I haven&#x27;t done it in a long time (thank heavens), but I used to write a lot of garbage as a way to afford vagabonding around China and generally avoiding real life. I would get paid $10 for 500 words of utter garbage, mostly for SEO purposes. It could be about almost anything, it just had to be well-written (no grammar errors), include a smattering of keywords in very specific locations, and had to meet a length requirement.<p>Eventually I started outsourcing my writing to stay-at-home moms with English degrees and one of my friends who would trip on acid and pound out three articles an hour.<p>On the surface it was good money; writing comes naturally to me and I could easily make $30&#x2F;hour, which was good money for someone sitting on a train in China. But eventually it starts to wear on you. Especially knowing that you&#x27;re not providing any real value and your entire purpose is basically to trick an algorithm, it just burns you out very quickly.<p>It&#x27;s still not ideal for quality content, but at least now the algorithm we&#x27;re all trying to trick is a mostly human one. I hate Buzzfeed clickbait as much as the next person, but it&#x27;s still better than filling up the Internet with endless spam.