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.
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.
Keeping in mind that rating is subjective, quality is always more important than quantity. It does seem that "quantity" has taken over. On some sites, the talent pool is leaving for lack of income and punitive TOS --nobody should be surprised. See "The trouble with word mills: writers beware" on my blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by, Raymond! I am a frequent visitor to your posts, and couldn't agree with you more on this. Especially places like Helium, where they had massive "talent searches" (yet don't have reference-link payback) and drew in a lot of people who write, which is so very different from writers. A lot of articles are being deleted from Helium and Yahoo! and they have realized that they may have made a mistake by enlarging the talent pool instead of paying the existing writers more.
ReplyDelete"Someone has to graduate at the bottom of the class." ~Russell Dwyer
ReplyDeleteMy late husband was onto something here. While it is necessary to have something come in last, the top should not be solely the least of the evils presented.
I want to put something else in the mix: SEO. In fact, the topic at hand necessarily means writing on the Internet. To do so effectively, one must either have a stable of regular readers or the ability to use keywords well enough to have their material found through search engines.
Writing is no longer pen and paper. To be truly effective writers must change with the times and write to the prescription of the day. It is possible to earn lucratively on internet articles if you are willing to sacrifice some of your style to serve your audience.
Relying on the article site to do the heavy keyword lifting is often the straw breaking the camel's earnings back.
2 more cents,
Red.
I'll take your two cents and give you change every day of the week, Red! Thanks, and I totally agree that writing sites serve good and bad purposes - they do do the hard work, looking for publishers, finding timely titles and ones that will pass the test of time. Of course you can write your own titles, but that involves learning all about SEO, as you said, and when writing good SEO copy it is more about the keywords and less about the article itself.
ReplyDeleteWhich way does a writer go? To the mills or on their own path? The destination, as you say, is dependent upon how many people they know who will open and read their postings. Relying on advertisements in blogs for income is blooey, because people have to actually buy things while browsing through their linked ads in order for the writer to earn any money.