Bukisa stopped paying revenue share

No Money -- photo by Alina Sofia

Another one bites the dust.  It's the same old story that we've heard from many of the other content sites -- Bukisa never recovered from Google's Panda and Penguin updates. Changes in the policies of their advertisers -- AdSense and Chitika -- also reduced the site's income.

The site is still up, and management is hoping you will choose to leave your content on the site to share your knowledge and to promote yourself as an expert. However, you are free to edit or delete your content or remove your account entirely at any time.

Anyone here write for them?  If so, were you expecting this or did it catch you by surprise?

Et tu, WiseGeek?

WiseGeek -- the third content site to make a major announcement in the past two days -- announced it will stop publishing new content in January.  (Hat tip to Rena, again, and to the Demand Studios General Discussion Forum.)


I'll post more information when I have it.

I wonder why all these announcements from all of these sites are coming at the same time.  And on top of that, today is the one-year anniversary -- to the day -- that Helium abruptly announced it was scrapping its upfront payment system and substituting the first of its new, confusing systems that paid increasingly lower and lower rates.

Is there something significant about the first two days of December?  Are December 1 and 2 like the Ides of March for writers -- dates that hold a special significance and danger?   Beware, writers, of the onesies and twosies of the twelfth month?

Is it that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a good time for a news dump -- a time when people are paying less attention to the news -- a time similar to Friday evenings, the traditional time for politicians to make announcements they hope no one will hear?

Does it have something to do with the companies needing to get things done before the end of the fiscal year -- but not wanting to make a move RIGHT before Christmas, lest they be too easily painted as Scrooges?

It's a puzzle.

Bright Hub is going to stop paying revenue share

Starting December 15, Bright Hub will no longer pay revenue share on its articles.  (Hat tip, again, to Rena for the info).

I hate to say "I told you so" (okay, I lied -- I love to say "I told you so"), but people who write for revenue share, thinking it will fund their retirement, need to think again.   Check your contracts.  Most of the content-ste companies can stop paying revenue share at any time, for any reason -- and still keep your articles.  Or the companies may continue to pay, but secretly tinker with their secret formulas so that you will get a smaller percentage of the total income -- without ever knowing what happened. Then where will all your hard work have gotten you?

Excerpts from the memo the company sent to its contributors are after the jump:

... Like many companies we are facing the reality of a changed economy, while simultaneously working to increase visitors in a post-Panda world. This combination of market forces has required us to make some hard decisions about our business model moving forward, including the elimination of some internal staff positions as well as our ‘Shared Success’ writer program.

Therefore, our current writer and editor roles have ended, effective immediately, and your last payment for revenue-sharing will be on December 15. Any updates or editing of previously created content will be handled by internal staff. And, if we should ever need to delete one of your articles, we will return the article and copyright to you via email, utilizing our current article notification system.

Does this mean we are closing our virtual doors? No.

Bright Hub will continue to focus on our core content areas of Business, Technology and Education, and will be contracting on an ad hoc basis with a small group of writers and editors, who will work closely with our in-house editorial team. Fees for both writing assignments and editing work will be based on the length and depth of content coverage needed....

If you would like to be considered for future contract work, please send a note to support@brighthub.com . This is also the email you should direct any questions or concerns to about the changes we have outlined here...

We understand that for many of you, the time will have come to part ways....