A Quick Note About Seed

Seed is the site that has been creating content for AOL. I have heard good things about them but I have not spent enough time there to offer much of a review. I registered with them quite a while ago, and wrote a couple of articles for them. The pay would have been pretty good, but the articles weren't accepted so I used them elsewhere and moved on to other markets that did pay.

I didn't mention the site here before, because I didn't really have anything to share. That approach might be short-changing new writers who come here for tips on paying markets, though. After all, just because it didn't work out for me doesn't mean it won't work out for others.

So, today I popped in at Seed. The site is currently in a transitional phase, with no new articles assignments being posted until Seed 2.0 goes live. I didn't see a proposed date for the new site, but there is  an email address for interrested writers to send their information in for consideration.

Here is the full text of the messagefrom the Seed homepage, with the email address included. "

We are in the process of reformatting Seed.com and new assignments are currently on hold. If you would like to sign up for the all-new Seed 2.0, please email seed2signup@seed.com."

I have several more sites like this, and will add them over the next few days so stop back for more information.  

Amazon KDP Select Update

The numbers for December 2011 are in, at least in the form of a newsletter, for Amazon's Kindle Direct Publisher Select program.

KDP Select December Earnings

The $500,000 is being divided between a little over 294,000 "sales" through Prime member's free days. How much each writer gets depends on how many Prime members checked out his or her eBook. Each "sale" in December earned the writer $1.70.

My Own KDP Select Experience

The travel eBook I enrolled in the program did better, much better, than it would have otherwise. I scheduled two of my five free days in December, one on a weekend and the other on Christmas day. My theory being that people are more likely to download travel eBooks on weekends and holidays when sitting around relaxing and dreaming about a cool holiday. I don't know how my theory panned out compared to the other writers participating in the program, but I am pleased with the results.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have had an experience with Amazon KDP Select; or if you have any questions about the program I'll do my best to help you out with an answer.

Suite Writer's Update for January 10, 2012

I just wanted to share this here, in case anyone who reads here hasn't checked in at Suite lately.

Suite is purging some articles from their system, about 50,000 articles according to the forums. So far, if any of your articles have been removed, a notice pops up in the message section of your "My Suite" page. As far as I know, email notifications have not been sent out.

The notice provides a link to view your deleted articles, but, so far, the page is blank. To find your deleted articles, you can hover your mouse over the view icon for each article. If the URL starts with an X instead of your regular sub-domain, there is a 95% chance that article has been deleted. Or, you can click on each article and see if it opens.

Just a thought: if you created a "web" of articles when that was recommended, you can end up with links that do not go anywhere.

2011 Year-End Online Writing Summary

With 2011 drawing to a close, I find myself reflecting on the online writing experience of the past year - on my own online writing adventure. Online writers faced some big changes and upheavals in 2011. Some (now former) "cash cow" sites, where writing quick, easy articles brought in a livable wage, crashed. Search engine changes left many writers who counted on residual earnings based on page views or ad clicks wondering where the readers and the money went.

As part of saying "Goodbye" to an interesting and challenging year, I thought I would offer a review of my online writing experience of this past year.

Paid Surveys

While not actual writing work, I tried a couple of paid survey sites and found them very time intensive for very little pay. Then, with payout around $50 on the sites, I gave up without ever reaching payout.  Two thumbs down - waste of time. (Though I did a few surveys on MTurk, and while still time-intensive for low pay, the pay actually came through quickly. So - my suggestion - if you want to do surveys, check out the surveys on MTurk Also, request permissions for the writing jobs, and transcription if you are a good typist. Finally, if you have other better- paying work, it makes sense to only spend fifteen or twenty minutes a day doing the extremely low-paying HITS offered until you get access to some of the higher-paying jobs. You won't get a shot at the higher paying tasks unless you do some, but if you can make more elsewhere it doesn't make sense to invest all of your time making 60 or 70 cents an hour either. Once you have over 100 HITS approved, they open up a few more options for you and over 1,000 even more tasks become available.)

Cloud Sourcing

For the most part, I am not a fan of cloud sourcing. The cloud sourcing sites I tried, MTurk, Cloud Croud, and Clickworker were all legitimate: all actually paid as promised. The problem was, for me, the wages worked out to be dismally low. I had the most success with MTurk after I was approved as a writer for one of their customers. At 2 cents a word, it wasn't getting rich, but the money was there quickly after approval, and so far, nothing has been returned for a rewrite and nothing has been rejected.

Wikio Experts to Overblog

Good while it lasted - current state - gone. The site owners have replaced Wikio with Overblog. Overblog did not hold my interest, but, since Wikio always paid honestly, Overblog is probably worth checking out for those interested in writing for residual-type earnings.

Factoidz

I don't have one bad thing to say about this one. It seems to still be going strong. The pay is not sky-high for general submissions but product reviews pay well, and for a site that pays for page views, the up front payments and activity bonuses are higher than average for an online content site.

Skyword

Another good one. Decent upfront payments. Good residual/page view paymets. Excellent editors. All around good experience. (No clue why I wrote that in non-sentences)

Demand Media Studios

Oh my! What a ride! I somehow managed to ride it out through all of the "layoffs" for lack of a better word, and I'm still writing for the site occasionally, but the titles are down to almost nothing and the editors seem to have upped the ante on unpredictability. They claim to have changes and new formats coming as well. It should be, at least, interesting to ride it out a little longer and see what they have to offer and what they ask.

Suite101

Suite and its writers have taken a really hard hit with the search engine changes this year. It should be interesting to watch as changes unfold over the next few months.

eBooks

eBook writing is moving to the forefront as one of the higher online writing niches. The two eBook publishers I can personally review are Amazon Kindle Direct and Smashwords. I have heard good things about Smashwords, though my own results were tepid. For me, Amazon KDP outperformed Smashwords by about double. My most recent eBook, released December 8th, 2011, is in KDP Select, so it's exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. In exchange they offer the use of some of their best promotional tools. If it proves worthwhile, I'll share more info on that later.

Smartphone Apps

I suspect smartphone app writing will pass eBook writing as the next big earning opportunity for online writers. Google has a drag and drop style app building program to help non-code-writers build their own apps.

Blogging

I really like blogging, but I tend to focus on other paying work rather than add content to my blogs. I know a lot of people make good money blogging, for me, probably because I don't invest enough time in it, the money is not there. I suspect blogs built around supporting or selling a product or membership are far more lucrative than blogs like this one, with occasional posts geared around providing information for writers and nothing actually for sale.

So, I'll close this post, along with the year 2011, by wishing everyone reading here a safe, happy, and prosperous new year.

For Craft How-To Writers

If you are one of the many creatives who enjoy both crafting and writing, FW media (The Writer's Market parent company) is accepting queries from prospective writers.

The FW company website offers details as to what the query needs to contain in order to be considered, but does not mention pay rates - stating that they will contact writers with contract proposals if interested in their work.

Details about the requirements for Craft Book queries are located here.

For Sci-Fi Writers

This will eventually be moved to the "Breaking Into Print" page, but for now, this paid writing opportunity (for science fiction writers) will be here, on the OWA home page.

Analog: Science Fiction and Fact accepts manuscript submissions though an online form on their website.

According to the Analog website, "Analog pays 6-8 cents per word for short stories up to 7,500 words, $450-600 for stories between 7,500 and 10,000 words, and 5-6 cents per word for longer material. We prefer lengths between 2,000 and 7,000 words for shorts, 10,000-20,000 words for novelettes, and 40,000-80,000 for serials. Fact articles are paid for at the rate of 6 cents per word."

If you check it out and have any luck, be sure to stop back here and motivate everyone by sharing your success.

Is it Contract Change Season?

Heads up DMS writers who have not logged in at Demand this weekend: just a couple of days after Yahoo Contributor Network's contract change, Demand Media Studios is following on their heels.

While coercing workers into agreeing to a new contract under the threat of no longer being permitted to work hinges on the unethical under any circumstances, legal or not, at least in comparison to Examiner about a year ago and now YCN,  DMS had the grace to give writers a heads-up so it would not be a total surprise when logging in.

They have an announcment up on the writer's dashboard stating that all writers are to log out Monday morning for site updates, after which it will be required that writers accept the new contract terms or they will not be able to access the dashboard.

In other words, if you don't agree, you're fired. I know they don't technically "hire" their writers, but since you have to apply and be accepted, then apply for each special project, and they offer insurance and benefits in the form of Demand Deals discounted merchandise, the terms hired and fired fit the situation.

In closing, I do plan to agree because I can't really foresee any reason not to "sign", since you sign away all rights to your work when DMS buys it anyway. As long as they pay the amount they offer on the day they say it will be there, I don't see what difference it makes; maybe if you wrote revshare articles for them, but as I understand they are not doing any eHow right now, so revshare would be off the table anyway.