June 1, 2016 at 11:15 am

I think @scheng1 gives excellent advice about what makes the posts more valuable for SEO purposes. Those who choose to follow his advice can earn more money for shorter posts. Those who choose to ignore such advice will have to be content with lower payment per post.

June 1, 2016 at 11:09 am

@bestwriter I’m not entirely sure that a site like LB will want to allow for video uploads. If the videos are streamed from YouTube, there is no need to worry about storing the files. If you’d like to include your own videos, perhaps it’s best to just upload them to YouTube yourself.

June 1, 2016 at 11:01 am

@melissa1024 I think every new site is a bit of a gamble, especially a startup that hasn’t paid any of its users yet. I’ve been cheated in several places, so I’m usually pretty careful about what kind of content I post and how much I contribute to an unproven site.

Luckily, I never published much on EliteVisitors. Some of what I wrote for them, I was able to republish elsewhere after the entire site was lost. So not much lost, except my trust in that group of people…

June 1, 2016 at 10:54 am

@scheng Perhaps a page view bonus is something we should be lobbying for, as the site gains more rank and establishes a secure revenue stream.

June 1, 2016 at 10:26 am

@swalia I think many on this site could use a refresher course in writing an image credit. I’ve seen a lot of “image by Pixabay” or “image from Wikipedia,” but these are not acceptable forms of attribution.

When we give credit for any kind of work, we must always state the name of the creator. Pixabay, Wikipedia, Google or Bing are not the creators or copyright owners of works that we find on their sites. If an image is hosted on Pixabay or Wikimedia Commons, it is good to name the site in a credit. But the artist who took the photo or created the graphic is the crucial name that must be on the image.

For images from Wikipedia, most fall under Creative Commons licensing. That requires we know and understand the terms of the license (usually attribution and share alike; sometimes no derivatives and/or no commercial use.) We must also state those terms when we use the image. If an image credit is missing these elements, we haven’t complied with the terms of the license and are technically in copyright violation.

@lovern Images generally become blurry because they are being resized. In all likelihood, the theme used on LiteracyBase is trying to stretch photos that are too narrow. A featured image should be 1200 pixels wide. Most stock images are only about 600 pixels wide. In the case of a celebrity photo or other image that it presented in the portrait or vertical orientation, that might be only 450 pixels wide.

Obviously, if the site is trying to stretch 450 pixels to fit a space 1200 pixels wide, there is going to be some distortion. The lower the resolution of the image, the more that distortion will show. This is why some images are blurry when they are displayed on posts.

June 1, 2016 at 9:52 am

@melissa1024 It certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, yes. Experiences like that have left me very wavy of writing sites run by people whose skill set is more technical than writing-related. I have heard a lot of very negative things about sites I was never involved with, too. Usually for about the same reasons….

June 1, 2016 at 1:57 am

@morgoodie Score! I hope he likes the story!

I started collecting the Nancy Drew books after I had read my way through the ones the school and public libraries had. When my youngest wanted to read them, we discovered the public library here has dozens of them. She never really got into them, though.

June 1, 2016 at 1:37 am

My early experiences with the first iteration of the site were quite good, but after the first time somebody ran off with the profits the site was never right again. There was a second incidence of embezzlement, and also an issue where one of several admins made a unilateral decision to shut down the site because of a technical issue. This decision was apparently made on the basis of them not having a backup – even an outdated one – of the site and its contents.

I had a negative experience with Christy after the second big kerfuffle (which was actually the third major shift in the site, due to a “clean start” that had happened when they took a new domain name.) I basically got the impression that members should shut up and be loyal, and not ask any difficult questions. Anyone who knows me from other sites, will know that kind of attitude does not sit well with me at all…

I’ve never known this site to be a reliable source of income, and as far as I know there were stretches of time where even their hosting fees were being covered by Rex.

I got a canned email from them after they launched the latest version of the site, inviting me (generically, as something like “dear friend”) to join their site. It was signed by the anonymous staff, and when I asked Rex if he was still involved with the site he ignored my question. That basically told me everything I needed to know.

I would not recommend the site, and I hope nobody else gets cheated by this group.

June 1, 2016 at 1:11 am

@bestwriter I think maybe I will have to look off-site for image sizes and guidelines for their various products. I will certainly make my store public once I’m happy with it 🙂

May 31, 2016 at 10:48 pm

@swalia Although the grammatical correctness of a text is less important online today, it’s not a simple matter of choosing a popular topic to write about for SEO purposes.

Especially if you write shorter texts, you can boost the value of your post by adding an appropriate image that readers will find attractive. The image should be of the right size and orientation so it won’t be awkwardly cropped, or end up getting blurry when it displays on your post. It should also be visually appealing. If the reader has a choice of two posts: one with a blurry head shot of a single actor and another with an appealing collage of several actors’ photos, the reader will likely opt to read the latter. This is something the admin may be taking into consideration when weighting the value of posts for pay purposes.

Another thing to keep in mind is whether your post has headings and subheadings, bullets or numbered lists, in-line images or video, etc. You could easily boost the value of a short, simply written post by adding more whitespace and a few subheadings, and by including just one YouTube video.

May 31, 2016 at 10:41 pm

@raaman I think it’s quite clear that we are not specifically paid for page views to our content. This is why it isn’t mentioned anywhere on the “Rewards” page.

If you want to earn something similar to a page views bonus, you need to use the referral code when you share your links. You can add the referral code to your own posts when you share the link, or you can add it to links for other writers’ posts, or for any page on the site.

When someone follows one of your referral links to the site, you will receive $0.0010 bonus payment. This seems very small, but it adds up very quickly. I currently have more than 2,400 visitor referrals over a space of about three weeks. That means that just under one quarter of my May earnings came from visitor referrals.

By comparison, just under half of my earnings came from the posts themselves.

May 31, 2016 at 10:33 pm

@scheng1 Perfect grammar is certainly not necessary for good SEO, but the text must be easy enough to understand. If the writer has used a machine translator, there can be major issues with terms that are not appropriately translated. The text will almost surely lack the natural flow of words and ideas that Google is looking for. This can also be true of texts written in English by both native speakers and non-native speakers alike.

If errors interfere with comprehension, then they are an issue. If the text doesn’t read smoothly, it’s also an issue. The rest does impact on the overall impression the reader gets, but these days it probably doesn’t affect search engine rankings all that much.

May 31, 2016 at 10:27 pm

@raaman As Grace said, it is very common for sites to pay only 10-15 days after the earnings period has ended. And in fact, some sites actually pay one month plus 10-15 days later,

There are two main reasons for the delay, and both are good ones:

1. Most advertising revenues are paid only every 60-90 days. The delay of a few weeks allows for the site to receive their pay from the advertiser before dispersing payments to the users;
2. A delay of 10-15 days allows at least five business days to verify accounts and process payment requests. As site admin must also continue site maintenance and trouble shooting, answering user questions, etc. during this period, it’s normal that it doesn’t happen more quickly. Hiring additional staff would simply mean a smaller revenue share for users.

May 31, 2016 at 9:32 pm

@peachpurple I think that’s a great plan! I will have to come up with something similar for myself 🙂

What do you think of MyKites? I had started doing a little there, back before my computers broke down last fall. I haven’t been back since, but lately I’ve been wondering if maybe I should give it another try…

May 31, 2016 at 9:27 pm

@morgoodie I was a big Nancy Drew fan too! I had a huge collection of them!

Yes, the old classics pop up a lot in thrift stores and second-hand book shops. They are usually priced very reasonably, and most are in almost new condition. My kids got better use of that series than of any of the more recent paperback editions. I think it’s the look and feel of the book that they like so much 🙂