled at that site, and they forced me back into the home and garden sector. Not once did I get “red flagged” for articles when I was at the travel site, but all of a sudden, 75% of my work was being sent back for revisions. It was my own fault I lost the job – I called attention to myself when I asked to be moved to one of the fashion and beauty sites I’d written for in the past because they had an opening – I knew I would flourish there. Instead, I got let go. They removed me from everything an entire hour before they sent me my farewell email.

This is what today’s content farms look like. They’re gulping up experienced and talented writers, chewing them up with their nonsense, and spitting them out, leaving them feeling defeated. And the content on these sites is still lame.