Misty M.

LocalVox Media is a relatively new start-up. I say 'relatively', because they've been around for about 5 years and they have a great idea and a great focus, but what they've ended up with is more of the same.
They sell access to an online interface that allows small to mid-size businesses to manage all their social media accounts and their blog from a main directory that is very well-indexed with all the SEO bells and whistles. Sounds great, right?
Yes and no.
First, a lot of how they attract their clients is through cold calling small businesses and trying to sell them subscriptions, which isn't bad - have to get the word out somehow - but it definitely colors this business more on the customer service/sales side of the tech spectrum.
The other thing about this business is their wacky way of hiring writers.
The company sells subscriptions that include two articles per month, hand-written by a writer, according to their specifications, for which the client pays $100 p/article (the writer gets $20 per).
Writers are treated like short-order cooks in this scenario. If the client doesn't like an article, it can get sent back, for which the writer DOES NOT GET PAID. Or, they can ask for edits, for which the writer DOES NOT GET PAID.
I'm a writer, and I've worked for radio and newspapers and have gone through editing processes before, and I don't know what to say about this place, because there is NO PROOFREADING PROCESS. So, if you have grammatical errors, the article is not long enough or there is some other error (especially if the writer is available and can fix it) - THE WRITER DOES NOT GET PAID.
To make matters worse, the woman assigning me the work was very uncommunicative, writing me one or two words when she could have been working with me to build a long-term freelance relationship. As such, I often didn't know I was doing anything wrong until invoice day WHEN I WOULD NOT GET PAID!
The worst thing is - they are actually not the worse for this kind of writing, only heart-breakingly NORMAL.