Should companies treat independent freelance writers as their "employees"?

...said the company owner, who doesn't write anything... who sells what others write.

writers do all the work, and have to listen to owners whine and moan about making the simplest accounting adjustments, which could result in a more equitable distribution of profits.

I know some writers are content, but really, it couldn't be better? at all? you're carrying these people on your backs, and smiling about how you can "do what you want."

most of these owners, as this message board attests, are too dumb to write the copy themselves. they need you; they're not going to outsource to $3/page illiterates, if they want their companies to continue to be respected.

owners: try taking a reduced cut, and starting a bonus program that actually pays significant dividends for measurable outcomes. try offering a feedback-based rewards system. cut out a little from advertising, and spread it around. don't be so greedy!

smirk, how many companies do you own? One or more?


Writers who are not content with the rates offered by companies take more private clients and get better rates.


Some companies only outsource to ESL writers and they are still doing well. You get what you pay for.


Educate yourself about the employment law first.

We could argue that better be dumb than looser.

...and you could argue it quite convincingly. Especially that first part.

1) stop making fallacious generalisations. Many American and British company owners are involved in the research/writing aspect of the operation. This is true of us, of AA and of Accredited Writers (am sure WB knows of a few more). Thankfully, it is not true of Rusty's employers. As bad as the majority of their writers, they are better than Alexei.

2) you claim that freelancers sacrifice a great deal. What, exactly, do they sacrifice. The good ones - pheelyks, fw et al., - do not see it the same way. Guess why? Because, unlike a certain Rusty Writer, they are good at what they do, are recruited by the top companies (those who wouldn't give you a moment's consideration), and are well-paid.

3) 60/40 in favour of writers? Did you come up with that one all by your moronic self? How many times have WB and others blasted the pay rates offered by your employers? The legits - who would never hire you - pay their top writers just that. Educate yourself first, please, before assuming that all pay the measly 20-30% which AR and EW do.

Mods - please close this thread. This ignorant commie is just a stark raving loon who's wasting time and space (both here and on earth in general).

editor75
it looks like you keep forgetting what was written a couple of pages ago.

let me summarize a few points for you:

1) by becoming a freelancer you become responsible for your working schedule and your earnings;

2) a freelancer would part the ways with the client if underpaid and wouldn't start begging "plz pay me moar, i've sacrificed so much";

3) freelancer is in the constant search of better terms and new clients - that's the way to be doing better.

freelancer - you
client - writing company

smirk-- once again, this isn't about "begging for money." it's about changing the way the industry works and making it more equitable. if no one wants a better way, it's 100% certain that there won't be one. are you really so happy with the status quo?

WRT-- you seem to have settled on a 5th or 6th identity for me, and you still look like just as much of a paranoid fool as before. I hope Rusty haunts your nightmares, just like centrapark, Batul, et al. yes, writers do sacrifice-- they sacrifice a fair deal, good benefits, and the power to bargain with their employers, for a nebulous sense of freedom and the ability to work when sick. what a deal. if you or WritersBeware actually write for your respective companies, which I don't believe, I feel a great deal of sympathy for your clients. also, are you saying that you pay your writers a 60/40 split? I don't believe that, either.


I see you've been learning from the master of anti-social bullying, and this time, I'm not talking about Joe McCarthy. are you proud?

stu4-- good one. I would say, it's better to be looser. who needs to be uptight?

major-- lawyers? really? like company owners aren't parasitic enough; now you have to bring lawyers into it? I'm not talking about employment law; I'm talking about what's right.

editor75
well, if you can offer nothing in return it looks like begging.


in other words
if someone tells you:
"it's about making this world better, donate everything you have on saving wild animals and live in a hut"

what will you say? i'm sure it will be "no, thank you"

same thing

smirk-- the returns are better motivation, quality, output, and loyalty.

re: saving wild animals, you and Major should get together and trade inappropriate metaphors. although writers do 100% of the work, I realize that managers do need to take some kind of cut for administrative costs and overhead. what I'm saying is that this cut, as it exists as an industry standard which is either held or deviated from, even as a standard, is too high.

quality?
you pay in kind to greedy employers and intentionally submit the works of poor quality? and once the cpp is increased the quality will go up at an exponential rate

loyalty? i'm against any loyalty in freelance


i hate to tell you, but this happens in all industries

those secretaries, hr officers, customer care reps, accountants, different supervisors are paid for producing absolutely nothing.

the managers often have huge salaries while hardly producing even 1% of the total output

that's the cruel world we live in

no one suggested this. where do you get this idea?

I am saying that employees who are treated better, tend to produce better quality work.


as long as you don't think you can change it, it will continue to be so.

Two ID's moron and boh are absolutely correct. Don't push your luck.

You are an ignorant SOB. How about opening your own company and practising what you preach?

Mods - when is enough actually ENOUGH?

WRT-- I'll take that insulting, repetitive, paranoid filth as a, "no, I'm not paying my writers a 60/40 split."

and stop raising your hand and trying to tattle to the mods, while at the same time indulging in this playground taunting. it's embarrassing, and it should be obvious by now that they're ignoring you.

then again, what have you written that hasn't been embarrassing?

well, i think it's funny


yep, i can change the world by posting on the board, why didn't i know this before?

As my writers know, moron, I do and that has been made more than clear throughout several of my posts.

As you were informed (several times), many companies adhere to the 50/50 - 60/40 split ... not the companies you work for though :)

This is simply untrue. I have already listed the may things I DON'T do as a writer for the companies I work for, but here goes again:

-I don't find customers
-I don't answer most customer questions
-I don't process payments
-I have not invested any capital in building/maintaining a website
-I have not spent any money or energy on advertising
-I don't pay incorporation fees or deal with business taxes, licenses, etc.

I agree that writers do most of the work, even when the initial and ongoing investments of teh company owners are called "work." Smart writers that work for the good companies also take home most of the money.

I would also agree that site owners take home a higher percentage of the company's revenue than the percentage of "work" (including investment) they put into the company. They also assume much greater risks in starting the company, and this risk is the source of their reward in a capitalist system. While I would love for the owners to pay me every cent they don't need for operating expenses, they have no obligation to nor do I feel it is right fr me to demand it--these companies wouldn't exist at all if the owners didn't think they could make some money by starting them.

Risk, reward, and innovation are all intimately tied together in capitalism; if you want to argue that capitalism is a bad system, that would be an interesting discussion and one in which we might find many points of agreement. Within this system as it currently stands, however, I do not think it is unfair for site owners to make a tidy profit from their businesses as long as they pay me a fair amount of money. I think earning nearly twice the national average salary while doing less work (and doing that work in my bathtub) is decent compensation.

I'm not surprised that you're keeping up these ignorant assumptions. what else are you going to do-- answer my questions?


yep! so they can have a free piggyback ride for your tenure, just because they took the "risks" of incorporating. most small business owners aren't in it for risk and innovation-- they're there because they're otherwise unemployable, and greedy.

for proof, see above.

So you are mad that independent freelance writers (half of whom work on weekends or take sporadic jobs at their own schedule and convenience only) have an opportunity to make extra money instead of living on a dole? You want to take this opportunity away from them too?

I can only imagine what a single stay-at-home mom who can afford to buy baby food thanks to the opportunity to write from home for money would say to you if she met you in person. SHAME ON YOU!

once again, Major, it's quite a stretch from trying to get better, more equitable conditions for writers, to stealing from welfare mothers. maybe this works on the radio stations you listen to, but out in the clean air, it looks sort of crazy.

Did you read my entire post, or just find the one sentence that you thought you could argue with when taken out of context?

You've now been unable to logically respond to every single substantive post I've made. I don't think you are a complete idiot, but you seem to be incapable of using evidence and rational thought to defend your assertions. I'm done.

pheelyks-- I read your whole post. I don't think I took anything out of context, as I referred to your context in my response.


you were done before you started. as with many others, your mind is already made up; you've justified your compromise, and become content. to do this, you've overestimated the amount of work these parasites do for you, and have given them much more credit than they deserve.

People - this person is nothing other than a stupendously stupid moron. None agree with Stupido yet, it still continues to argue. Its "I'm right and you're all wrong" mindset is symptomatic of megalomania. Leave it be. It is useless and a waste of our collective time.

Something shouldn't push its luck. Why don't people ever learn? Stupidity? Probably.

WRT-- whose collective time are you talking about?

and, megalomaniac? I've said again and again that I don't have all the answers, and that I actually came here looking for constructive feedback.

just because you haven't provided any, doesn't mean that no one else has.

if you think my ideas are stupid, fine. you've said so about a thousand times. it's obviously very frustrating for you to be in this thread, repeating the same childish insults, so may I suggest a simple solution? stop posting in it.

Editor75, why are you such a pathetic loser-nature or nurture?

FINLANDIA vodka (instead of Russian one)

editor75
I think you're just trolling. You start the discussion, keep maintaining it by pretending not to understand elementary things, after people have written several pages, you write the same stuff you wrote at the very beginning and it starts all over again

is that what you think? I've been repeating myself because I keep getting challenged on the same points.

...and failing to actually counter them.

it's not about "countering challenges," to me, it's about trying to build something together.

if you disagree with the foundation on which this hypothetical building is to take place, you're free to express your disagreement. you're not changing my mind; I'm not changing yours.

we're at an impasse.

And when people explain why they don't want to build something with you, all you seem to be capable of is repeating your assertions.

You might not have been looking for a debate when you came here, but you got one. That fact that you haven't tried to find a new group of more receptive people to "build things" with suggests that you are interested in the debate, yet you consistently fail to actually debate. This is why this thread is boring.


Yes. Because you cannot logically counter our challenges, we are at an impasse. If you simply have no desire to attempt to counter our challenges, that also puts us at an impasse, but then it's one of willful ignorance rather than incompetence. I'm not sure which one you prefer, but either way I'll play King Arthur to your Black Knight and call it a draw.

Jesus Christ. I can't believe this thread is still going and that anybody's still trying to reason with this clown. He deserves the all-time award for biggest forum troll on the Internet.

+1,000,000

it all goes back to how you feel about the status quo.


if you don't want it to continue, you should probably stop posting in it. you haven't contributed anything productive, anyway.


I'm just trying to troll up some ideas about improving conditions. it seems to me that the real trolls are the people who want to constantly disparage and demean others, rather than adding anything of value themselves.

It's just an observation, not a statement of concern. As far as contributing "productively" to this board, I have about 450 posts on this forum in about 2.5 years and the vast majority of them are helpful advice to students hoping to find information here about how not to get ripped off, which happens to be the main purpose of this forum.

You, on the other hand, have 163 posts in ONE MONTH since you joined and virtually 100% of those repetitive posts have been derided as complete idiocy by some of the most respected members on this board. That hasn't even caused you to consider that nobody here considers your "contribution" to be anything more than amusement and evidence of apparent mental deficiency, instability, or both. You haven't responded directly to any of the intelligent challenges or questions about your position either and you've just continually fillibustered with more nonsense instead.

By all means, continue "contributing."

MOD, I am formally requesting that you close this thread. There's nothing of the dead horse left to beat. I am also requesting that you ban the moron if he attempts to infect any other threads with similarly ridiculous, asinine ramblings.

WB-- every time I post in other threads, the mod puts it here. if this is the same mod you keep crying to, good luck. to a certain extent, you're right-- it is a dead horse, at this point. so... that means I should be censored, right?

FW-- I'm sure you've made your share of contributions to this board, but that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about this thread.

Where, exactly, do I "keep crying," idiot?

you do it all the time, because apparently you're a huge tattle-tale, as well as an obnoxious bully. a tattle-tale and a bully-- the worst kind of pariah. "MOD-- stop this thread," "MOD-- mark this as spam," "MOD-- why aren't you doing anything?!"

now, please answer my question-- when someone repeats something, do they deserve to be censored?

For once, I agree with you :)

sticks and stones... I'm sure you feel the same way about your employees.

so, if it's just me and the peanut gallery left, this thread should probably come to a close. if anyone else is a writer or manager, and has some ideas about how to improve the status quo in this industry (or even if they want to state their contentedness with it), feel free to revive it.

I'm not going to just sit here and be insulted, though. WRT, WB: goodbye. you should both be ashamed of yourselves.