Once upon a listicle: On writing for pay in the 2010s

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Recently, I tried to send one of my friends a link to an essay I wrote for HelloGiggles in 2018: “The particular joy of cooking for one after an abusive relationship.” When the link wouldn’t open, I did some digging. The website had completely shut down in 2025, and my essay had disappeared along with it. 

If you’re unfamiliar, HelloGiggles was a website geared toward millennial women. Founded in 2011 by Zooey Deschanel, Sophia Rivka Rossi, and Molly McAleer, HelloGiggles hosted personal essays, news, and lifestyle articles. In 2014, HelloGiggles was the first website to say yes to publishing one of my essays — a short piece on gender equality. The site paired my essay with a comic-book-style image of a female superhero. I can’t remember if she was more Wonder Woman or Super Girl. I do remember visiting my grandpa post-publication and telling him my essay had been published. Unable to speak, his eyes widened and he squeezed my hand in response. It was the last time I’d see him alive. 

A handful of HelloGiggles’ articles remain accessible via a Refinery29 page dedicated to the site, and neither of my essays made the cut. 

Among other things, the 2010s were a Golden Age for young women seeking to pair writing for pay with the freedom of working remotely. From 2014 to 2020, I consistently secured enough paid writing assignments that I regularly worked seven days a week. I pulled more all-nighters when I was writing for a living than I had during college. 

Initially, I wrote a lot of listicles about pop culture and pop feminism; but I eventually got to interview Jane Goodall. I profiled a Serbian photojournalist who was actively documenting the Syrian refugee crisis, and I reported on the 2016 election. In 2017, a travel company sent me to Ibiza in exchange for three articles. In 2019, I took a solo road trip from Long Beach, California to Seattle, Washington and back, writing for pay along the way. During the latter half of the 2010s, I moved house eight times and visited five countries. I could work from anywhere as long as I had my laptop and a solid internet connection, and I took advantage of that fact. I wasn’t the only young woman living this lifestyle either — there were a lot of us.

Occasionally, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for the days when paid writing opportunities were seemingly abundant. Between the lasting economic devastation of COVID-19, consumer preferences shifting from text posts to video content, and the rise of AI products like ChatGPT, the current landscape of paid writing opportunities feels like an empty wasteland to me. When I’m tempted to pine for “better days,” I find it’s helpful to remember how imperfect the 2010s actually were for young women writers.

Moira Donegan, co-host of the podcast “In Bed with the Right,” recently described being a young woman writer in the 2010s this way: “ … it was basically impossible to get assigned anything that did not involve you writing in the first person about sex, in a way that was, like, supposed to specifically invite the reader to think about you having sex.” 

She’s not wrong — there were a lot of writing assignments revolving around the sex lives of young women writers. I wrote one such listicle titled: “17 tips for having sex with someone new.” I wrote about my favorite sexual positions, and I wrote about losing my virginity. I wrote about attending a pansexual make out party, and I wrote about the one night stand that followed it. I also wrote extensively about my struggles with mental health, and I wrote about traumas I had barely begun to process. 

Writing about the deeply personal was incentivized in the 2010s, especially for young women. One of the women’s websites I wrote for even asked its writers to fill out a questionnaire that included statements like: “I grew up a little poor.” (I remember responding “yes” to that one.) The questionairre was optional, and it was allegedly meant to assist editors in assigning the right stories to the right writers. Another women’s website, at which I only ever interned, required me to sign a nondisclosure agreement to write for them. I signed it. 

If you had asked me back then, I probably would’ve told you I was living an empowered life of radical honesty. I might have said I was defying a lifetime of Christian guilt and shame. I probably would have said I was filled with gratitude to be writing for a living instead of working at one of my hometown’s factories or retail stores. But as a 36-year-old woman, I can’t deny my younger self was being exploited at least some of the time, whether the websites I wrote for saw it that way or not. I wasn’t wealthy; I was naive, deeply traumatized, and desperate for the kind of work that kept me from feeling trapped — I presented the perfect cocktail for easy exploitation. 

As of this writing, my most recent paid writing assignment was published in 2024. I earned about the same amount for that piece as I did for my debut chapbook, Leaving the House Unlocked, which was published by Etchings Press at the University of Indianapolis in 2023. It’s copyrighted in my name, and it’s available to borrow from my local library, where I work 40 hours a week with some of the best people I’ve ever known. 

I still write about the deeply personal — about sex and trauma and mental health — but I do so on my own terms, with years of processing behind me. Most of my writing is published on my website, which means I own it. I can edit it however I see fit. I can remove it if I want to, but I don’t have to worry about it disappearing from the internet without warning. Occasionally, I find a home for my work in online literary journals, most of which explicitly state some version of: “all rights revert back to the author upon publication.” 

I record myself reading almost everything I write and upload it to my YouTube channel. I send out a monthly newsletter with links to whatever I’ve been working on, along with links to the art of others that I’ve been enjoying. When I find myself wondering if I’m pathetic for doing all of this work for free and for such a small readership — when I wonder if I’m wasting my time — I remember that it’s healthy to cultivate hobbies and passions. I remind myself of the value of creativity for creativity’s sake. I consider what an artist friend recently told me: “Remember, you’re doing this for yourself too.”

I may never again support myself financially with writing, and I may never again watch an article I write go viral — but I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing, whether it’s for pay or for free, for a readership of five or 5,000. I’ve often said writing is the love of my life, and I don’t think that will ever change. I hope it will never change. 

My writing life looks completely different now than it did in the 2010s: I don’t get to write every single day, I don’t feel pressured to publish every single piece I write, and my creativity isn’t financially motivated. Writing doesn’t define me in the same way it did in the 2010s, and that’s a good thing. Writing comforts me, heals me, challenges me, and fuels me — and I’ll take that over writing for pay any day.