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.

British writers: Yahoo Contributor Network now has a UK site

Writers living outside the U.S. have been unhappy with Yahoo Contributor Network (formerly Associated Content) ever since the site stopped paying them (under most circumstances) a couple of years ago.

Now UK writers, at least, who like the Yahoo model can write for the company for pay again at Yahoo Contributor Network's new UK site for UK-resident writers only.  It works the same way the U.S. site does, with paid assignments, revenue share, and the opportunity to publish on high-traffic Yahoo sites.

A recent blog post from Yahoo said "Yahoo! Contributor Network UK is currently looking for talented writers on parenting, beauty, technology, fashion, fitness, food, weddings, movies, TV, and celebrities. Potential contributors sign up at uk.contributor.yahoo.com/signup and, once approved by Yahoo! UK’s editorial team, they will be eligible to claim assignments."

See the official post for more information.

"Associated Content" is now "Yahoo! Voices"

The "Associated Content" name and domain are gone, may they rest in peace.  All AC content was moved to the voices.yahoo.com domain, except for our profile pages, which are still at contributor.yahoo.com.

In case you haven't seen it, there's an official introductory memo that seems to explain everything.


I just glanced at it, and haven't really looked around the new site beyond the front page, which does look nice.

I probably won't be following much of the cheering or gnashing of teeth (whichever it may be) going on in the forums. I'm only peripherally involved in AC -- oops, Yahoo Voices -- now, and as long as I get my "metro beat" assignments, I'll be happy.  I'm also using AC -- oops, I did it again -- it's going to take me a while to get used to this -- I'm also using Yahoo Voices as a place to park my rants about TV and other things that don't have much commercial value (and don't fit into any of my existing blogs) but that I want to inflict on the world anyway.

The biggest change that I can see is that all articles will now be a single page.  That means less revenue share, and it also means that some existing articles will take a lot of scrolling to get through.  Going forward, I guess the basic strategy for writing for Yahoo Voices (ha -- I got it right that time) for people who want to maximize their revenue share is to break articles down and submit several short ones instead of a single long one.  This won't affect articles previously published on Yahoo ("regular" Yahoo), though, as those were always only a single page.

Maybe in the end it will work out for the best.  Without the content-farming stigma of the "Associated Content," name, maybe our articles will be seen in a more favorable light.  Not that anyone (least of all Google) would be fooled by a name change, but it could be a part of a new start.

CEO of Yahoo was fired

Carol Bartz, former Yahoo CEO

Yahoo's board of directors unexpectedly fired the Yahoo CEO today, in the hopes that shaking things up at the top would reverse the company's poor performance.

The Wall Street Journal is saying that Yahoo is also "open to selling itself to the right bidder."

So the big fish (Yahoo) that swallowed the smaller fish (Associated Content) might itself be gobbled up by an even bigger fish.

And the writers?  Fish food, I guess.