Freelance Writing

So recently I've been toying around with doing some freelance writing. I'm funny. I'm entertaining. I have something to say, although I do have to apologize as I see I now have FOUR followers and I haven't posted anything in ages (sorry kids!).

I had seen an ad on Craigslist to be an official freelance writer for a website called "Gather.com." While the site itself makes it very difficult to figure out just what the hell it is you can do there (social networking, blogging?), I finally figured out that it's almost like Facebook, but instead of a page where you just post updates, you can blog stuff and post pictures, etc, etc. The neat thing is that this site will pay you (in gift cards or in cash that you can collect via PayPal) for what you write. In fact, they'll toss one of their OFFICIAL writers anywhere from $2.50 to a whopping $10 per article you write, if said article gets 250 unique views or more. The thought of that is enough to make me pee my pants!

"OK," I thought to myself, "not enough to make me an insta-millionaire, but occasional extra change in my pocket might be nice." But, being a person of slightly above average intelligence, I thought to myself, "Self, where is the catch?" So I turned to the sometimes hard to navigate but always informative "Terms of Service" (or TOS ... to those of you who like to abbreviate).

Quickly skimming along, I see why it is that they offer gift cards and nominal cash offerings. It's an incentive to the average man. Gather.com, essentially, can take anything you write and then pass it off and do with it whatever they please. They don't own it, but they kinda own it (if that makes sense). A brief passage from Gather.com's TOS page:

"Gather does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to such Content, you grant Gather a world-wide, royalty free, perpetual, unlimited, and non-exclusive license(s) to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, create derivative works, publicly perform and publicly display such Content via the Service or on any other Gather property. Gather reserves the right to syndicate the Content submitted, posted, and/or displayed by you and to use that Content in connection with other services offered by Gather. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under the TOS. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete Content from the Service."

I feel bad for people who don't think to read things like that. Because I'm willing to be there are some really talented authors and bloggers who have signed up to be members of that site without reading the TOS (or having read but not truly understanding what the TOS truly means). In fact, Gather.com's home page offers testimonials of members saying things like, "I paid for my summer vacation" and how they "generate a steady income" from Gather.com.

But I'm glad I did read the TOS as I was considering creating a profile and coping over the content from THIS little blog-o-mine and then putting it on their site. OH THE POTENTIAL TRAGEDY!

Nope. I think I'll stay right here for the time being, and spend my days writing my original thoughts for my dedicated fan base and twittering in between. At least these thoughts belong to me!

- The Incident