Catching up with the content site news

Hi. I haven't written in this blog for almost a year. I got tried of tracking and publishing my content-site income. It got to be too much trouble for the small amount of money I was making.  I may start doing it again at some point, on a less detailed scale, but I have to think about that.

For now, I'd like to update what I know about what's been going on with the sites since the last time I wrote here.

Demand Studios
They raised their rates, but they are also looking for more substantial experience, credentials, and degrees in the subject-matter areas they cover.

Helium
They said they will be launching a redesigned site before the end of the year.

Media Piston
Shut down.

Textbroker
They raised rates for their clients, but didn't raise pay for their writers. It seems like a lot of the work has shifted to team orders. On some days, the open order pool is almost empty, although I guess that could change.

WriterAccess
There's more competition for orders now after an influx of new writers, but it's still a good site for good writers.

Writers Domain
A lot of new writers signed on, but they are still accepting more writers periodically. Easy work.

Yahoo! Voices
This is the site that used to be Associated Content. I really haven't kept up with what's been going on there lately, but I've heard some grumbling.

Are you working for any of these sites or any other content sites?  Please share your opinions in the comments below. Pooling information helps everyone.

If you want to comment anonymously, please select Name/URL from the drop-down box and make up a name. That way, if someone wants to reply to your comment, they don't have to refer to you as "The second Anonymous," or "Anonymous at 6:31 p.m."

Rants, raves, warnings, and neutral opinions are all welcome.  Any detail you can provide about what, specifically, you like or don't like about a particular site would be fantastic.

Play nice.  Don't insult your fellow commenters who may have different opinions than yours.

More sites like Textbroker

The Textbroker business model must be working well, because a lot of similar sites are springing up. In this type of site, customers post requests for specific articles, writers claim assignments from a list, and the site takes a percentage of the price.

These broker sites appear to be Panda-proof, because they are not posting articles on one huge website, but instead selling them directly to customers, who typically use them on highly targeted sites.

Recently I've heard about two broker sites I hadn't heard of before:

Media Piston -- I don't have any personal experience there, but a writer friend said that their rates were similar to Textbroker's. The editorial feedback, she said, was very helpful. They take international writers. Site  [Update -- Media Piston is now closed]

Scripted -- I heard about this site when a rep from the company left a comment on this blog. Their site lists prices for customers, but I couldn't find any info on the site, without registering, about how much they pay writers. Site / apply

If anyone has any personal experience with these sites, please leave a note in the comments.

Update:  I signed up with Media Piston to see what it was like.  The pay is substantially lower than what I am now getting elsewhere, so there were no assignments there I was tempted to claim. They don't publish a pay/word rate, only rates for individual articles, but I spot-checked some articles, and the pay rate was less than 2 cents/word for all of them, and even that was contingent on earning a bonus. Like most of the broker sites, the pay gets better as you climb your way up the ratings "ladder," but unlike many of the other sites, Media Piston doesn't reveal what the top rates are.  The sign-up process is quick, the site design is attractive and easy to navigate, and the company seems quite legit. Might be a good choice for new writers, writers currently working for a similar or lower payrate elsewhere, and writers who have the time and energy to work their way up to higher payrates without knowing, in advance, what those are.

Update 2:  After looking around the site a bit more, I'm actually not sure if there is a ratings "ladder" to climb, as there is in Textbroker and WriterAccess, or if you can just get higher bonuses on individual articles based on your work on those particular articles alone. I did hear through the grapevine that you can get a bonus that is twice as much as the amount stated on the assignment form. The forums seem pleasant, and the owners seem to be accessible. I'm still not feeling tempted to try it, though, unless I run out of work elsewhere.

Update 3: Well, curiosity got the better of me (I'm always curious about how different sites work), and when I saw a very short, easy assignment that paid a bit more per word than the rest, I took it.

Update 4: I submitted my first assignment. They lead you by the hand through the submission process, which could be attractive to people new to Internet writing. I had some problems with the cursor jumping to the top of the input form, which may be a browser-related problem, and there didn't seem to be any way to save work in progress. Otherwise, it was all very easy. They send the work through a peer review system, which I'm not thrilled about, as I've had problems on other sites that used peer review with people "correcting" or rejecting work that wasn't wrong in the first place. I'd much rather work with professional editors. But we shall see. Oh, and apparently there is a "ladder" after all, as they say that doing well on assignments can "unlock" higher paying ones.  But they don't say what that higher payment is.

Update 5: The article was accepted, and I got all the available bonuses. The editor fixed some minor issues without bouncing the article back to me. I also received friendly "outreach" emails from a company staff member. Everything went smoothly and was very pleasant -- but the pay, even with all the bonuses, was only about half of what I am getting elsewhere for similar work. I'm going to keep an eye on the site but put it on the back burner for now, at least while I still have work elsewhere.

Update 8/21/12:  Here are a few more sites I recently heard about that work on the Textbroker model. Both, alas, are low paying. I don't have any personal experiences with them -- if you do, please share your experiences in a comment below Thanks!

iWriter -- At the starting level, pays $2.43 for a 500-word article, which goes up to $3.01 if you get a "special request" (which sounds like the equivalent of a Textbroker direct order). There are three levels, and higher-level writers earn more.
site / apply

Writers Domain --Pays $3.00 to $3.30 for 200-250 word articles.
site / apply

Textbroker is opening a new site for UK English

Textbroker opened a new site today -- textbroker.co.uk -- for writing assignments in British, Canadian, and Australian English. Payment is in euros. (Hat tip to Rena for the info.)  You can find out more in the press release.

Editing to add: The new site is open only to writers outside the U.S. because of tax issues.

Updates on WriterAccess, CloudCrowd, Textbroker, Demand Studios, and Helium

I recently signed up for a trio of new (to me) sites.  I've been active on WriterAccess and CloudCrowd for a little less than two months, and I've been at Textbroker for a few weeks.

WriterAccess

I've settled in here, writing mostly for two clients with ongoing assignments -- one marketing copy for a catalog, the other news items for law-firm blogs. It's working out very well for me -- it's one of my favorite sites now -- though people who have come in at a lower level (the site assigns "levels" to all writers, which determine the pay rates and the projects they can work on) say they are having trouble finding things to do.  (More info)


CloudCrowd

My second month here is going much better than my first.  I'm doing mostly editing now, with some writing here and there. My score has climbed, I'm getting a bigger choice of assignments, and I'm probably making (roughly) about $10 to $15 per hour.  Best of all, I love to edit.  It relaxes me, and is a great change of pace from writing. (More info | My referral link)

Textbroker

Textbroker is similar to WriterAccess (or perhaps I should say WriterAccess is similar to Textbroker, since Textbroker has been around a lot longer) -- but it pays less. It's a double whammy for me because (1) each level on TB pays less than the equivalent level on WA, and (2) I came in on a lower level -- a 3 -- on TB than I did on WA -- a 4..

Here's a comparison of the pay rates, in cents per word, by level (the WriterAccess pay rates are minimums and often go higher):

If you are looking at this post in the future, you can find current pay rates here: Textbroker pay rates and WriterAccess pay rates.

It's not worth it to me to be writing for one cent per word, but I'm doing some stuff there in the hopes that I might soon be promoted to a higher level.

Also, Textbroker has two advantages: (1) They have a lot of work.  There is always something available.  (2) The work is easy, and the standards, especially compared to sites like Demand Studios, are low. Also, as a Textbroker writer helpfully pointed out to me, if you click on the client number in a job order, you will see what percentage of articles the client sends back for rewrites, and what percentage it rejects.  It's shocking to see how many clients never reject or even ask for rewrites on anything -- which makes writing there totally stress-free.

The downside is that some of the assignments are pointless exercises in keyword stuffing.  This is not a place to practice doing your best work.

In the last few weeks, Textbroker also started a new program, which has "team orders" and "casting calls" -- concepts perhaps borrowed from WriterAccess' "love lists" and "casting calls" -- which enable you to apply directly to specific clients to be put on preferred lists for assignments -- and the clients can pay above your usual rate.  (More info)

Demand Studios

Are the glory days of the $25 eHow Money articles over?  At this moment, as we speak, there are no $25 Money titles available at all. Whether they will come back is anyone's guess, as DS tends to be very secretive about things like this.

Meanwhile, there are lots of new $16 titles for Home & Garden, so I guess I need to try to get in touch with my inner decorator.

I've been doing less at DS this month -- feeling burnt out on the research needed for the finance articles, while they were available. (More info)

Helium

Helium has a new Community Manager, and perhaps because of that, there has been a flurry of new activity around the site, with a lot of pulse-taking of members' opinions.  My take is that they are going to continue along the road towards becoming more of a "fun" site that offers contest prizes rather than consistent or reliable payments. Outside of Content Source (Helium's new name for Marketplace, which is by application or invitation only), the site may be of little use for writers who rely on content writing for income. Still, when reading entries in the "tell us what you think of us" contest, I was struck by how strongly some of the site's active members/volunteers felt that Helium provided them with an online writing home.  (More info)