Writing for Money – Is the Content Farm Dead?

Writer at Work

Since mid way through 2009 I’ve earned a considerable part of my income from writing in various forms including writing for the web.  In 2010 I dedicated a proportion of my time to writing for so called “content farms.”  For those not familiar with the concept, a content farm is simply a website which allows members to publish material in return for some form of financial gain usually linked to the clicks on adverts placed in close proximity to the article.  While the term content farm is usually used in a derogatory way, like all web content there exists the good the bad and the dam right ugly.

Content Farming in 2010

I quickly found my experiment in 2010 to be quite profitable, I registered with a number of sites including Suite 101 (my main site), Triond and Infobarrel.  Within a few months I’d built up an article based and was making what I would consider to be reasonable “bonus” money, nothing that was going to let me quit the day job but certainly enough to make a real difference to my monthly bottom line.

In short, from a personal perspective content farming was certainly worth the effort in 2010, every month I wrote new articles and every month my income grew.  The advantages of the content farm in 2010 were obvious, the average writer could gain a reasonable income by publishing articles on a pre-existing platform without a great deal of knowledge of search engine optimisation (SEO) or web marketing.  Content farms generally held a high ranking in the search engines and this lead to steady traffic and with it a steady stream of add clicks and income.

Content Farming in 2011 – Year of the Panda

Unfortunately starting in February 2011, Google implemented a major set of changes to its algorithms which affected the page rank of many sites.  The algorithm updates referred to as “Panda” while hitting many sites saw those sites classified as content farms hit the worst.  The results for content farmers like myself were devastating, articles which had previously been on the first page of Google search results now languished in the back waters and with the death of traffic also came the death of revenue.

While many content farms responded with changes to editorial policy, the large culling of poor quality content and various cosmetic changes in order try to gain favour again with Google and the search engines.  The fact remains that at the end of 2011, few if any of the content farms had made a significant impact in restoring traffic volumes to pre-Panda levels.

Content Farming in 2012 – Year of the Dragon

2012 and the Chinese year of the Dragon is now upon us, but what’s the future for content farmers?  Since the Panda algorithm changes I have seen little evidence that any of the major content farms has the ability rise again in the Google search ranks.  While there are always those eternal optimists, only a change in the bottom line will see me returning to the content farm model. 

As such, in 2012 it may be better to focus on writing for your own websites and blogs, personally the reason for writing for the content farms before was due to the high ranking such sites enjoyed in the search engines.  However, with that gone and no sign of it coming back, far better to maintain editorial freedom and 100% of the revenues generated from own branded websites and blogs.