Is this a scam? Make up your own mind
LOTS of ads start like this: “Are you an experienced business journalist who loves to fire off a hot news story or piece of analysis on your specialist subject?”
This one goes on: “SEOContentKing.co.uk provides tailored business news to clients in a variety of industries and is looking for talented writers who enjoy researching and putting together a news story.”
Yes but what about pay? “Stories are generally 250 words and take between 5-15 minutes to write. Payment is £2.50 per story so £15 per hour is achievable, although you can work at your own pace, with subjects provided.”
Work it out. £2.50 for 250 words is £10 a 1,000. Does anyone know of a lower freelance rate? And to earn £15 means writing six an hour.
Presumably this sort of “business story” is just a press puff for some company and its products, search engine optimised — that’s what SEO means — to help them sell it, but even so the scam is “disgusting”.
That’s the word I used when I wrote to journalism.co.uk, which carried the ad, to complain. The website replied that they “maintain a strictly neutral stance on our advertisers, and prefer to allow our users to make their own minds up”.
Really? How much choice does a keen young college leaver have when searching for work? There’ll be kids who’ll leap at this, and what kind of start in journalism will that be for them? Sadly there’ll probably be experienced people too, desperate for any income at all.
You couldn’t invent a better illustration of the way journalists are being exploited — that’s if it’s journalism at all. And journalism.co.uk should be ashamed of itself for accepting it. Does it too need the money that badly?