Demand Media Studios Chairman/CEO quits the company he started

Demand Studios was Richard Rosenblatt's brainchild.  Not any more. He's leaving the company. He already quit as Chairman and will be leaving his CEO post by the end of this month.

The company will probably find a new CEO and keep on going, but Rosenblatt's leaving sure looks like a vote of no-confidence.

Freelance writers, as always, should stay alert and avoid relying too heavily on any one company.

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.

Are there other places for writers like Demand Studios?

Demand Studios titles have dried up for most DS writers. Even many of the 15 percent, or so, who are in “First Look” are finding little or nothing to write. A question keeps on popping up on the DS forums: Are there other sites that are like Demand Studios?

The short answer is “no.” But while there are no sites exactly like Demand Studios, I think it’s possible to cobble together a substitute that is at least satisfactory and potentially much better.

The best path out of Demand Studios probably depends on the path you took to get there in the first place. Roughly speaking, there seem to be three partially-overlapping groups at DS: people who chose DS because they wanted to work at home, people who were career writers, and people who enjoyed picking titles from a list.

More after the jump


Working at home

Demand Studios is hardly the only work-at-home option. The best resource for finding other work-at-home jobs is the WAHM forums. The site is aimed at moms, but you don’t have to be a mom or even female to join. Just looking at the forum titles will give you an idea of the huge range of things that people have done to make money at home, and the discussions themselves are quite active.

Writing

To look for other online writing jobs, Google “writers wanted,” check Craigslist (but be wary of scammers), and bookmark some of the many sites that list writing jobs, such as Freelance Writing Gigs, the Absolute Write forums, Freelance Writing Jobs, and Write Jobs. Keep on reading the Demand Studios general forum, too. I found my now-favorite writing site because someone on the DS forums was raving about it.

I'd suggest staying away from revenue-share sites, for the most part, especially sites that have been targeted by Panda. The best bet now is to work for clients directly or for sites (such as Constant Content, WriterAccess, and Textbroker), which act as middlemen between writers and publishers.

To branch out beyond online writing, check out the job listings at Media Bistro and take a look at the classic guide, the Writer's Market. If you buy the deluxe edition, you’ll get a year’s free subscription to their online database as well.

If you were mostly a creative writer before DS, this could be a good opportunity to find new, more interesting projects that don’t require writing about computer-generated topics while typing into little boxes.

If you had professional writing experience before DS, brainstorm new ways to get back in touch with old contacts.

Picking titles from a list

It may seem silly, but one part of writing for content sites that always appealed to me was browsing through lists of titles. It’s not that I couldn’t think of my own topics to write about, but seeing those lists somehow kick-started my brain.

Textbroker and WriterAccess both have lists of requested titles. While their pay rates are often (though not always) less than Demand Studios' rates, you can usually write articles for them faster than was possible at DS. Also, both offer the chance of being selected for direct orders at potentially higher rates.

Don't burn bridges

While it may be tempting to leave DS with a bang, you can't predict what will happen next at this company, which has always been  unpredictable. They could come up with new projects some day that would be just what you were looking for. I certainly wouldn't count on it -- but I wouldn't rule it out either.

Big changes at Helium and Demand Studios

Photo by Jonas B

I've been a critic of Helium since the disastrous retooling of the site in December 2010, but I have to give credit where credit is due: Helium took a huge step forward this week by announcing plans to publish page views and pay rates. Moving towards greater transparency sets a whole new positive tone for this formerly secretive company.

More after the jump

Helium is also changing the way it calculates revenue share. The company's blog post revealed the old payment formula, for the first time, and it turns out the formula relied heavily on the site's rating system, giving more income to articles with higher ratings. The new revenue share system will pay strictly by page views, which I believe is a lot more fair, considering how flawed the rating system is. In a way, it's an admission that the rating system, the site's original claim to distinction (even the site's name, Helium, referred to the way the rating system was supposed to lift quality to the top), no longer carries much weight.

Pay rates were posted on the forum. They vary by category (topic), and the current range is $1.25 to $2.00 per thousand page views.

Demand Studios seems to be moving in the opposite direction, away from transparency. It soon became clear that the vaguely-worded memo sent out on Oct. 5 meant there would be little work left for writers and editors who weren't assigned to special projects -- and this was after months of the company claiming that the slowdown was only temporary and/or was a technical glitch. Confusion still reigns because after the "buh-bye" announcement, DS then announced a program to help writers new to the site. There are no titles, but they are hiring new writers?  No one seems to know what is going on, but suspicions are running high.

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)