The Newest Online Writing Scam

I had heard about it, but it didn’t hit as sharp as when I got the email inviting me to join a particular site.  I went over to it, but before I made a keystroke, my eye caught the ‘free’ membership and the ‘professional’ membership.

One pays for professional membership.

Now I’m sitting here, staring at the screen trying to put it into logic.

These people want me to PAY to write on their site, and will, after I Submit Ten Articles, which are good, elevate me to being Paid for the items I write.

So why don’t they just get a gun, go out on the road, and rob people, honestly?

It is bad enough to steal, but to make people pay to be ripped off?

I stared at the page for a minute.   I really didn’t want to mislead or mistake.   But no… this is just One of the rip off sites that want you to pay to be ripped off.

Let me show you a trick that was played time and again.

Scribe writes an item for a site I’ll call Ripoff.  The item is very good.  The item published on Ripoff is captured by the Owners of the site…. it might be translated into another language and published on a site in that language.  It might have the Owner’s name replace that of the writer, and be submitted to some well paying professional site.

Scribe doesn’t know… but when Scribe finds out, and complains, Scribe’s membership on Ripoff is locked. Scribe can’t touch the article.  The article has been captured by Ripoff and earns money for Ripoff, and the pennies Scribe got for the article is all Scribe will get, because in very fine print on the Terms of Service has paragraphs which allow this.

So it is bad enough that one joins a free site which gathers Ad revenue for the Owners of the Site (usually on a 1 to 10 basis… for every 10c that the site makes from the writer, the writer gets 1c) much worse to pay for the privilege of being ripped off.

If you have to pay to join, don’t join.   Let the site go down without taking your work with it.