{"id":186,"date":"2019-01-30T16:32:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T16:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp\/?p=186"},"modified":"2019-01-30T16:32:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T16:32:59","slug":"dont-write-for-free-and-why-links-arent-that-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisajohnsonfitness.com\/dont-write-for-free-and-why-links-arent-that-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Write for Free and Why Links Aren\u2019t that Great"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t\n

I\u2019m currently in a cash crunch. There\u2019s a bit of a family thing, and we\u2019re watching every penny. Perhaps that\u2019s why today\u2019s email hit home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who hire me to write for them get a polished piece. The post or article is to your required length, will be SEO ready for optimization, spelling and grammar are checked. If you agree to pay for my services I will turn my work in on time. I can even share the piece to my network with a reach from a few hundred to as many as 30,000 people depending on the promotion choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been a blogger for seven years, and I have built a reputation as a solid journalist. I don\u2019t write sensationalized crap, I rarely mention Hollywood celebrities, I don\u2019t follow the trend of the day. My fitness advice comes from my 17-year career in the fitness industry through hundreds of hours of certification training and well over 10,000 hours training clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So don\u2019t ask me to write for you for free.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today Gabrielle Frank (@GabrielleFrank<\/a>), the fitness editor at MindBodyGreen.com asked me to write a \u201cfitness confessional\u201d about what it\u2019s like to be a Pilates Instructor in 2015. What is a confessional? I have no idea. I asked about compensation and received the following reply:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, we do not pay our contributors, but we get about 12 million unique views per month. Each author has their own bio page<\/a>, where they can link off to their website and social media accounts. If a post does well, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site!<\/p>

Please let me know if you\u2019re still interested!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What she\u2019s really offering me<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

OK, so I\u2019ve been around the block a few times, let me break this down for you. The 12 million views is for the entire site over a 30-day period. Unless this post sits on the home page for an entire 30 days (it won\u2019t) then I don\u2019t have a chance in heck of my piece getting anywhere near that number of views. It\u2019s likely that it\u2019ll be under 1,000, maybe just a couple of hundred. So this is bait and switch advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bio page consists of a headshot and a few pithy lines about me on a landing page. Depending on the site, I might be the only person on the landing page, or I might be in a long list of other people who also agreed to write for free. Either way, this page will be buried deep, very few people will ever see it. The link juice I\u2019m hoping for might come from this page or the blog post page (or both) but the page authority will be relatively low, and Google won\u2019t care very much that I got a link on one page buried deep on a large site. It\u2019s also possible they will \u201cno follow\u201d my links \u2014 this tells Google specifically not to track it. (I\u2019ve had that happen before too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So a few hundred views, a link with little to no value and how exactly do I feed my family?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How they build wealth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Founder and CEO Jason Wachob viewed my LinkedIn page earlier this week. I got a little thrill because 1) I really do like his site and 2) I\u2019m job hunting and was hoping I\u2019d get a request for work. So to get a solicit for a free article was even more of a disappointment given that Wachob had at least glanced at my resume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of resume, Wachob<\/a> is coming out with a book next year entitled \u201cWellth: How I learned to build a life, not a resume.\u201d I\u2019m sure his book will gleam with nuggets on how to work smarter not harder. If I presented him with this blog post but substituted a different site for his, would he tell me to write the freebie confessional or skip it because it\u2019s not a good value for my goals? (My goals are modest right now, paying rent and eating.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But creating \u201cwellth\u201d by asking others to forego their \u201cwealth\u201d accumulation for a little link juice smacks me as disingenuous. Jason, I\u2019m sure you\u2019re awesome, and if you ever read this, maybe you\u2019ll cringe a little bit, but I need groceries dude, not a buried link.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m using MindBodyGreen as an example because they were the proverbial last straw, but there are thousands (millions?) of sites that do this to writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I\u2019m saying no more freebies, publicly and loudly. I\u2019m not trying to be a jerk here, but enough is enough. Don\u2019t exploit people by telling them half-truths that only help you. It\u2019s not OK.<\/em> I believe unpaid work is an ethical issue, and creative types, from interns to writers need to do better. I\u2019m standing up for myself, but also others like me who value what they do. Who\u2019s with me?<\/p>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m currently in a cash crunch. There\u2019s a bit of a family thing, and we\u2019re watching every penny. Perhaps that\u2019s why today\u2019s email hit home. People who hire me to write for them get a polished piece. The post or article is to your required length, will be SEO ready for optimization, spelling and grammar …<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Write for Free and Why Links Aren\u2019t that Great<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nDon\u2019t Write for Free and Why Links Aren\u2019t that Great - Lisa Johnson Fitness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lisajohnsonfitness.com\/dont-write-for-free-and-why-links-arent-that-great\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Don\u2019t Write for Free and Why Links Aren\u2019t that Great - Lisa Johnson Fitness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m currently in a cash crunch. 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