The Conversation I Never Wanted to Have About ‘Make Writing Your Job’
What happens when the people doing the groundwork aren’t the ones getting recognized.
(A note before reading: This piece reflects my personal experience, perspective, and the decisions I made based on that experience. I’m not claiming to know anyone else’s intentions, motivations, or private actions beyond what I personally observed and experienced. I believe in accountability but I also believe in fairness. My goal in sharing this isn’t to encourage harassment, diminish someone else’s success, or suggest that any person or platform is incapable of contributing value. It’s to have a broader conversation about transparency, attribution, and the often invisible labor behind the resources and communities we build online.)
I went back and forth about writing this because conversations like this are often dismissed as jealousy, competition, or resentment.
That’s not what this is.
It’s about transparency in how online businesses are built, how trust is earned, whose labor creates the foundation beneath a resource, and what happens when that work becomes invisible once something gains visibility.
This is my experience with Make Writing Your Job, founded by Amy Suto and Kyle Cords.
Before I continue, I want to be clear.
No one owes me a platform, a collaboration, or access to their audience. Creators are free to build businesses in the same space and the writing community is big enough for many people to serve writers.
I also wasn’t the first person to create a writing job resource. Others were doing valuable work before I arrived and I respect what they contributed.
What I built, however, is different. I created my own lane by centering Remote Writing Jobs on fair and transparent pay when sharing opportunities because an “opportunity” should never require writers to guess what their work is worth or sacrifice the value of their craft just to be considered.
My concern has never been that someone else entered this space.
It’s what happens when the research, relationships, and credibility behind a resource become invisible while others benefit from the foundation that already exists.
The Work Behind a Writing Job Platform
From the outside, a writing job board looks simple as if the only work involved is just finding opportunities and sharing links.
The reality is much different.
The actual work consists of spending hours vetting leads I find independently/receive through industry relationships/are submitted by the community I’ve built, researching companies to understand who they are and how they operate, verifying legitimacy, pushing for clarity around compensation when that information isn’t always freely offered, and making the difficult decisions about which opportunities are worth asking a writer to pursue.
Most importantly, it’s earning trust.
That trust isn’t built overnight. It’s built through years of showing up consistently and proving your judgment is worth relying on as a writer myself.
My History With Make Writing Your Job
Amy Suto and I have had a few interactions over the years. During one of those conversations she shared that she had been familiar with my work dating back to the early Patreon days of Remote Writing Jobs.
At the time I didn’t think much of it. Creators follow other creators and people pay attention to industries they’re interested in but when I later looked more closely at the timeline and the overlap between our work I found myself asking questions I hadn’t considered before. Remote Writing Jobs was already established as a resource for writers when Make Writing Your Job launched.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting anyone owns the idea of helping writers find work. No one does. The question is one of influence, inspiration, sourcing, and transparency.
When someone is familiar with an existing resource before building in the same niche it’s reasonable to ask what was independently created, what was inspired by prior work, and whether appropriate acknowledgment exists.
More recently, someone sent me a screenshot showing a section on Make Writing Your Job labeled “Remote Writing Jobs.” Seeing the exact name I’ve spent years building associated with another platform became another part of the chronology that shaped my perspective.
Again, I’m not asking readers to infer intent.
I’m simply documenting my experience.
A Missed Opportunity for Collaboration
I’ve always believed there’s room for multiple people helping writers.
I reached out with hopes of collaboration and cross-promotion but those efforts weren’t reciprocated.
That’s completely her choice.
No one is obligated to work with me.
Still, it’s difficult to watch someone decline collaboration while later benefiting from a framework you’ve spent years helping build.
My frustration isn’t with someone else’s success.
It’s with seeing foundational work go unrecognized.
Why I Drew a Boundary
Over time I decided I needed clearer boundaries.
Both Amy and Kyle were also paying subscribers to RWJ. At some point I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable with that arrangement. From my perspective people building a competing resource were simultaneously benefiting from access to mine by scraping my listings while publicly offering little acknowledgment of the work that informed it. I came to this conclusion because I recognized opportunities on their platform that matched listings submitted through RWJ’s own submission process including writing-adjacent opportunities that aren’t typically categorized as traditional writing jobs and that I’d innovatively worked to carve out space for within my directory.
I’m not claiming every opportunity they shared originated with me but what I can say is that the dynamic no longer felt appropriate to me. I eventually blocked both accounts and later blocked the payment method through Stripe after additional subscription attempts because I no longer wanted my paid research feeding a business operating in the same space.
Again, I’m not presenting this as evidence of wrongdoing, only explaining the decisions I made based on my own experience.
Why I’m Speaking Now
For years I’ve focused on building rather than defending.
I created Remote Writing Jobs because I wanted to help writers but protecting a community also means being willing to discuss the systems that structure it.
I’m not claiming ownership over an industry. I’m asking us to recognize that the internet often rewards who has the largest audience, not always who spent years laying the groundwork.
Writers deserve transparency about the resources they trust.
Creators deserve recognition for the work that makes those resources possible.
The question isn’t simply who built the most visible platform.
It’s who helped build the foundation.