Paid Phones | Daniel Kolitz
I USED TO GHOSTWRITE SEO-OPTIMIZED promotional web content for a living. I thought the good times would never end. Each morning, people I’d never met, flacks for various midsize B2B tech startups, would put in their orders. A Forbes editorial on improving business practices “during times of economic uncertainty.” A press release for a high-performance modular battery solution. A LinkedIn post, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, about the challenges faced by black women in STEM. I accepted each assignment with relish. I typed sentences like “In today’s unprecedented threat environment, air-gapped security isn’t a luxury—it’s a baseline necessity” with an impish smile on my face, convinced I was getting one over on the world. An insight like that, composed in under six seconds at a rate of $0.50 to $1.00 a word, could net me up to $14.00, depending on the client. An assortment of such insights, welded into more or less coherent texts in the six or seven weekly hours I allotted