How to Become a Web Content Writer
by Joy Henry
First, graduate college. Congrats, you did it. Read a bunch of trend pieces about how the economy is in the crapper and thousands of college graduates are moving home with mom and dad. Consider the prospect of moving into your childhood bedroom with the flimsy wood paneling, where you can hear your parents rutting vigorously in the next room. Still in love after all these years.
Panic, have stress diarrhea. You’re on the precipice, although you don’t know it yet. For a short while longer you’ll still be a virgin. Your Search Engine Optimization hymen is intact and would be worth 100, even 200 goats in some areas of the Internet. In the future you will look back on this time and wonder at the sweet, naïve girl you used to be. Before you could slip a link about diet pills into a blog post about rubber playground floors. Back when you took the Internet at face value.
Follow a lead from a friend who “worked freelance” one summer. Send in a writing sample to a company that sells scammy diet pills and get a job without an interview. Ben says you’ll be perfect for the new health blog they’re starting, with your background in science and writing. You talk briefly on Skype, and he’s beautiful and obnoxious. He wears an expensive t-shirt and his hair is gelled into an urban bouffant. It will be a few weeks before the full picture of your situation settles in. Before you’ll visualize hate-fucking Ben, rubbing his face into a bunch of articles with titles like “50 Cool Facts About Strawberries,” “Mohican Indian Resource List,” and “The Best Documentaries on Eating Green.”
You like that content, Ben? You like that?
Ben likes your content. In truth, the blog is okay work — you get to read scientific studies and sum up their findings, relate them to the reader’s need to buy B-12 shots or Phenylfenadrine so they can slough off some fat. But after a few months the blog is killed and Ben moves you to working on “affiliate blog posts.” Ben has a list of blogs that will publish guest posts by the scammy diet pill company. Your job will be to write articles for these blogs and pepper them with nonsensical links to the diet pill site.
By now, you can’t fool yourself that this writing is even a little bit meaningful, rather than a turd sculpted to the specifications of Google’s algorithm. This is not a business that helps the world, even in a small way. Today you will write four articles about hammocks for a website that sells the world’s most ergonomic hammock. You have to work in 20 links to the product pages for Ten Day Detox, RippedoBlast, and Obesi-lance.
Do not, in moments of weakness, linger on thoughts of that guy in college. You know, the one with the flat face who made out with you and insulted you at the same time, who is now an embedded reporter riding high in a tank in Afghanistan. In moments of weakness, it is okay to make almost-funny comments about friends who are “taking a class or two” and “learning Photoshop” on Mom and Dad’s Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship. Just know that no one finds your brittle sarcasm as enjoyable as you do.
Breathe deep. Close your laptop after a long day’s work and gaze into the mirror that hangs behind your desk. Say confidently: “RippedoBlast is a great product for outdoor lovers who want to boost their energy level.” That light in your eyes comes from the electricity you paid for, courtesy of DietPill.info.
When not writing SEO content for cash, Joy J. Henry also writes short stories. Her latest one is up at New England Review Digital. She’ll be starting a creative writing MFA at Oregon State University in the fall.
Photo via Flickr/Jon_Tucker.