In Defense of Content Farms (well...some of them)

Online content farms are a bit like offline food farms. There are farms that produce beautiful output -- fresh, flavorful, ripe, pure and wholesome, the type of stuff you see at your favorite displays at the farmer's market. Then you have your pretty crappy stuff -- unripe, tasteless, full of chemicals, non-nutritious and just plain ugly to look at.

Let's call the really good stuff that the farmers produce organic. And let's call the crappy stuff...ummm...how about spam!

There are content farms producing wonderful organic content. And there are content farms producing spam by the ton. I'm really fortunate to be a freelance writer for an organic content farm named Demand Studios, owners of the much-maligned eHow, among other sites.

Demand has been dragged across the coals, unfairly in my view, and I just want to say a bit on their behalf.

First off, it's a great gig. I work when I want, where I want, and as much or as little as I care to. I can write for a flat fee to bring in immediate income, or for revenue share, to earn a continual stream of income for years after an article is written (I have a few individual articles that have each earned thousands of dollars). I don't earn like Bill Gates, but I do a lot better than flipping burgers (I figure about $30 an hour, but in truth, I haven't worked out my earnings in much detail).

As for the quality of my content, I can say...with a bit of a caveat...that I have no reason to hang my head. My articles are well-written, well-researched and, dang it, they're useful! I don't think any readers will feel unduly spammed if they happen across How to Make Money on the Internet, or How to Find Unclaimed International Assets.

The fact is, Demand is demanding when it comes to article research and quality. Writers are always griping behind the scenes about how strict the editors are (yes...Demand has oodles of editors!) and what a pain it is parsing AP writing style. Sure, an occasional clunker may get past the reviewers, but all in all, the vast majority of what Demand puts online is good stuff.

Not great stuff, mind you. Just good stuff. There are no Pulitzers looming in our freelance futures. But everything we produce is servicable and geared towards answering -- and answering well -- the very questions that people are asking online, no matter how mundane.

That caveat I mentioned? The focus on quality is a recent development at Demand, something that's dominated their content creation for the past two years or so. Prior to that, a lot of the stuff that went up on sites like eHow was, sorry to say, garbage. I certainly contributed articles to that collection that I can't honestly say I'm proud of. Demand is still in the process of culling through that older material and deleting what needs to be deleted. Most of it's gone, but you'll still come across a few junky gems here and there.

But happily, Demand has completed its transition to a full-fledged organic content farm. It's a good freelancing gig producing good quality content that is well-matched to the needs of millions of searchers. Apparently, the stock market agrees. When Demand Media (the parent of Demand Studios and eHow) went public in its January IPO, the stock price jumped and has stayed elevated since. Investors seem willing to place a solid bet on the Demand business model.

So what's everybody so worked up about? Why is Demand being sullied as the ruination of all that is decent about the web, a source of nothing more than Internet pollution?

That's a really hard question to answer. There's no good reason for the invective, that I can see, but there are a few obvious factors that enter the mix.

There's a lot of angst out there, as the business end of earning a living as a writer or journalist is changing before everyone's eyes. Opportunities that were successful in the past paper-based world are disappearing, even as new cyber-opportunities are blossoming. Demand has been on the receiving end of some scorn from old-school writers, highly-skilled Paul Bunyans, warding off the evils of new tools that allow anyone with a power supply to hack down trees or crank out articles.

Demand is also paying the price for its wayward youth. People remember those nonsensical, useless eHows, even though they're mostly long gone from the web.

And I guess there's also a certain indiscriminate thing that the human mind does. There are certainly bad content farms out there, just as there are bad spinach farms and bad strawberry farms producing things that make people sick. And when that happens, folks tend to throw out all their spinach and all their strawberries...and from the looks of things, all their Demand Studios articles as well.

Which is a shame. Because there really may be some unclaimed international assets with your name on it!



P.S.  Are you a journalist writing about quality issues at content farms? Do me, yourself, and your readers a favor. Look over 50 eHow articles at random -- it won't take that long -- before coming to any conclusions about overall article quality at the site.