Surfing the Internet and B Grade Movies

Surfing the net, do you ever get that feeling you’re watching a ‘B’ grade movie? Internet writers are a dime a dozen, literally. There are people all over the world, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more, earning less than one cent per word for their efforts. Is it any surprise that the resulting article is full of, spelling errors, grammatical faux pois and content that is simply gibberish?

Back in the days, don’t we all love that phrase? You know what’s coming, some old geezer giving us the benefit of their experience that means nothing to the young. Yes, the old geezer is me (female version) and for the sake of Laurel at Lorlie6, I’ll rephrase to a long time ago, I could type for more than one cent per word. Now that I think about it, I could probably earn dollars per word for typing now but I’d like to think, hope, I’ve progressed.

As a freelance writer I have my portfolio, resume, curriculum vitae, all of the aforementioned, listed with a number of online writing and employment sites. I take great pride in my work but I am a little picky about the jobs I apply for. I don’t actually want to write for less than one cent per word and I don’t want to write on one topic, again and again until I’m bored to tears.

How many times have I been pipped at the post in one of my proposals because someone from a country where $1 a day is a good income gets picked over me? Dozens, hundreds, too many that's for sure. I know I shouldn’t be fussed. If the client was prepared to accept a writer who would accept such a low wage, chances are the work was never going to be of interest to me anyway.

Surfing the Internet

Surfing the internet by keying in a search phrase uncovers a myriad of information totally irrelevant to my original search. I am frustrated, knowing that the internet is a good thing. It has changed many lives and given us the access to knowledge that was once confined to a library. But more than that, we have on tap; news releases before they hit radio or television, book and movie reviews and how to articles about anything in the world you want to do, try or haven’t even the imagination to conjure.

The internet is a wonderful invention. I love the ease of use via my computer, the portability of my laptop and wireless internet connection that I can use wherever I am. I can sit in a coffee shop or at a park bench at the beach and I have even sat in the middle of the country in the desert and booked accommodation at the next roadside stop.

But the rubbish needs to be filtered. We want information, but we want good and useful information. English that is credible and readable and how to articles that explain step by step, so we can actually succeed with our next do it yourself project. But the world is full of millions of people wanting to make a quick dollar. Writing has become a commodity for anyone who can use a computer, and these days that would be billions of people.

These ramblings may not be what you were hoping to view if you keyed in ‘blah’ (insert search word here), and landed on this page instead. This is part of a 30 minute challenge to produce a hub here on HubPages. Consider this my contribution to a ‘B’ grade movie -- the one you ended up watching when all your friends had money to go and see the real thing.

My apologies if this was not what you were looking for, but I will endeavour to produce future writings that are relevant and useful for anyone scouring the internet in the hope of finding information on topics they searched for in the first place.

Happy surfing!

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Everything above this line was written in 21 minutes. It took a few more minutes to add the images from those on file and then I hit the publish button. Why? A fellow hubber, Shadesbreath, posted to the forum, a challenge for others to come forward and produce a hub in 30 minutes. It took a while to generate interest but eventually he had seven players.

1. Shadesbreath
2. Wrylilt
3. Cagsil
4. Habee
5. Lorlie6
6. Mikeydoes
7. Betty Reid

The game was on. Here are the published Hubs that came from this challenge.

Even though the challenge was finalised within those first 30 minutes, other Hubbers read the posts or the hubs that were published and decided to jump on board. Obviously they were too late to win the big prize but given that the value of that was nothing it didn't really matter.

As you can see, I was one of the late starters in this challenge but I decided to give it a go regardless. Writing to a deadline has always helped to push me beyond writer's block. I had an idea the moment I read the post in the forum and I was curious to know what I could produce in such a short time. By the time I had finished I was amazed, not at the brilliance of the words, but by the volume of content generated. I struggle for days on end to write more than 300 words for one hub, normally. This hub has a word count of 650 and was written in 21 minutes.

Maybe I am up for the 30 hubs in 30 day challenge or maybe I can actually produce two or three hubs per week every week. This test has given me an insight into what is realistic for me. It makes sense, I have paying jobs where I can rattle off 500 words in a limited time, because if I want them to pay me I have to produce content. The same should be true for writing hubs on HubPages.