August 6, 2016 at 8:01 am

Harsh words, Grace? Surely you overestimate how mean you are! I know when you grumble that you’re just feeling left out. Your bark has always been much bigger than your bite.

I tend to just pass over those words that are written when friends are being unkind, anyway. Most times, the deeper meaning is that someone’s feelings have been hurt and they want others to hurt too. It’s not worth paying attention to that kind of talk. It’s just venting.

In any case… If I could be in a dozen places at one, I probably would. But I do what I can, where I can. Today I am catching up. We will see what the future brings. If LB is running smoothly, it’s always a lot easier to interact here. But when things are going all haywire, it’s best to leave for a while and give the admin time to get things fixed. What I owe, I owe to myself and my family. I don’t allow others to make me feel obliged to do anything more than what’s right for me and mine.

August 6, 2016 at 6:25 am

Hmmm, I’m not sure that I care to be a mascot….. Maybe you’d care to wear the funny costume, Grace?

August 6, 2016 at 6:23 am

This is why I like to tag the author when I comment. They’ll usually get a notification for the mention (although today I’m getting notifications but then the mention won’t show…)

August 6, 2016 at 6:01 am

@bestwriter Thanks for your understanding and your friendship. Sometimes it helps to hear kind words 🙂

August 6, 2016 at 5:45 am

@bestwriter I am trying to catch up today, Grace. But it’s very difficult with the ads and the video on every page. I’m also having that same issue we had before, of the orange bars that have no notification in them and won’t go away. I’m trying to track what activity they might be related to, so they’ll go away…

August 6, 2016 at 5:00 am

@swalia Those spammers hit a lot of sites. it’s nobody’s fault. It was just another brick in the wall that day, so to speak.

@bestwriter Yes, we all had issues because there was a huge influx of traffic that was more than the server was intended to handle in the early days. I’m happy the owner chose to migrate to a dedicated server. Any future upgrades should be seamless and not cause interruptions for the users. It can be more expensive to go this way, but it is a good investment if a site owner can afford the extra fees.

It can be more expensive to go this way, but it is a good investment if a site owner can afford the extra fees. Repeated downtime and server errors are a turn-off for users and visitors alike. They can really hurt a site’s earning potential.

August 6, 2016 at 4:53 am

@bestwriter I find it interesting to hear various people’s guesses at what was going on when a certain comment was written. Sometimes they can be pretty close but often when we make assumptions, we can be way off!

In this instance, for example, I think the comment was written right after I started writing on TextBroker. The other places I was talking about were TextBroker and my personal blogs.

August 6, 2016 at 4:45 am

@peachpurple I am the author of the comment that you and Grace find so deplorable. It is honest feedback that was solicited by a question about our experiences on LiteracyBase. It was not meant to hurt feelings, but to give the admin here fair warning that there are some issues that need attention.

I know that when I am in a position where I am helping to run a group or a site, I appreciate such feedback. It isn’t easy to hear sometimes, and I might not always agree with the priorities or opinions of the people who are giving the feedback, but I’d rather hear from someone directly than to have things go unsaid or to gossip behind my back.

August 6, 2016 at 4:23 am

@lovern I don’t really remember what the comment said. I think it was just me asking what you had heard about this plagiarism issue. I saw comments here about accusations but didn’t get the details and was wondering what the problem was.

@peachpurple I have no idea how many people deleted content and reposted here, but I know some moved posts to their own blogs or to other sites. I had previously asked Sheridan about our copyright because his TOS implied that BJ owned our posts. He told me it’s ours and he’s not trying to claim ownership. And LB has said they don’t mind if we migrate posts, so I can’t see any reason why anyone has a reason to complain.

You really should be sure that Google has deindexed a post before you publish it on a new site. You can wait for them to do that on their own, but you can also request deindexing. Either way, it’s preferable not to move content until it’s been deindexed. This reduces the chances of either site being penalized. But ultimately, it’s up to the site owner to decide whether they’ll require content to be deindexed before posting it again. If you want to know if it’s safe on LB, you’d have to ask the admin.

August 6, 2016 at 3:57 am

I don’t know about others, but I find it really difficult to participate here lately. For about a month or so, I’ve had repeated issues with pages not loading properly, with server errors and downtime, etc. It makes it really unpleasant to even visit the site. And now there’s the video that is set to autoplay….

Anyway, I’m trying to catch up today in amongst the other chaos in my offline life! I want to at least clear out my notifications 🙂

August 6, 2016 at 3:02 am

I actually think the video has a very limited interest to most people. It would be good to have on a FAQ page where there are explanations about earning on LB. For recruitment purposes or to stimulate activity, they really ought to work on a shorter video with a human voice. It should be catchier, with a lighter tone, and not be so concerned with providing specific details of how the site works.

And obviously, any video that autoplays when the page is loaded is really a bad idea.

August 6, 2016 at 2:33 am

@lovern I will be very surprised if BlogJob starts to pay again. I think Sheridan has been silent about his main concerns for too long, and too many members have left the site. Some are migrating massive amounts of content to their own blogs because they need to keep earning, and others are migrating to other writing sites like LB. I’m sure this is hurting Sheridan’s earnings. He may have dropped so far that he can’t return.

As for Rex, he was only a moderator in the forums, as far I know. He was always active on multiple writing sites, so I’m not surprised that he continues to join new sites that he feels have earning potential for his content. He’s a good writer and is very active when he belongs to a site. I think he will do well anywhere he happens to hang his hat.

On a slightly different note, with Persona Paper changing hands, it could be interesting to see if writers there will get active again.

August 6, 2016 at 2:23 am

There were a lot of issues with Tsu, not the least of which was the fact that earning was painfully slow and that they only paid by cheque. It paid well for the power users who had hundreds of downline users. But only for them. And their activity was probably bankrupting the site.

Other issues were a lot of copyright infringement, which was largely ignored by the admin, and the fact that you couldn’t see anything on the site without being logged in. I think that alienated a lot of potential users, who might have enjoyed earning on a site that was like Facebook.

As @sunil says, there were some poor decisions made by the admin on Tsu. I don’t think many of us are surprised about them closing. Most people I know left there a long time ago.

August 6, 2016 at 2:17 am

@sunil You are not the first to mention that on MyLot there are certain people who seem to have appointed themselves moderators. I know there are a couple of veterans who are well respected, and who have occasionally gotten into heated discussions with other users. I haven’t seen much beyond that but I found that after my first month there, most of the posts were just not interesting enough to stimulate conversation.

I haven’t seen much beyond that, in terms of the atmosphere. But I found that after my first month there, most of the posts were just not interesting enough to stimulate conversation. It’s hard to earn under the MyLot model when nobody is posting anything to comment on…

As for sites that constantly change, I think it’s understandable with a new site that is trying to adapt both to the demands of advertisers who provide the revenue and the needs of its users. LB, for example, has had a lot of changes to its ads. Sometimes they are there, sometimes there are none. Now we are seeing an autoplaying video and some InfoLinks ads that make it more difficult to use the site. There have also been a lot of issues with downtime and with server errors. But this is to be expected of a site that had seen little activity until the influx of members here in the spring.

To my mind, it’s much worse when a site with a long history (like Bubblews or BlogJob) suddenly announces drastic changes to its payment program, or when it fails to pay users what they are owed or eliminates revenue sharing altogether. Sites that are changing and announcing changes along the way, like the Harlow-McGaw sites, tend to do better in the long run. That’s why I always advocate transparency and giving users frequent updates, even if that means some rules will change more often than planned. It’s better than hiding the concerns until the problem is so big that the only choice is to stop paying the writers.

August 6, 2016 at 1:53 am

@swalia Actually, I took time away from LB because I was busy offline. I was also having issues accessing the site for a period of over a week. Too many 500 errors, as we had previously experienced on Bubblews right before the site started to go downhill.

I had hoped to return to do some writing and socializing here, but I’ve got to say I’m really put off by the LB video that autoplays on every single page. The computer-generated voice is jarring. And I don’t see the need to “sell” me on the site, as I’m already a member here! I think @support should move the video to a page that the public is more likely to access, as forums don’t often attract non-members.

I will do my best to answer to my mentions and other notifications today, but participation is hampered by this video. It’s an unnecessary waste of bandwidth, even if I turn the volume off.