The Filler: There's Always a Demand

Award-winning writer Kathy Widenhouse has helped hundreds of nonprofits and writers produce successful content and has gained 600K+ views for her writing tutorials. She is the author of 9 books. See more of Kathy’s content here.

An online devotional for writers

A Word From The Word

Whatever you do, do well. (Ecclesiastes 9:10, NLT)

A Word For Writers

A filler is a short-short article, usually about 100-500 words.

Filler content runs the gamut from anecdotes to tips, recipes, how-tos, devotionals, jokes, news bites, household hints, images with captions, quizzes, top 10 lists, statistics, quotations, quirky facts...

I got my start as a freelancer by writing fillers for Christian magazines. Back then, writing a filler was considered to be a great way for a new writer to break into publication.

That was a couple of decades ago, when publications relied on typesetters to lay out content in columns.  A filler was used to top off a column’s leftover spaces.

Today, layout is completed on computers. With a click of the mouse, the designer can adjust font size to fill in the extra inch of space.

Meaning that today, there’s a dwindling demand for fillers.  

Some publications like Reader’s Digest still use fillers from freelancers for special sections like, “What’s New” or “Grab Bag” or to fill up space. Yet more often, what was once called a filler is now published as a sidebar to a longer article, a short-short article, or as a quick guest post.

So while fillers are not the easy market they once were for a freelancer, there is always a demand for one particular type of content, whether it is a short or long … 

Content that is high quality. 

Write quality content – from the shortest filler to the longest feature – and your words will be published. And even more important than that, your pursuit of excellence will honor God.

A Wise Word

High-quality content (no matter what length) is always in demand.

A Word To Pray

Loving Father,

Let me pursue excellence. Show me how to continually improve my writing skills. Let the content that I write honor you and communicate truth.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.

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