Passive Income and digital sweatshops

 Dan Olsen released a video investigating a niche internet grift revolving around the appeal of passive income. 

I had never heard of the Mikkelsen twins or Urban Writers, the principal villains of this particular scam method. But I had to keep pausing the video because much of it felt so familiar. As amateurish as a lot of the Mikkelsen twins pitch comes across the appeal is obvious, passive income is great. Everyone who isn't a lifestyle coach scam artist will admit working hard for low pay isn't great. Aside from physical and mental tiring you also have to wrestle with feelings of inadequacy and wastefulness. So getting money for a long time after you've stopped putting effort into it has its advantages.

So, while I was surprised watching the pitch get elaborated on reflection a scam that offers you the reward of passive income with zero effort, completely passive income if you will, well that's bound to attract a few individuals. It's pretty maddening to watch, but I can say from experience that this method is unlikely to work, especially now that a very big platform has publicly exposed them. 

I have some experience with working in the internet gig economy freelancing for anonymous clients using job boards that operate very similarly to Urban Writers. There were sections of the video, the part outlining the pay and conditions for the ghost writer and what it feels like to write a book yourself were unpleasant to sit through because they were very accurate to what I went through.

The response so far has been very positive, though I've seen some questions and reluctance to believe that parts of pipeline can be realistic. Artificial Intelligence programs have been getting a lot of buzz lately especially the bots that make digital artworks from prompts, some have suggested that this could explain how the writers are able to live and work on such terms. Which simply isn't feasible for a number of reasons. We're still a long way off from AI created books that are coherent much less passable, the market sites like Amazon and Apple don't care about sloppy prose and run on sentences but they do have some standards for publishing. Furthermore the intellectual sweatshops like Urban Writers couldn't survive without a large pool of desperate writers to churn out the goods. If AI could provide product to the standards a client desires then there wouldn't be much need for middlemen groups like Urban Writers, just buy or license the software and make as many low content Search Engine Optimised trash you want.

The reason these intellectual sweat shops work is simply because there's a large pool of eager or desperate people who are vulnerable enough to be open to the few crumbs thrown their way. Writing, even technical and copy writing require passion as careers. It may seem like light work if you only take into account the time spent physically using a pen, keyboard or typewriter, and assume a payment equivalent or better than average salary at the end. But as Dan's video makes clear, this is not the case, there is research time, editing, planning, and for many writers myself included time spent in a sort of mental stalling phase where you cannot easily move into any of the phases. And I can attest that Dan is correct when he states that even much of the time that's not supposed to be devoted to the writing task, breaks, other chores etc, is often time still spent obsessing over the book or dealing with anxiety or frustration over the work. I'll add that even when I've finished a project and it's been submitted, I often spend a few days in a sort of limbo where the lack of a project makes me feel restless. So it requires a lot from you, and this is probably why writers in fiction are often presented as high strung, self absorbed, fragile, and erratic individuals as that can be what's visible from the outside.

As to why this makes writers so vulnerable to these types of content farm outfits, well that's more structural. Publishing is a small world and thanks to monopolies its becoming even smaller. At the time of writing Penguin and Random House are battling in the courts for the right to merge with many celebrated authors giving evidence to the opposition as they fear the merger will severely impede their abilities to make a living and pursue a career. Just imagine what its like for someone starting out or on a much lower rung. And that's in fiction, novels are the main money and fame making area of publishing, if you're a poet, a short story writer or a non-fiction writer there are even fewer options to take. I remember when I left university I was told that a non-fiction book selling over 3,000 copies would be placed in the best seller category.

If you're not already a big name you need to build up a body of work, this is very difficult in non-fiction publishing. From personal experience the few publishers for that aren't very hospitable to original research that isn't attached to an author who's already established in a relevant field. It can even be frosty to authors who have been published but there has been a long gap between the last accepted submission and the present. Feast or famine was the advise I was given about publication, if you want to make a viable go at it you have to publish early and regularly.

These attitudes freeze out a lot of graduates and passionate amateurs. If your desperate for work, any work these shady companies can be the only game in town at least at the start. I tried to support myself in this field after graduation and my applications met with silence. I managed to get several gigs as a freelancer for several websites that were just a bit above modern clickbait mills, and some contracts on job board sites very similar to how Dan described Urban Writers system. Dan's assumptions on the emotional state of someone having to depend on such a system were spot on. I spent all day and chunks of the night grinding out assignments with limited research, and I was still making the equivalent of welfare. And that was when every other part of the arrangement was working fine, which it rarely did.

After walking away from it I wrote about the experience, looking back on that piece now I think its the most pessimistic bit of writing I've ever published. Since that time there have been some changes, the level of oversight on the self publishing market has improved a little, and some of the worst offenders have gone bust, though a few have rebranded, and overall the market has become dominated by a few big players. I still could not in good conscience recommend this system to anyone wishing to start out or make a living out of it.

Behold! Tis lord Odesk, benevolently giving labour to
the grateful scribe

In more positive news, there is now a union for freelancers which back when I wrote digital economy was something I didn't think was possible. Its international though currently its main presence is in the USA and Canada, expansion has been slow but is happening. It has also been relatively successful in two areas, its become a method for freelancers to share experiences and information about conditions in the industry which is vital to stopping the most egregious examples of exploitation which rely on a company interacting directly with an inexperienced individual, and has had some success with campaigns targeting specific employers. 

I still freelance occasionally when time permits me, but now I mostly stick to submissions for magazines, journals and websites I've had previous dealings with. I've also started using platforms like amazon to host some translation and non fiction work. These platforms offer an alternative for authors of niche material, but a path to riches they aren't for most. Passive income is pretty good so long as you put some effort in and don't cook up a scheme that exploits others. Personally, I think the major bottleneck comes after creation. If you've worked on a book, collection of poems, audiobook, song, art, video etc. then these platforms will make your work more available to a potential audience. But it's the promotion or the lack of it that gets in the way of pivoting to this as a viable career. I was not surprised to learn that Dan's book sold one copy in its lifespan as he didn't do any promotion and because of the pseudonym kept a lot of distance from it. I wish he had kept it up after publishing the video so we could see how much even that limited and deprecating plug thirty minutes into a video did for it. 

You either have to buy advertising, which takes a low/no cost option and turns it into a high cost one, and a high cost for a gamble. Or word of mouth, and the issue with word of mouth I find is that getting people to buy something is the easy part, and I find that quite hard, its getting those customers to rate, review or even mention what they've purchased that is the truly difficult task. My sales to date across all formats, including discounts is around 400, my ratings and reviews have been less than ten. Haven't had any refunds or e-mailed complaints and the few ratings and reviews are positive, but that isn't a firm foundation for a retirement plan.

And I'm not alone here. A common question in forums for authors is "how do I get more reviews?" and I've none more than one talented artist who put a lot into a project that was selling relatively well, that burnt out because of a lack of response from the audience. It goes back to passion really, earning a living is a necessity in our times, but the feelings of failure and lack of impact can eat away at a creative type. So, if you enjoy something letting the people who made it know goes a long way.

In conclusion, well done Dan, support artists and of course

Buy my book!