Writing Sites; Trying For the Balance

I was invited to join a writing site.  Unlike the crowd, I do my research first.  I have been on so many sites since 2007 that I am qualified to write this article.

In ancient days a writing venue would pay for web space.  They’d solicit ads and do all sorts of promotion to get people to join, participate at the best level, and then share payment.

Many sites were fairly sensible when it came to payment as they did have the views and the hits to confirm 1c for every 6 views.

Some were a bit innumerate in trying to catch users by an ‘unsustainable business model’; that is the only way they could pay what they promised was if they had no expense and at least one thousand people who would click on an ad.

In early days people did click on Ads.  They were clever, they were real, they had products that people wanted.

I remember clicking on a Rolex ad, not that I could afford a Rolex, (that was a very expensive watch) and on a few other ads on other members sites because I was interested.

In early days the Mods were living beings and active.   They’d be very much ‘hands on’ for the newer members and then would ‘class’ them into categories.   They would read the best articles simply to read them if they pricked an interest, and would run spell checkers, (which often slapped me who wrote in English not American English) and grammar checkers.

When it came to plagiarism they could differentiate between what was posted to substantiate the article, such as a quote or attribution, which would be flagged by an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)  plagiarism checker and what was being posted.

As there were many mods, the delay was an hour or two in some cases.

On many sites there were problems with Moderation.  Too slow, too biased, etc.   Many mods would quit because it seems so much work for nothing.

Over time, as the ads became less clickable, as the Panda gave writing sites that minus rating, many sites could no longer pay and collapsed.

This brings me to a new site which has a 50 Euro pay out.  To reach that 50 Euros would take me about a year, considering how low the payment per item is.   Hence I passed.

Thresholds have become a kind of mountain for many writers.   One has to write X items per month to reach that pay out.  In the right cases it isn’t difficult, in the wrong cases, as this new site I was invited to join, it is a waste of time and effort.

I didn’t bother to even glance at the Terms of Service (or Terms of Use) because I am not going to join such a site that has such a high threshold and limits ones activities to X number of whatever per day.

This is where writing sites have become swamps.

Instead of going after good writers who will lure Netizens to the site by having really good content people want to read, instead of treating a writer with respect, so that s/he feels inspired to work, one is treated as an automaton.

To write on line not knowing if you will;

a) have your item approved

b) have your work wrongly rejected for plagiarism because the owners run bots which can not tell the difference between an attribution and a quote,

c) be confronted by an enormous threshold that might take ‘forever’ to reach, (and the site might not last three months)

is not inspiring.