Signs a Writing Site is Going Down

I am going to differentiate from those born scams,  those semi-scams and real sites that collapse.

BORN SCAMS

There are publishing sites which are basically created like this;

I. borrow Ten Thousand Dollars to ‘set up’ the Site.

a) get free or semi-free web hosting
b) use your personal adsense account

II.  load the site with temporary items of very high quality (virtually plagiarised)

III) run around and get others to run around touting the site

IV) promise to pay for hits/comments/likes

V) use new items submitted by users to replace the temporary items so that everything is original

VI) pay everyone the first time as they reach the threshold

V) Make the second payout only to those who have:
i)brought in new users
ii)live in 1st World Countries
iii)write a lot

VI) Launch attacks (using nicknames & shills) on everyone who complains about non-payment

VII) Raise the pay out threshold

VIII)Shut the site when the complaints are about to be acted on and you receive the Adsense payment

This is the basic Scam.  The money borrowed is to pay the users their first time as what they post can not in anyway cover the promised payments.   The revenue gained from unpaid users is what pays the new users and when the borrowed money is paid back from the actual ad earnings from the site, and keep the site going until the first warning from some Legal Agency.    Delay closing the site until receiving that final Adsense payout.

SEMI-SCAMS

People who have very little business sense begin a writing site and at first do well.  However, over time, they can’t satisfy payments to their users based on advertising revenue.  Hits fall, and they don’t know what to do so they start to play with hits on a ‘temporary’ basis.

Hence, before they hit a rough patch every hit counted.  Now they ‘adjust’ so that 5 hits equal 1 or 10 hits equal 1 or they do a kind of ‘adjust’   so that if you logged on at 6 am you’d see you had 1,345 hits and when you log on at 10 am you have 345.

This ‘adjustment’ is supposed to be temporary but becomes permanent.  Users complain, stop writing, and the site goes down.

REAL SITES

A real site maintains its standard as long as it can.  When views begin to drop due to an unforseen Panda they inform their users that they will either:

a) change the rate from 1c for every 6 views to 1c for every 60 views
b) change the payment schedule and rates
c) stop paying

Users are now placed in the position of making the decision as to whether they wish to continue or not.  Some may remove items, some might continue writing, but are aware that the site is going to collapse.

On sites which pay by hits, corruption is far too easy to perpetuate.  The ‘sudden’ drop in hits, for example is so clear.   One joined the site in January, the coin mounted, they were paid in February, they posted and were paid in March, now, despite writing, networking, getting views and comments they stick at $3.35

At this moment in time there is a bit of a ‘famine’ going on in the publishing community which should be replaced by a feast when new sites pop up.