This blog post and the one directly below it are a debate of sorts on content production sites and residual income for freelance writers. You may want to begin with my side of the residual income debate, which appears below, as it explains exactly what we're talking about.
I want to thank Angela England for this guest post. Angela is an accomplished, veteran freelance writer with credits in several magazines such as Mothering, not to mention a cache of content articles that pay her mortgage every month! Be sure to visit her biography page and her website.
Angela's Side
As an experienced web content writer, I will be the first to say this style of writing is not for everyone. However, when writers are careful to select a website to write for that matches their writing style and needs, freelance writers can create a healthy residual income through web content writing. It may seem like a gamble to some, but a bit of research ahead of time can turn that gamble into a calculated risk.
The key is to know what you're getting yourself into as a writer, since both wonderful and horrible sites exist - and everything in between. Freelance writers who want the web to supplement their writing income need to find out what a website will pay, what the editorial oversights are and, most importantly, what rights are being given away.
Some sites, such as Examiner.com and Suite101.com, allow the writer to keep the rights to their work. Other content sites, such as About.com and Demand Studios, take all rights completely. If a site demands all rights, and doesn't pay a great income upfront, I would encourage writers to run. There are better websites with more reasonable payment structures. Even beginning writers should have hope for a good, solid income from their web writing.
Many web sites pay writers a residual income model of some kind. This means that writers will not be paid upfront for their article, but rather will continually be paid small amounts for their articles. For example, when I first began writing for Suite101.com I wrote four articles the first month and only got paid $.26! Scandalous! However, two and-a-half years later I am still getting paid for those same four articles and make a significant amount of money - average $1-$3 per article per month. Every month. And with almost 300 pieces on Suite101 alone you can see how this adds up!
In fact, I earn enough from Suite101 each month to cover my mortgage payment. And, since payments continue to come in each month, I earn strong residual income even during months I am not writing as actively. In September of 2008 I took a month off for maternity leave but still made enough to cover the mortgage. I was literally paid hundreds of dollars for no work whatsoever!
I do contribute to other sites beyond Suite101.com and each has a unique pay model writers should familiarize themselves with. Many of the articles I write at various online columns and websites are topics I am either very knowledgeable about, or very interested in. The research parallels any print articles I am researching, or other self-education I'm already doing. Also, the actual article construction is easy and doesn't take much time since I tend to write in article series now. The overall energy and time investment is minimal for the added stream of income. And in today's economy, freelance writers need to find every way possible to maximize their income potential.
I write for Suite 101, too, and made a whopping 41 cents my first month.
What Angela did not mention is that many S101 writers are contacted by publications in their field to write articles that do pay very well. And we never have to spend time on pitching articles, then waiting and wondering if they’ll be accepted. The publishers come to us. This aspect alone makes S101 attractive.
I write for Demand Studios and I think the difference with their program is that they put work into figuring out what articles will make you money. I’d heard about people making a few cents a month, so it’s good to know that those few cents can turn into a lot of money later. I hadn’t tried their program before, but this makes it more tempting.
I’ve written for several large networks, and while yes, pay can add up over time and it may lead to other gigs, I’ve found that they never compare to sites of your own.
If you have even an inkling of marketing ability (and you’d better if you market your writing services anyway as a freelancer), the better investment is in your own site. Networks should be more of a supplement, and more for new writers. When you work on your own sites or blogs, you control the marketing, the content, and the monetization. There’s no standard formula sitewide you have to follow (like with ad placement). And frankly, different niches monetize differently. If you can’t test it, you can’t optimize it. For example, even as as editor with one of the networks pay was only mid-$xxx per month. When I wised up and left and put that time into my blogs, the top one was earning me four times that much after about three months (and I ran several that were earning at least equal to that network gig). Sure, I have a marketing / PR background and that helps. But there was nothing unusual about how I did that, and I really didn’t spend much time marketing at all early on.
On top of it, my own blogs bring in infinitely more referrals for private work with clients, and with the freedom you have you can use them to more directly tell prospective clients what you offer.
Do networks have a place for some? Sure. But you should always take the path leading you to the greatest rewards if you’re doing it as a part of a writing career and not just “for fun.” That means at a minimum giving your own sites a shot so you can really compare them. With as easy as it is to get started with free blog platforms (wordpress.org – self-hosted), free designs / themes that are easy to edit (even though I can code a site, I use free themes to make life easy, and they don’t negatively impact earnings), and the wide variety of add networks to get behind, now’s a good time to try if you’ve never done it before.
About.com doesn’t take full rights. Guides give About.com an exclusive online license for the work that Guides publish on their sites, for as long as the writer remains a Guide. The Guides retain copyright, however, and can do whatever they like with the content if they leave About.com.
I use a different business model for Website writing.
I network and find clients who need a Website designed or revamped. I get heavily involved with the organization of the site (so it’s easy to navigate), help identify the personas (so the language resonates with the Web visitors), and write or edit all the content.
I charge by the hour, not the project, since every project is different. I don’t get any residual fees and the site and its contents belong to the Website owner.
I find this situation very agreeable. Of course, it means I have to do a lot of networking to find clients, and sometimes I have no clients at all.
But when I do have a client, I can make good money and the client gets a damn good site where visitors can “find what they need and understand what they read.”
Martha Roden
“About.com doesn’t take full rights… The Guides retain copyright, however, and can do whatever they like with the content if they leave About.com.”
This isn’t true and you should read your contract better. About.com can get rid of you for any reason and if they do they will keep your site live until they find a new guide.
You can take your content with you but to post is somewhere else makes google read it as duplicate content and so it’s effectively worthless.
It doesn’t make About.com right or wrong, it’s just the way it is. That’s why they pay you the way they do. Also there is alot of turnover for a company that makes 91 million.
About.com’s writers are the lifeblood of the company but you are also at the bottom of the totem pole as well. It’s too bad.
“This isn’t true and you should read your contract better.”
Thank you, but I am quite familiar with my own contract.
“About.com can get rid of you for any reason and if they do they will keep your site live until they find a new guide.”
That’s true, and you also get paid for that content until they find a new Guide. At which point, they remove your content (or, in rare cases, they can negotiate with you to keep the content, if both parties want) and you retain full rights.
At which point, you could repost without Google seeing your site as duplicate content, or sell elsewhere, or do whatever you want with that content.
If you don’t like the license agreement, that’s your choice, but it is significantly different than “taking all rights completely,” as your blog post states.
I think the About.com discussion was actually began in the post BELOW this one, if anyone is having trouble following that.
Someone brought up that About.com could also be construed as a content site, which is true, but I pointed out differences such as upfront pay, exclusivity and a journalistic training process. Sandra addresses the rights argument of About.com below.
@Jenn Mattern Thank you for contributing so much- may you have great karma for your part in helping newbies decide this issue:)
I agree with Angela, the style of many of these website might not be not for everybody, but even a new “green” writer can write articles on them and feel recognized, at least by comments and reviews of fellow writer-wanna-be’s, which is a great boost to start a potential big career. And, as she said, the first figures you may earn have more of a “symbolic” meaning, and have to be considered as such. But like for anything, if you work at it and create a good meaty and mighty portfolio of articles, and do a little bit of homework on keywords and such so to improve your earnings by each click you receive on them, then you can do it too. And I know more than one of these writers who is making at least half of their living with this kind of residual income. And that is a great solution then to take your time to write your “dream book” (normally months or years) and not having to worry too much about income. But you have to do it as part of the game, the bigger one. I am working at it and loving it myself!
One thing that didn’t come out in the discussions, above, is that Suite101 keeps your content posted forever, yet quits paying you when you leave. This is blatantly unfair and a deal-breaker, in my view, because it effectively negates your ability to ever do anything with that material elsewhere online.
Also, be careful about a site that pays you a percentage of ad revenue without ever disclosing what that percentage is, which means that they can change it at will-how would you know? It would be like a book publisher not disclosing your royalty rates. Worse, you have no way whatever to audit the books. Blaming Google for this is bogus, because there are ways to do it without violating their nondisclosure requirements.
As for showcasing your writing on a content site: I am a person who sometimes seeks writers there for paying gigs. Be worried if some of the content is poor or written by people who aren’t authorities–it reflects badly on your finer writing and topic expertise.
“One thing that didn’t come out in the discussions, above, is that Suite101 keeps your content posted forever, yet quits paying you when you leave.”
That is incorrect. Suite continues to pay writers as long as their content remains live (ie, pretty much forever).
I despise Suite101 with a passion for my own reasons, but I will backup Sarah on that one – they do continue to pay the writers even after they leave (as long as the content is on the site).
First, about Suite’s payment policy, I wanted to quote directly from my contract: “In the event of termination, Suite101 will have a continuing right to publish the Writer’s previously-delivered Content and this Agreement shall continue to apply to the Content.” Since the Agreement continues to apply, that includes payment. If Publishing Rights Pro knows somebody that didn’t get paid and has a contract like mine, it’s probably worth looking into.
However, the warning about writing for a site “that pays you a percentage of ad revenue without ever disclosing what that percentage is” is a valid one, and I am looking for web writers to weigh in on that and a couple of other questions in my post Opinions Sought from Web Content Writers. I’m particularly looking for folks that see value in this type of writing, because I want to see at what point the value disappears for most writers.
And finally, Publishing Pro, if you’re going to look for writers on these sites you will probably save a lot of time if you focus on sites that have an application process and an editorial staff. Helium, for example, has writing on it that makes my eyes bleed; the site uses community controls instead of professional ones and it really shows in the quality.
I agree with Jenn Mattern, comment #3. Since most here are writers. Take steps to start your own website. There is nothing like venturing into it. Once you see the huge potential as a content writer you will wonder how you never thought of it yourself.
The online world interaction is as follows. I search for information from say google. I click through to a website. The content on the site might interest me and I will stick around or it will not and I will click away to some other site. So the procedure is you build a rich website with helpful content, the visitors will come. Once the visitors are on your website, you presell what ever you want to sell as they use your content. Finally you monetize your content. Adsense is the one that readily comes to mind.
The process is simple Content->Traffic->Presell->Monetize. That’s how it works in a nutshell. So you content writers have a lot to make on the internet if you decide to setup your own website.
Some internet marketers would call it, building your internet real estate. Get started today. Do some research and it will be worth the efforts.
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