Saturday, February 6, 2010

Hilarious Video about Writing for Demand Studios

Oh. My. Gawd. This is hysterical. I laughed until I cried. If you write for Demand Studios or are thinking about it, this is a must see.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Ehow January Earnings and UK Update and a note on Life123 and Seed.com

January has come to a close on the heels of an announcement from Demand Media promising to "generously" compensate eHow writers whose content was used on the UK site to the detriment of writer earnings.

I see lots of people saying they don't understand the UK issue and telling the complainers to be quiet. Respectfully, I say if you admit you don't understand the UK issue, then it is you who needs to be quiet. This was a big deal--it is the writers that shape the industry just as much as the clients/content mills/magazines/editors etc.... What the writers do matters and if you haven't taken the time to figure out what does matter then you have no business having any opinion at all. In this case, the writers won an amazing victory that will benefit writers for years to come because it will shape the web content business model in a material way.

In other news, Life 123, the content site that paid based on views, abruptly closed up shop this past week. They say they'll pay their writers, but we'll see. I smell a scam here. All those people who wrote content that hadn't yet had time to mature to the $20 pay out level are probably going to lose out.

Life123 illustrates that nothing is forever in this industry and if all your eggs are in one basket, you're asking for trouble.

As for Seed.com. It seems very professional. The assignments are more journalistic, looking for expert interviews and the like, than other content mills. But there is a distinct lack of a good style guide and comprehensive writer guidelines. You're left to try and figure out a lot of things on your own, which probably plays into the rejection rate on Seed. So, write at your own risk. The pay is good, but it's competitive and editor response times are slow. Recently, prices went down with the disappearance of the $100-$200 assignments. I wonder if Seed will eventually realize that, if their competitors are only paying $15 per 500 words, then why should they pay $20 or $30?

Okay, so earnings.

1. eHow is still down from November's high, but the earnings are still there. I'm off about 20% and haven't seen any positive growth for 2 months. I'm averaging $2 an article. I had one $20 day and one $15 day and the rest were below average. I've even added articles in an attempt to boost earnings and it doesn't seem to be helping. The UK's negative effect on earnings is much more pervasive, I think, than people realize.

2.Adsense is picking up. This is due, in large part, to Infobarrel. I am seeing clicks most days of the week. The totals are still low. $12 last month. $14 this month. Not getting rich, but seeing any up tick in activity is a positive change for me.

3. Amazon is down from the Xmas shopping high, but still respectable at more than $50. I have had some affiliate sales from Infobarrel articles.

4.Niche sites. Of the crappy niches I am working, a few are starting to show some potential. Even had some ad clicks. I really need to devote myself to this--which I think I've said this umpteen times here. The truth is, for me (because it's different for others), life with a small toddler is much more conducive to one-off articles than strategic web site campaigns. But we'll see.