According to Wikipedia, a content mill:

is a company that employs large numbers of freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines.

Why so many writers feel compelled to start their careers writing for content mills, I will never understand. If you’re also baffled by this phenomenon, here are a few of the most common reasons for writing for content mills.

3 Top Reasons for Writing for Content Mills

Experience–The experience you get pushing out one blog post after another is not the experience you will need to write magazine feature articles, website copy, marketing materials, or really, anything else you might like to do.

Exposure–You will not get a byline, for the most part, for what you write for a content mill. So this is not a valid argument.

Pay–Ha! Really? Five dollars an article is not my idea of pay. Write the same length of post for any number of blogs and get paid ten times that. In fact, here’s a list that will get you going.

If you want to “generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines,” do it for your own blog, monetize it, and sit back and reap the rewards.

Do you write for a content mill? I’d love to hear about your experiences.