I need to talk about 'Make Writing Your Job'

10,233 clicked links, one repeat offender, and a pattern I can no longer ignore.

The freelance writing newsletter world is surprisingly competitive.

After all, plenty of the opportunities here are sourced freely from online, LinkedIn, and any number of other spaces. Anyone can start an account, curate some opportunities, and start posting. That's how most of us got into this business, myself included. For some of us, things go really well, the newsletter takes over your whole life, and something you set up on a whim becomes a significant part of your livelihood.

There’s just one thing you shouldn’t do when running a writing newsletter, and that’s to take from creators in the same space.

I am aware of ‘competitors’ to the Freelance Writing Network, so to speak, and I have a good relationship with many of those creators. I always have nice things to say about creators like Samantha at Harlow, Melissa at Remote Writing Jobs, and Jen at Jet Plane Crew, for example. I know there are others out there too, and I’ve never had an issue with any of them.

I neither own nor should own this space, and anyone is welcome to try running a newsletter like this. There is and should be no issue with that. There are plenty of writers for us all to serve, without the competitiveness.

However, there is one newsletter that seems to know no bounds when it comes to sourcing other opportunities that I want to talk about today: Make Writing Your Job¹.

All of you here engage in a healthy, respectful way, except for one particular, repeat culprit.

After a deep dive on member behavior and engagement at the FWN this weekend, I came across a paid member that I did not recognize. This user first upgraded in August 2025, and has clicked 10,233 links in the last 11 months.

I know we share a lot of opportunities for writers… but 10,233 seems a little much for one person, right? That’s 930 opportunities a month, close to everything we share. The next highest number in those 11 months was fewer than 1,000 (and I actually know that individual personally).

Something about the email address attached to this profile rang a bell, and I had a bad feeling about it.

Turns out, I was right to feel bad. The email address linked to an app, the founder of whom jointly runs Make Writing Your Job (MWYJ), one of the most successful jobs boards on Substack. So successful that they recently boasted about earning more than $250,000 a year from their Substack.

I want to show you some images from my search. They show this one particular user and their engagement with the Freelance Writing Network’s content.

Note the term ‘omlist’ at the top left of this image (omlist is the name of an app available to purchase).

The creator of omlist, who also runs the newsletter Make Writing Your Job. This is the same person behind the account found on our dashboard.

The total number of links clicked by this user since August 28, 2025.

How can I be absolutely certain this is not a coincidence?

Well this is, sadly, not the first time I have had to block users from this newsletter. In fact, I’ve had to block the founder (Amy Suto), the founder’s partner (Kyle Cords), and three different staff members from having paid subscriptions to the Freelance Writing Network. In every single case, they were opening posts and clicking links at a rate far beyond what I would consider reasonable usage, seemingly indicative that these opportunities were being lifted for their own newsletter.

I have never spoken to any of these individuals. I have no prior relationship with them. And given the scale of what I found, I chose not to reach out privately.

I actually thought I’d stopped this abuse of the FWN newsletter almost a year ago when I blocked those accounts, but this one slipped through the cracks and has been accessing all of my content for nearly a full year now.

I should clarify: I do not own these opportunities. They are not ‘mine’ to own. But behind the resource you see here is a small team whose job it is to curate, source, and vet opportunities for members. For another newsletter to profit financially from that work, with no regard for the people who built it, doesn't sit well with me.

It’s why I feel like I have been pushed to the point of having to speak up.

Why does this matter?

Perhaps you’re reading this, unsure why it all matters.

Here’s the thing: one thing we’re proud of at the Freelance Writing Network is our hand-picking and vetting of everything we share. It’s not 100% perfect, and occasionally roles get missed, but these are real listings and opportunities from real people that we’ve spent time and effort verifying for you.

Scraping other newsletters for these opportunities defeats the point. Essentially, this equates to copying work from one place to sell it to your own list of subscribers. If their newsletter were free, perhaps I’d understand it in a ‘Robin Hood’ kind of way.

But they charge $19 per month. For content they take from other creators.

That’s nearly twice what we charge at the Freelance Writing Network, by the way.

This is just not something I can get on board with.

Sure, opportunities pop up here and there from people you follow or businesses that get shared on LinkedIn. That’s fine. But clicking links on what works out to an average of 32 times a day? The intent, I believe, is abundantly clear.

Myself and a very small team spend hours every single day curating opportunities for you. We have hundreds upon hundreds of links that we scan manually each day. Key word threads on social channels, saved pages from a huge variety of websites, new gigs shared from community members, hiring managers who reach out to us directly, and much more. All of this is run entirely by our team.

These opportunities are then, seemingly, taken and used by another newsletter.

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one in this situation. Melissa from Remote Writing Jobs has been through the same thing, and had to block Make Writing Your Job team members as a result. Other newsletters in this space have done likewise. I know of at least three others, and I’ll let them decide if they want to go public on this.

So why am I telling you this?

Many of you will know of the newsletter I’ve written about today. Some of you will be free or paid subscribers, and I think it is important you know the truth about how they work. After all, they charge a larger monthly or yearly fee than any other creator in this space, when the work there is built from republishing content already posted elsewhere.

Why, for example, would you spend $19 per month or more subscribed to that, when a fraction of that subscription fee gets you full access to the FWN or one of the other genuine newsletters out there?

Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons I paywalled more content in the first place. I want to share more free roundups, but if someone is going to take that content to place it behind their own paywall, I may as well honor FWN members instead.

I have even been told by members of the Freelance Writing Network that, after paying to subscribe to MWYJ, they noticed how many posts from this newsletter appeared straight afterwards in theirs. Some of these were FWN exclusives, opportunities shared with us directly by one person, never posted publicly or shared anywhere else.

Isn’t that peculiar?

What can you do?

Double check your memberships, and decide which ones are really worth your time.

Do you want to support real creators, who spend real time curating, vetting, and providing access to paid writing work and other resources?

Or do you want to support those who build a business off the back of taking opportunities and content from others?

I’ll let you decide on that one.

For now, a repost on Substack or a moment to share your thoughts would go a long way.

1. For legal reasons, this is not an accusation of copyright infringement, but a pattern of behavior I’ve observed over time.