February 26, 2017 at 6:26 am

This Blog is about writing sites.  Those which went down, those which are still up, the pluses and minuses.

It is hoped that we can learn from sites that went down; why? so as to know if another site is teetering on the edge of collapse.

Sites that remain; why?  And are they strong or weak?

I also want to share various sites that are up And Pay as well as those that Don’t Pay or pay so little they aren’t work a key stroke.

February 26, 2017 at 6:48 am

To get the ball rolling I want to discuss a site that went down perhaps ten years ago.  A site called Factoidz.

If you get on the wayback machine  (archive.org) you can take a glance at what it was when it was what it was.

There were many good articles which were well received.  Originally, Factoidz paid very well.  Then, the Owner got greedy.  He developed a fantastic plot on how to rip off his writers.

The process was simple; you would join as a member and write an article or two and depending on how good a writer you were,  you’d be elevated to ‘writer’ after those one or two items.  As writer you would earn.   If you were very good, you’d be elevated to Staff Writer; which meant the Mods didn’t need to review your work.

Earning $150 a month on Factoidz was no big deal.

People flocked to Factoidz.  They would solicit from Triond, Hubpages, Squidoo… and they would get the best work, for they PAID the most.

For some reason, the Owner decided to rip off the writers.  Decided to have his squad of Shills, and Goons go after a writer.

They’d attack for nothing.  One could be writing about a historical figure and every fact, date, event was good enough for a college thesis.  But the Goons would attack,   When the writer responded, he or she would be dropped a peg, that is go down from Staff Writer to Writer. If the user questioned, he or she would be dropped to ‘member’.

In Factoidz, ‘staff writers’ made the big money, ‘writers’ had to be moderated, and ‘members’ couldn’t post and couldn’t touch their coin.

Yup.

As soon as one was dropped to Member, their money, be it $100 or $1000 would be stolen by the owner.

When the writer revealed this on Hubpages or Triond, the Shills would attack and claim the reason the writer was ripped off was ‘Because You Broke The Rules!!’

This went on until the F.B.I. was activated.

Then the site went down.

The owner opened a site called Knoji.   You can take a glance at it, but don’t join.  It’s rubbish.

February 26, 2017 at 8:01 am

@kaylar I was at Factoidz for a long time and liked the way it kept our articles on SEO valuation and paid bonus. Then what they required us to keep sharing others’ posts and all was exciting as well encouraging but later the site lost its value and interest of almost everyone. The worst thing is that you cannot remove your posts from that site.

February 26, 2017 at 11:39 am

I have seen Squidoo, Bubblews, Niume, Tinycent fall. Niume and Tinycent turned out to be so scammy that they manipulated views. Same with bubblews. Some people got paid so it remained hanging case. I miss squidoo, it was good income source. As good as the real job itself.

Fall of these sites made me think that after I earn some specific amount from such sites, it’s better to invest this money into real sites to make some consistent money.

February 26, 2017 at 5:54 pm

What was the worst part was when he dropped one to ‘member’ the article was earning.   He was pocketing the money.  So you could see your article earning… but he would keep your money.

February 26, 2017 at 5:57 pm

One has to be alert.  When one sees a manipulation or a trick, they have to know what to do.  When a site is in America then one can contact a law enforcement agency which will shut them down.  With Bubblews, the two thieves who ran that one lived in America so they were a few steps from jail cell when they were shut down.

Like Quac, the Factoidz guy, Dixit and his pal Jason went on to diverse scams.

February 26, 2017 at 6:03 pm

@kaylar, There were almost 500 writing and paying sites closed, meaning weak and lack capital.But BlogJob is still showing its resurrections.We can still open our site and interact some those who happen to be on line. There is one blogger there she is blogging and discussing daily about her daily beliefs hehehehehe, that seems insanity posting with a dead site. I do not know what comes to her mind. She might be thinking that all her accumulated discussions will have payment when BlogJob comes back to life again hehe, so funny lady. She is very positive, yet so insensitive to sense the situation.Well, anyway, that is her life and belief. About your discussion here, the sites you mentioned, never had I knew them. At least I knew them from you.

That is life we have to fave…. that there is no permanent business and no permanent job.Everything on earth no permanence.

February 26, 2017 at 6:09 pm

Helium was another site.  In this one, you had to write on a set topic.   After you wrote your item would be ‘judged’ in comparison to other items on the same topic.  To submit an item one had to judge other items…

It was a ridiculous site which lasted way too long.   I  used it for ideas.   Often, if I had writer’s block I’d log onto Helium and see the various assignments they had.   And take one.  Or, I’d read the items written by others that were up for judgment and pick up other ideas, words, sentence flows, etc.

When Helium went down everyone was surprised it had lasted as long as it had.

Can you imagine writing a 1000k word item on a topic; i.e. “The significance of Anne Boylen in the English Monarchy” or, “The Myths of Red Roses,”  stuff that required research, and you submit it and it isn’t published… you don’t get 1c for it?

February 26, 2017 at 6:17 pm

There were so many sites; and a great deal of quality items were published.  The quality kept Factoidz and Helium alive.  They had many hits.  Writing on Blogjob and not being paid is ridiculous.  It hasn’t starting paying yet, and it has been a long time… I think a year…

February 26, 2017 at 7:29 pm

Helium died way before adblocker. So I guess their exit definitely helped the owners. As you know it’s hard to make money from ads now. So it’s really a trouble to see how many sites these days are going to pay. Afterall, we can’t see sites surviving despite having adblocker.

February 26, 2017 at 7:33 pm

HubPages is still ‘active’, term used loosely.   It once paid fairly well, had many good writers, and had Twelve MIllion Hits a Month.   Twelve Million.   Getting 1k hits on an item was minor, as many writers got so much more.

The site demanded long articles with lots of images.

Then, in 2010, something happened.

The Top Writer stopped really writing interesting articles and created rubbish with lots of Keywords and S.E.O. terms, which would attract Google and coin from Google’s Adsense.

In those days, (seven years ago)  entering particular search terms would bring you to Hubpages as often as to Wikipedia.  This is because the ‘writers’ at Hubpages knew how to play Google.

Imagine an article of 1000k words which says NOthing.  But!  Is stuffed with Keywords.

Let us suppose today a lot of people are doing searches for ‘cheap flights’.  An article would be written in which the term “cheap flights” is used in almost every sentence.    The article said nothing..

Example

“All over the world people are interested in Cheap Flights.  People are doing searches every day for Cheap Flights.   I am sure you are interested in Cheap Flights…..”

The article will go on and on repeating this emptiness.

The next day;

“All over the world people are interested in Coconut Oil.   People are doing searches every day for Coconut Oil.  I am sure you are interested in Coconut Oil…”

Hubpages could have paid attention, tossed these items into the rubbish and kept a top site. But they didn’t.   The big effort they made was to encourage one writer to flag the work of another writer.

Now… I’ll deal with this ‘voting’ in another blog, but right now, one can see how pointless this is.

So, Hubpages is a ‘Content Farm’ and any article written there will not show up in the first 20 pages of a Google.  If your item doesn’t show up in a Google, how will people find you?  They won’t.

Hubpages has dropped from 12 Million hits a Month, to 6, to 3 and now has about 600k a month and going down.

Making 5c a month on Hubpages is standard.

February 26, 2017 at 7:35 pm

Adblocker didn’t destroy Helium.   Helium did it all itself.  Who wants to waste time on such a site?  Imagine researching some topic, writing, posting….and your item is discarded. Nah.

February 26, 2017 at 9:15 pm

Hubpages is not relying on google SEO and the adblocker. So they are working hard on so many variables. It means they are going to find better way to get traffic. Hubpages hardly gets traffic from googel anymore but they are making good money. Hubpages is using niche site to get traffic and they are also running newsletters and social media traffic to share the content. It’s working for them.

And as for Helium, that’s what I said. Helium died way before adblcoker. But for them the reason was they went bankrupt.

February 26, 2017 at 9:36 pm

If you Join Hubpages, you aren’t going to make much money.  The kind of stuff they publish which gets views, is as you say, niche.   If you find the niche and you are interested in that stuff… fine.  If you want to write what you want to write about, don’t expect many views.

They can’t rely on Google because they are the capital of Content Farms.  Further, with only Six Hundred and Sixty Thousand views, down from 12 Million, one has very little hope it will go up or even balance.

February 26, 2017 at 9:52 pm

I am Hubpages member since 2009. So I have seen hubpages ups and downs. And now I can see that they are getting non google traffic. So yes, they did survived. It’s not easy to survive more than 11 years on web. They are doing it. With adblcoker it would be harder. But let’s see what happens.