Is There Anything Wrong With Writing At "Article Mills"?

One More Article!

Is there some reason that so many people are dissing the so-called "article mills", the sites that allow writers to upload articles to titles with proven SEO rich content. Writers, no matter their skill level, can join these sites, and once they have a few articles submitted can ask for some pointers from anybody on the site and get almost immediate, professional assistance. Stewards are proven writers with a minimum number of published articles, and they can be assigned to one-on-one mentoring if you were to just ask.


If you submit problematic entries, no worries, you can leapfrog them with newer, improved submissions at any time. sound like such a horrible place? Add in that they give you a percentage of the revenue your articles generate (with you doing no PR work on your own work, like some sites make you do) at industry standard rates (better than Yahoo, with $2 per 1,000 page views), If you write well, you should be able to earn the $1 and $2 upfront payments, with no reduced RS.

Okay, I'll admit it sounds like Hell frozen over, like winter in Siberia with only your underwear to wear, like being a peasant in the 13th Century. Nah, it sounds pretty good to me, when you realize BEFORE hand, and anyone on the site will tell you honestly, that you WON'T GET RICH, AND YOU WON'T EARN DECENT MONEY UNTIL YOU HAVE A LOT OF WELL WRITTEN ARTICLES ON-SITE!

(that was me yelling! Did you hear me? Really? Oh, well...)

I'll admit that I type slowly, just in case there are slow readers out there who may not be able to keep up with me while they read along.

But, if you don't like these article mills, don't go there. We'll take the money that you might've earned. No worries there. If you don't like the place, don't come back (we know you were here, we have life-long databases, even if your account was frozen or stopped). There's no need to be telling young, starving writers to stay away from somewhere where they can easily earn a couple of hundred bucks a month. Where they can start to establish an Internet presence once they improve their craft to an acceptable level for publishers.

I started at Helium with no experience writing articles. I was a technical writer, and it took some time to learn to write to the specific audiences being targeted by Helium. 2 years in I was a steward, mentor, award winner. I had over 100 published articles (Car and Driver, RV Monthly, Field & Stream, etc). My best year I made  $3,150 - not bad in my books, but I guess I'm not a "professional" writer.

For any "hobbyist" or beginning writers out there, don't be swayed by their negativity. Just say "thank you sir, may I have another?" and then ignore them. Join an article mill, get noticed, make some money. You will need to submit at least 500 articles (think 2 a day) before you start realizing steady, regular paychecks (direct to your PayPal account).

How can a writer increase their earnings?

Writers can increase their earnings, it just takes a little time, a lot of Internet friends and loyal followers, and a good sense of humor. The humor is needed when you see how little you have earned while building up a respectable article portfolio, and that could take 2 to 3 years. With at least 500 articles writers should be able to generate at least $50 to $100 per month on royalties alone. This may not sound like a lot, but with most sites paying around $1.50 per 1,000 page views, making a hundred bucks a month all of a sudden seems rather lucrative on 500 articles. Now, bear in mind that not all of your articles are going to be read every month, many of them should be seasonal and only read during the times of year that they are written about.

One way to make money, but blogging could be less dangerous!

In order to increase your earnings you need to spread yourself out, advertise your works through social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, and write to timely, popular topics. Writing mainly to news stories may give you decent page view numbers for a short while, but in the long run they will taper off and even dry up. It's always best to write about topics that people will want to read about all year long, and throw in some seasonal material, like spring break destinations, how to save money at Christmas, home maintenance and repair, automotive repairs, home theater and smart phones.

Another great way to increase your earnings is to write and publish your own blogs, again using timely topics, topics that stand the test of time, and topics that are popular all year round. You can add a section to your blog for article sales, and post some of your best articles in .pdf format. Only give a synopsis of your articles, with about 20% of each one shown. Charge about $10 to $25, depending upon how much research went into them.

You can also increase your earnings by joining AdSense, and have Amazon and other retailers advertise on your blogs. When someone who is on your blog clicks on an advertisement and then purchases something from the site that they are linked to, you will earn a percentage of what they spend.

Another blog, another withdrawal!

Now, using any one of these methods can help you to make a little extra spending money, but when you combine all of them the earnings can really start to add up. The real question is are you willing to take the time to get a good-sized and well-written article base of at least 1,000 articles?

A lot of writers, and people who write (those who refer to themselves as "professional writers") give up trying to earn money after having only 30 to 50 articles posted at an online writing site like Helium,com or Yahoo!, and most of these people's articles don't make much money anyways, mostly due to being written in the first person, having poor grammar and lots of spelling errors, as well as writing to topics that wouldn't be popular.

Online Writing Sites - Good or Bad?

With so many companies vying for only so many articles to sell to the publishers who want to buy articles for filler space for their websites, e-zines, e-books, magazines and papers, there are just too many writers vying for too few posts. Take a look at a site like Helium.com, and look at the articles that are posted there. Forget about the front pages, those are the creme-de-la-creme, so to speak. Look at some titles within the different channels, and read some of the articles - most of them are written by people who should not be writing on public article-for-sale sites, they are bloggers. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I am attempting to become a blogger myself, because those writing sites just don't pay what they used to. And in a blog you can say whatever you want, as long as you are willing to accept any consequent circumstances.


Now, we have a lot of people complaining about falling revenues (myself included) at all sites that we have articles earning evenue share, but the real problem is that the article base has been diluted with, well, crap.  Ad share revenue has dropped across the board, and it is being blamed on Panda and Google, but the truth of the matter is that too many writing sites are taking too many hobby-writers on as serious writers. They write fairly well, but they start articles with "Well, let me tell you about.." "If you are looking for information on X, you have come to the right place" and "If you are looking for X, then this is the article for you!".

When all is said and done, the more serious writers are the ones who lose out because the "writers" who blabber on about personal experiences instead of writing fact-based, knowledge-sharing articles are the ones who have big social circles, and they get their friends to rate their articles high. This makes the better written articles appear lower in the ratings and the publishers get tired of looking for the quality that they had come to expect. So, the publishers leave and go elsewhere looking for their filler articles. Incomes don't just fall they jump from the International Space Station.


So, who do you write for? Are you happy there? Do you make enough money to pay the rent? Have your earnings gone down considerably in the past year or two? You're not alone!

Maybe the best idea floating around is for these "article mills" to weed out the poorly written articles, but they must be careful in doing so. They would have to actually read every article, and decide whether it belongs or not over it`s quality of writing, not its place in the rankings as decided upon by the other writers on the site, because many of these other writers are the ones who have diluted the talent pool, and they rate articles that they like better, not which article is better.

Are online writing sites good, bad or the 3rd coming of Satan? According to many "professional writers" (they call themselves this, so it must be true) anyone who writes at the sites is selling themselves out much like a prostitute does at night on a dark street corner. However, this "hobbyist writer" (even though published in well over 100 magazines like Car and Driver, RV Monthly and Field & Stream, as well as many websites like EHow and iMakeNews) as I have been called many times on LinkedIn for aiding people who were being jumped on by these "professional writers", thinks that anyone who is willing to write article after article, knowing well in advance that they may be lucky to earn a few pennies from each one every month is a writer. They may not have gone out and spent a lot of money on publishing their own works, unlike these professionals who have done so because publishers wouldn't buy their crap, but they are published, they are writers and they are earning money from their written words.

To me, that is a writer. To me, someone who trawls around in social networking sites, writing their narcissistic views and calling people names because they enjoy what they do are not writers, let alone professional writers. They are just whining because they couldn't put in the hours to build up large enough of a portfolio to earn a few hundred bucks a month off of old articles.