Now that we have learned, developed, and tested relevant new strategies for building a solid Internet presence, and have made sharing this information with you the cornerstone of the new Crunchy Data, you might be wondering what happened to our older posts about writing online.
Our older Crunchy Data is now primarily located under the category, “Archive” on this site. At one point I considered dumping all of it, but Crystal advised me against that, and she was right. Because while a lot of it focused on the negativity of Demand Media’s exploitation of its writers and its other [allegedly] highly deceptive practices, many of the older posts are still relevant and helpful to writers and publishers today. So we have included the still-relevant posts in our new categories.
Here is the bottom line on what Crunchy Data USED to be about and how that relates to you in terms of today’s Internet environment:
Writing for mass content farms will barely pay the bills for 95% of the people who write for them. Not only that, but as search engines demand greater content quality, the content farms increase their demands on their writers’ time without increasing their financial compensation. That includes the best of the farms. They earn less ad revenue these days, at least in theory, since most have had their ranks reduced in Google, but they don’t even bother to explain that to writers. They just announce “new policies” every few months, like more references or less subjective writing, and spin it as an advantage to the writers.
That said, there was a short period of time in 2007-2008 when writers could make decent money on sites like eHow and Examiner. But that was a bait-and-switch devised to fill their sites with cheap content. Period. Smoke and mirrors.
So here’s the deal: If you need to be home with your kids or you and/or your spouse lost your job(s) and can’t find another, you might have to suck it up and write for a company like Demand Media to feed your family. If you’re lucky, you’ll get on with a more ethical site, such as LoveToKnow or About.com, and at least be well-treated for your efforts, if not well-paid. Unfortunately, LoveToKnow pays monthly (I’m not sure how often About.com pays), and groceries can run out while you’re waiting to be paid.
From what we hear now, Demand Media’s title queues are dwindling quickly, so if you’re still depending on that weekly PayPal deposit, you’d best be looking elsewhere, and fast.
As for Examiner.com, I used to recommend writing for them–somewhat–but since they reneged on their agreement to pull my content from their site within six months of a written request, and since no one I know has earned anything near fair compensation from them, I say stay away. One of their writers even stole my image from my scrapbooking website, and they dragged their heels removing it. They still have a thumbnail of my stolen image up, but that one links to my site, so I’m letting it go.
The lesson I learned from Examiner was if your contract is readable only in pop-ups as you’re clicking, “agree,” and you can’t find them on a permanent page on the site, PRINT THEM to a PDF for documentation.
The other bottom line is this: The only hope that most people have of earning significant money online or increasing traffic to their online and/or offline business is to build a quality site, continually fill it with relevant content, and promote it like crazy with smart, relevant, and ethical strategies. That’s it. It’s that easy, and that difficult.
So stick around and subscribe to the new Crunchy Data. You can learn what you need to succeed online here, or you can hire us to do it for you. And even if you hire us, we’re going to insist that you at least let us teach you the basics, because ignorance about your virtual storefront or your Internet presence is fatal to your small business.
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