What's with these "NO Compensation" Jobs?

[MineralMan]

9. There's paid work, but you won't find it on Craig's List.

OTOH, I have found several clients by advertising my services on Craig's list, including my primary client for my web content writing. I'm not unpaid, either. I'm not making as much as I used to, when I was writing for magazines with !,000,000+ circulations, but it's a living, and it's fairly straightforward writing.

The uncompensated content writing is bullshit. Don't do it, under any circumstances. Content mills that are spewing out lousy work are on their way out, since Google started using some decent algorithms to identify quality content. It's not perfect yet, but it's improving all the time.

Traditional journalism jobs are few and far between, and there's tons of competition. These days, either corporate web content jobs or freelancing for such work is how it's done. If someone offers you crap pay or no pay, just laugh in their faces and walk away. Keep looking.

My best advice for you is to create a website for your own business, where you can demonstrate your skills. Keep updating it constantly and try to present a broad range of topic areas you can handle. Then start calling web designers who are clearly successful and offer your services. The successful ones understand the need for quality content. The rest don't matter.