How Google Panda Has Affected Freelance Writers

In case you're not aware of what Panda is, it's an update Google made to its search algorithm in early 2011. The update, like all of Google's updates, was intended to reduce the amount of spam and low-quality links appearing in search results. One of the ways Panda did this was by weeding out sources (websites) of low credibility. One type of website Google considers to be of "low quality" or "low credibility" is what's referred to as a "content mill" or "content farm."

Just what exactly is a content farm you might be wondering? A content farm is a website and/or company that pays lots of writers a small fee to produce lots of content. A content farm's business model is simple: fill up your website with as much content as possible so that your website appears in as many search queries as possible, and make money from the ad revenue. It was a good business model up until Panda came along.

Google has known for a long time now that content farms like Demand Media Studios, which runs sites such as eHow and LIVESTRONG.com, produce low quality content for their websites in high volumes at a fast pace just so they can saturate Google's search engine result pages (SERPs) and turn a quick and steady profit from the ad revenue. Much to the chagrin of many content mills, Google's Panda update has effectively reduced the rank and the volume of their site's pages in the SERPs.

So, what does this have to do with freelance writers?

Well, making a fulltime living as a freelancer writer is no walk in the park. Expecting to land a high-paying gig at a newspaper or a magazine is like expecting to become a movie star if you move to Hollywood. Since steady-paying, reliable print-gigs are hard to come by, many freelancers resort to writing online.

A few years ago, when content farms were doing just fine and dandy, making lots of money from Google-generated traffic clicking on their ads, it was easy to pickup a steady gig (or several) writing for a content farm. Sure, you were still just a freelancer, and you had to write a high volume of articles each week to earn a decent living, but it was viable.

However, now that content farms are losing money, they're not paying for content anymore. That's not to say you can't still find a job at one, you just won't find much available work to be done once you do. With all the content farms drying up, there aren't many viable online options for freelance writers left.

So, what's a post-Panda freelance writer to do? Well, the good news is that now that generic sites like eHow and About.com aren't being shown as much love from the SERPs, there's a lot more room for the little guys. Google is more interested in authors these days than it is in websites. In other words, the person who writes the content is more important than the site that it's on.

This means that now you have a better chance than ever of getting your own blog or website off the ground if you can write about a particular topic with a high level of expertise. Sure, you won't get that sweet up-front payment, but the longtime benefits could yield much more than you ever earned churning out article after article for any content farm.