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Gamelive- Forumville Poster of The Century

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Matty
Are you still able to get paid by the word Davey? I did that for a long time as a writer/translator, it was a pretty sweet deal. It's all gone now, and all my old colleagues are doing something else.

I was paid A DOLLAR A WORD by CAA in 2016-2017 to write bullshit listicles about cars and motorcycles. 500 words, $500, one to three articles a week. Sometimes I could bang one out in 90 mins if I knew the subject well.

Translation was between 10 and 30 cents a word depending on the source content. 2008 was my best year by far, I'll probably never make that much money again. Sometimes I would get fed repeat content that was slightly edited and my translation would barely change. I'd get paid twice to have my translation memory software tell me the source text was a 99% match to something I'd done previously. Feltgoodman.
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Mannnn those rates are WILD, must have been a blast. I believe some elite magazines and subscription sites do still pay $1+/word, but yeah for listicle type shit that sounds like a unicorn. In my two main niches (betting/iGaming and e-commerce), things topped out at around .20-.25/word, which was plenty to make a living on.

Similar vibes (albeit at a much lower rate), at OS I used to get 10-12 350w game preview articles per week that were pure auto-pilot. Intro, Team A graph, Team B graph, Trends, Outro. Knocked those out in like 30m apiece. The good ol' days.

But to answer your question, decent per word gigs are tougher to find these days, but you definitely still can. The issue is that the massive rise in AI-generated content and content mills (sites paying ~.01-.03/word) has made cheap or free content so easily accessible that there are far fewer spots paying worthwhile amounts, so those jobs are a lot more competitive. And a lot of places are hiring in-house "content engineers" to basically be AI editors and babysitters.

On the flip side, Google is constantly updating its algorithm (and using AI, ironically enough) to combat the propagation of AI trash and to display quality content higher in the rankings. And there are still plenty of "I'll never use AI!" curmudgeons out there. So there is a market for well-written content at a decent wage, you've just got to look for it. Happy to share pointers and resources if you are interested, or maybe you were just asking out of curiosity haha.
 
Thanks much but I don't think I'm ever going back to that type of work.

I think I'm headed towards B2B services, ecom support for small shops in verticals I'm knowledgeable about (bikes and guitars).

Doing sales for a year was fun but I don't have the profile of a good hustler, I'd rather help shops rather than stuff product down their throat.
 
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