Writing quizzes. Part I

Most of my freelance work for over a year now has been writing those stupid online Facebook quizzes. Although sometimes it can be enjoyable, in general, I hate it. Now, I could write personality quizzes, but I refuse to stoop to writing "What kind of pizza are you?" I would not be able to respect myself in the morning if I did. I like to think my knowledge quizzes are educational, challenging, and fun, but I must admit my employer (whom will remain anonymous) is new and not the greatest.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to share my experiences. When I first started writing, it was relatively easy. I would write the quiz in a Word document and submit it to my employer. I was paid well per quiz, there was a list of hundreds of topics to choose from, and I could ask obscure questions that made writing the quizzes easier (but taking them very difficult). My only complaint was that most of the quizzes were based on old television shows that could be difficult to find. (And since I am probably one of the few complaining eternal optimists that are in existence for me to find little to complain about says a lot.)

Within a month, there was a change. No additional pay was offered, but we were required to enter the quizzes into the generator ourselves. This was distasteful to me on several levels. First, I found out who I was working for and they had a checkered past- mostly fraught with building websites that contained an overabundance of advertising. But unlike Sporcle (where the quizzes are created by users and not paid for but excessive advertising still exists), they at least paid the content creators for their work. Don't get me wrong, I like Sporcle and have a free account on it, and I will some day create quizzes for them (when I don't feel it will be a conflict of interest), but they have a ton of ads now (as opposed to when I first started taking quizzes there) and the people making the quizzes don't get paid to the best of my knowledge. A little targeted advertising, okay, a ton-bad form in my opinion. 

Anyway, I am working for a quiz website that has a horrible amount of advertising on it. So much that it can interfere with your ability to take the quiz. Why do marketers think this is helpful? It is easy to find in our online society today, but it is not going to improve your sales. First, I think most people are exposed to so much advertising that they are becoming numb to it. Second, most of the advertising is driving by cookies that tell you where I have been. That means if I just bought a Peppa pig playset, I am going to be seeing a ton of ads for one. How silly is that? Do I really need more than one Peppa Pig playsets? No. And I most certainly am not going to encourage my daughter to have more than one either. Lesson: if you are building a website to advertise your book or your whatever, don't overdo it. I think statistically, you should do about 10% of self-promotion and the rest should be interesting, useful content.