Scam Warning: Compose.ly

The bar for content mills manages to get even lower as self-touted "high quality" "marketplace with a difference" Compose.ly has announced that they are planning to charge both writers and clients a "maintenance fee" if they do not log in once per month.

You may recognize this term from the world of online casinos, where even degenerate gamblers find it to be a practice beyond the pale. At least gambling sites have enough courtesy to give you six months to two years before they start hitting you up every month!

It's unclear what this fee would be or when it would be implemented. Compose.ly noted that it was forthcoming in a mass email to writers about two weeks ago.

The Terms and Conditions and Services Agreement pages have not been updated with notification of this new fee as of yet, so Compose.ly may opt to reverse course in the face of negative feedback. Even if they do, they richly deserve to land on the "scam warning" list for even proposing such a ridiculous thing.

While combing these pages, we noticed some added interesting abusive terms that writers should be aware of:

• They apparently ask you to grant them access to your social media account login information, to: " ... access, make available, and store (if applicable) any content that you have provided to and stored in your social media account (the “Social Network Content”) so that it is available on and through the Site via your account, including without limitation any friend lists"

• Not that it represents a binding contract anyway, but their entire Terms and Conditions page is probably legally null and void because of this gem they copy-pasted in from whatever boilerplate source they used: " ... These Terms and Conditions and your use of the Site and the freelance writing services are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of [name of state] applicable to agreements made and to be entirely performed within the State/Commonwealth of [name of state]." Oops!

• " ... we will assume no liability or responsibility for any ... unauthorized access to or use of our secure servers and/or any and all personal information and/or financial information stored therein ... any bugs, viruses, trojan horses, or the like which may be transmitted to or through the site by any third party." So if Joe Derp Compose.ly employee gets phished and someone steals your personal info on file or a rogue customer passes malware that they don't catch as part of an order, they think they get to just skate out of it.

• "Upon accepting a Project, you agree: To contact the Client within 30 minutes of acceptance"

• "If you fail to deliver on a Project as required under this Services Agreement, we reserve the right to deduct as a penalty up to 30% of the Project price from any eligible balance that is owed to you."

• They expect you to have no communication with clients outside of the site for a period of two years

I have no special knowledge of Compose.ly or anyone making decisions there. But my best guess would be that they have no clients and are in serious financial trouble, so they decided to milk what they do have - inactive client accounts with credit card info on file, and a lineup of desperate naive writers who won't pay close attention to the terms.

Whatever the case, avoid this pack of chuckleheads. And if you do have an account you may want to cash out and shut it down right away.