One problem I run into is that I have an execrable attention span, and working a lot of short files makes it worse, not better, so I struggle with that. I suspect I'm an outlier in this regard.

But if they pay by the article -- and if, as I suspect, this is the kind of gig where you're frequently sneaking in 15 minutes or a half-hour several times a day as other commitments allow -- how do they check you on your hours? It'd make more sense to have a minimum number of articles to get through each week...

Life of a 'Content Creator'

"A lot of my friends did it and we had a lot of fun with it," said one graduate of a top journalism graduate program when asked about her work for Demand Media. "We just made fun of whatever we wrote."

The former "content creator" -- that's what Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt calls his freelance contributors -- asked to be identified only as a working journalist for fear of "embarrassing" her current employer with her content farm-hand past. She began working for Demand in 2008, a year after graduating with honors from a prestigious journalism program. It was simply a way for her to make some easy money. In addition to working as a barista and freelance journalist, she wrote two or three posts a week for Demand on "anything that I could remotely punch out quickly."

The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included How to Wear a Sweater Vest" and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed," even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog.

"I was completely aware that I was writing crap," she said. "I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves.'

"Never trust anything you read on eHow.com," she said, referring to one of Demand Media's high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared.

Although chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford has touted Demand's ability to give freelancers a byline and get their pieces published to "a great place on the web," the successful writers I interviewed made great efforts to conceal their identities while working for the content farm.

Demand Media, a four-year-old company that has yet to turn a profit, has been on a campaign to lure major ad dollars from deep-pocketed marketers by selling special sponsorships on its own sites, such as the opportunity to feature an advertiser within the text of an article, or producing custom content for a brand.

"Because our business is transforming traditional content creation models and is therefore not easily understood by casual observers, our brand, business and reputation is vulnerable to poor perception," the company said in its filing.

"Patch" will quickly demonstrate the same thing as everyone else who tries to build such "news" organizations: Everyone wants to be a columnist. No one wants to be a reporter.

Here's an amusing tale of Demand Media, from a one-week washout.

And another one. Apparently everyone who dips into Demand Media will come out with a first-person account.

In a nutshell, what the company does is to take informational demand and create, in virtual-sweatshop fashion, supply. Basically, if you plug it into Google — “Seasonal mating habits of poison dart tree frogs,” say — it’s got a good chance of eventually finding its way, via a proprietary set of content-churning algorithms, into a list of “topics” to be turned into an article or bullet-point list by Demand’s cadre of stay-at-home moms, independently accredited experts in something or other, magical writing elves, and junior high honors students.

I assume that some people who know that have had a little fun plugging a bunch of crazy shit into Google search engines to keep Demand's writers and editors busy diving down rabbit holes.

1. Draw a small dot on your paper. Now draw a second dot at the point where you want your line to end. Place your pencil on the first dot, but keep your eyes on the second dot. Connect the dots. If your line is crooked, you probably looked at it as you drew it. Do not look at the line as you draw it.
2. Find the right tension. If you press too lightly with your pencil, your line appears shaky and unstable. On the flip side, if you press too hard, the pencil isn't able to glide along the paper smoothly, which creates a choppy line. Practice your lines, but focus on the tension until you find what works for you.
3. Use graph paper. You can purchase graph paper that is designed with barely visible lines. Don't consider yourself a cheater--you simply want your work to look neat. Take some practice runs, though. You may find the idea from Step 1 carries over as it's easier to keep your eye on the final point, rather than on the pencil as it draws.
4. Experiment with horizontal and vertical lines. Some people can't draw a vertical line if their lives depended on it, yet a horizontal line comes out surprisingly well. If you are more successful at one than you are the other, turn your paper to accommodate the line that you draw better.

How hard is it (for someone who owns a computer) to just find a ruler -- or anything with a straight edge?

I'm half-tempted to concoct a few ridiculous search queries just to see if they'll show up as eHow articles.