Iakul's Freelance Writing Musings

Iakul's List

2029-08-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

If you are just here to look at Iakul's List and are not interested in my updates, reviews and reports, click here.

For a list of online publishing sites and their page ranks, click here instead.

Otherwise, continue on. The list can still be found on this blog at here.
I realised there were some people who were here just to look at the list, but the list was just getting too long, so I had it shifted down and set up a Squidoo lenses with nothing except the list on it for those who just wanted the list.

List update

2011-09-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

Added Experts123.com under "Sites which pay upfront for articles", added Wikinut under "Sites which let you earn passive income". Updated the descriptions for some of the links, fixed a broken link.

List update

2011-02-04T03:26:00.000-08:00

Added About.com For a Contributing Writer, it's a minimum of $500 a month for the first two years at About.com,with payment incentives based on pageview growth and after that the minimum drops to $250. You are required to publish at least 12 pieces of content per month, which works out to around $42 per article when you are starting out.

Removed Factoidz. There have been a number of complaints regarding it by former members, alleging that it's a reverse Ponzi scheme, where the earnings of older members are used to pay newer members. I have yet to ascertain how much truth there is to this, but until I find the time to really go digging into this, I'll remove it for the time being.

Changed Helium's description, since they changed their upfront payment structure. There have been complaints about this, and while I do personally know a number of Helium members who will expect to be earning less after this change, I think it was inevitable. It just didn't make sense that under the old payout structure, one was given more financial incentive to suggest and write topics about obscure subjects than to write about subjects that people might actually be interested in, given how Helium generates their revenue.

List update (and no, nothing new added)

2010-12-18T00:25:00.000-08:00

Just a minor update, regarding Bukisa's change from a multi-tier referral based model to a Google Adsense sharing revenue model. And yes, compared to my previous site description *points below* , Bukisa didn't get much of a site description this time.

"Bukisa
Personally, I don't like Bukisa. It seems to be a content site that's focused on quantity and not quality. There are quite a number of peole who do recommend Bukisa though. Bukisa has a 3 tier referral system, which means that you get a cut of the earnings of the referrals of the referrals of your referrals. As far as I can tell, that's the reason most of the people are recommending it. But like I mentioned, I don't like it. They even set up a Help page which has nothing on it except "Coming Soon" and a link to their FAQ. It's now Aug 31st 2009. Bukisa was started in 2008. That's a long time to set up a Help page. *Updated on Nov 10th 2009: it has come to my attention that Bukisa no longer has a "Coming Soon" Help page with nothing on it. I wonder if my lens had anything to do with this change..."

And no, as I mentioned in the title, no new sites added. Although it's been more than half a year since my last update. Well, I have been busy with, erm, stuff *waves hand vaguely*.

If you all do want to look at a new site though, there's a post by Bianca Raven last month talking about Content Authority here.
http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/

List update

2010-05-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

Added a couple of sites under the Blogs and Forums section.

There's Writing For Dollars, which isn't exactly a blog or forum, but I guess that's the section that fits it best. This kind of made me realise that I don't have a section for informative sites that are not blogs or forums. Writing For Dollars certainly has a wealth of information, which includes tips and advice, job listings, and a whole lot more.

The other one's WAHMs WHo Write. I have to admit that I have been late in adding this one, mainly because I'm not a WAHM (Work at Home Mom). Still the leads and information in this forum are relevant to all writers, even if you aren't a WAHM.

List updated

2010-05-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

Well, as I prmosied in my previous blog post, I addded two new sites to the list.

First one's Firehow, under "Sites which specialise in certain writing categories". It's a how-to article website, and it only pays US residents.

The next one's Redgage. While technically it does pay non-US residents, there's a cap of on earnings that they don't mention anywhere on their site.

I'll explain.

Redgage pays via the Redgage card, a card that they ship to you when you have earned your first $25. THey charge $5 for the shipping. From then on, you withdraw from Redgage via your card.

Here's the catch. After your first transfer, you'll have to register with a giftcards site, which you won't be able to unless you are a US resident.

And no, you don't have to withdraw when you have made $25. They allow you to withdraw in increments of $25, which given the "invisible cap" they have imposed, means that you are actually better off holding your earnings there and then withdrawing in one shot.

Update to list

2010-04-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Updated description for Associated Content, since they changed their policy regarding international payments.

Took out EHow from list, since they got taken over by Demand Studios. I knew about it soon after it happened, but forgot EHow was on my list and so didn't update it. Doh.

Updated description for Demand Studios, since they do accept international applicants now.

Leo9 left a commnet mentioning a site called Write For Me. If it's the site that I think it is, it isn't exactly a site where you can find work, and it's more a personal site for a writer rather than a site offering information for writers. That's not to say that writers and would-be writers can't pick up anything useful from there, just that I don't think the focus of the site itself fits with my list, so I'm not going to add it.

babygirl3605 mentioned Redgage That's one of the sites I have been planning to take a look at(the other one's Firehow). I do appreciate the heads up though.

Associated Content's new policy

2010-04-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, Associated Content has just made it public, as of 29th April, that they will stop paying non-US residents from 1st May onwards. Unless... well, I'll come to that later.

Apparently,the decision behind this is due to the implementation of new tax laws that affect companies making payments to non-US taxpayers.

Of course, no matter whether they actually had any leeway in the matter, there's still going to be irate writers who are not going to be happy about it.

And in case you haven't realised what the dates actually mean. Associated Content are only telling people about it two days in advance.

Make that lots of irate ex-writers.

Anyway, as I was saying, they do offer a way out. First you'll have to apply as a Featured Contributor for Associated Content under one of the various categories (sports, travel etc) which involves filling out an application form with questions like "How do you stay current in this field? What blogs, websites, periodicals, etc. do you read on a regular basis?" In short, it's not one of those application forms needing just your details, but one of those that'll take considerably longer to fill up.

Then assuming you get accepted as a Featured Contributor for Associated Content, you'll have to submit a United States W-8BEN tax form, have to publish in your category at least once a month, and be able to withdraw only when your earnings at Associated Content reaches USD$100.

Now, that's a lot of hoops to jump through. And for those of you who don't know this, international members are not eligible for upfront payments on Associated Content, so to be precise, that's a lot of hoops to jump through to be able to earn 0.15 to 0.2 cents for every person that reads your article on Associated Content.

A couple of additions to the list

2010-01-18T01:19:00.000-08:00

Two new revenue sharing sites, Factoidz and Infobarrel added to the list under "sites which let you earn passive income". Thanks to AnneM for telling me about Infobarrel.

Academia-research

2010-01-14T05:57:00.000-08:00

Some time back, I wrote an article exposing Academia-reseach as a scam. Recently, it came to my attention that someone has written an article claiming that it's not a scam.

*Sighes* I don't know whether to laugh or cry after looking at what he wrote. It amazes me that there are people who can be so deluded. And frankly, I think his article builds a case against Academia-research. Imagine an article, written in barely passable English, claiming that a certain writing site is not a scam, that he has worked there for 4 years and they do not just take on anybody, but first assess whether the applicant is a good writer.

For those of you who are interested, you can do a search for "Academia research scam" and read the one with a title claiming that it's not a scam.

Minor update

2010-01-12T03:00:00.001-08:00

Just realised that I missed Absolute Write back when I split the "Forums and Blogs" from the rest of the "Sites Where Publishers Will Post Job Requests" section (which was months ago). Have shifted it to the "Forums and Blogs" section.

New addition to the list

2010-01-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

I forgot to add this in with the rest of my updates, so I'm going to mention this in a seperate post.

AOL should be a name that most of us have heard of. They recently set up Seed, which to quote from their About Us page "assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL's properties: more than 80 of the Web's most highly trafficked and respected websites, including the world's leading sites for music, style, TV, tech and more."

Most of the article requests from Seed are paying around 30 USD for a word range of 400-500 words, although I have seen some that are paying a few hundred USD.

That certainly looks attractive.

Two points to take note of though.

1.Quite a number of the members on the writers' forums I visit have raised concerns about Seed. OF course, it may turn out that there's nothing to be worried about, and so far, Seed has not done anything to worry me, but it's still something to keep in mind.

2. Seed only pays US residents. Which unfortunately, also excludes me.

Still, Seed should be something US writers should check out though.

Belated Happy New Year (and some updates)

2010-01-11T21:17:00.000-08:00

A belated happy new year to my readers (I hope I still have readers :P, since it been more than a month since my last post)

Looks like it's been more than a month since my last post.

Anyway, here's some updates.

Did some spring cleaning on my list and cleaned up a few dead links. It appears some of the sites are no longer in business.

In my last update, I mentioned that I was taking Review Stream off the list. Have been doing some digging around to see what I could find out about then since then and what I have found out appears to support my decision. For those of you interested in just what it was that I found out, here's the link to the article below.

http://writinghood.com/writing/review-stream-opportunity-or-scam/

Minor list update

2009-11-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

Just a very minor update. Took Review Stream off the list because of a number of reasons.They are poorly set up, their criteria for accepting reviews is non-existant, and there are quite a number of other complaints about them by writers.

There are also a number of writers who have previously written for them claiming that their account was closed when they had almost reached the payout of $50, or claiming that they suddenly started getting paid at the bulk rate of $0.40 after they have requested payout.

In light of all these, I'm taking Review Stream off.

The Philoscribe Blog

2009-09-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

Just came across The Philoscribe Blog.

It's a blog maintained by a small group of copywriters and editors, and there are a number of entries there that should prove to be quite insightful to new writers.

Request for websites

2009-08-31T00:19:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I had a request from Aunindita in my comments section that I "list a few websites which accept international writers and pay good"

I'm sorry to inform all of you that my knowledge of the freelance writing industry is limited and I really do not have a huge list of websites that pay well and do not mind their writers not being able to tell the difference between "good" and "well"

I have to say that my one week search drew up a blank. I do have a number of sites already on my list where jobs that offer $10 for 500 words (or higher) are available, but if those sites aren't accepting him, I really don't have any other recommendations that I can make.

I'm hereby requesting website recommendations from my readers which fit 3 criteria
1) They pay $10 for 500 words (or higher)
2) They are not already on my list
3) They are not restricted to members of certain countries

On a separate note, Aunindita is from India, and I do know that quite a number of writing opportunities are exclusive only to people in India. However, being located in Singapore, I am in no position to scout out these writing opportunities for him. Hopefully someone who knows better about Indian writing opportunities can get in touch with him.

List update

2009-08-30T23:24:00.000-07:00

Added two sites to the list, Bukisa under the "Passive Income" section, and Words of Worth under the "Sites which Pay Upfront Section"

Personally, I don't like Bukisa, and I have indicated so in the site description on the list itself. They have been around since late 2008, which does mean that they are relatively new as a content site. I have to say that they are actually better than when they started out, when they didn't care what you published there as long as it was 250 words. They, however, still have a long way to go.

Words of Worth is a UK site set up in 2007. You enter into a contract with them, where you promise to deliver 10 to 80 articles every month, depending on the contract, and they promise to pay you £250 monthly.

Contracts typically last for 12 months, and they do require you to give a month's advance notice should you decide that you want to quit. You are not limited to one contract and can choose to apply for a second contract with them, though they will only consider it if you have been writing for them for some time.

Note that they also recommend that you schedule your articles to be published evenly throughout a month e.g don't publish 40 articles all on the last day of the month if you have a 80 article monthly contract. According to thier guidelines, article length should be from 200-500+ words.

List update

2009-07-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

Well, after planning to make changes to the list sometime in March, I somehow managed to procrastinate and put it off till now.

Nothing new added or removed(for now). Just moved some sites from the "Sites Where Publishers Will Post Job Requests" section into a new "Blogs and Forums" section.

What to Do When your Article Gets Plagiarised

2009-03-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

Just published an article on on Triond about the options available to writers who get their content plagiarised.

Was inspired to write it after reading a topic started by Spike over at MyLot about a website that he discovered had been plagiarising his articles, and apparently articles by a few other writers as well.

Here's the link to the article for those of you who are interested
http://writinghood.com/online-writing/what-to-do-when-your-article-gets-plagiarised/

List update

2009-03-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Added descriptions and moved Feed The Village and Print N Post up to Sites which let you earn passive income

Personally, I don't like Feed the Village. They're not the only site donating to charity, and if you take the 10% they donate and add that to the 10% they pay out to writers, that's only 20% they're paying out. In contrast sites like Squidoo and Triond pay out 50% of the revenue they earn to writers. And Squidoo even pays out an additional 5% of their total revenue to charity and doesn't attempt to make a marketing gimmick out of it. You could decide to give half of what you earn on Squidoo or Triond to charity and both you and the charity of your choice would still come out ahead earnings-wise compared to writing for Feed the Village.

Print N Post, on the other hand, might be worth taking a look at.

True, it's a site where you earn via having Google Adsense displayed on your articles (which means a high payout threshold of $100USD for those of you who care about payout thresholds), the community isn't very large so you won't be getting read a lot by traffic within the site itself, and the Page Rank for Print N Post isn't very impressive so natural traffic from search engines will be low.

But.

They do allow linking in your articles, and those are quality links e.g not "nofollow" links. Which makes Print n Post useful for publishing excerpts to your blog entries/articles published elsewhere.

PWRLN and Bianca Raven

2009-03-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

Those of you you have been following my blog will know that I recently discovered Bianca Raven's blog just two weeks ago. Since then, I have been checking back on her blog quite frequently.

In her 20th March entry, Bianca Raven blogged about Googling herself to see how easy it would be for someone looking for Bianca Raven the freelance writer to find her using a search engine.

Let's just say that she didn't like the results :P

Since her stated goal in her blog entry is to be the only Bianca Raven to turn up for the first page of search results, I decided to give her a hand by starting the Let's Help Bianca Raven Achieve Her Goal Of Being The Only Bianca Raven To Show Up On The Search Engines by Using Every Chance To Refer To Bianca Raven By Her Full Name When We Can Project or PWRLN(Project With Ridiculously Long Name).

It occurs to me that since Bianca Raven the freelance writer doesn't like revenue sharing sites, her blog + her blogger profile + profiles for one or two other sites she joined = short of the 10 results required for Bianca Raven the writer to hog the front page .
Therefore, in order for her to succeed, it falls to those of us involved in PWRLN to blog/write about her so our blogs/articles mentioning Bianca Raven the freelance writer will appear on the front page.

So, here's a call for my readers to participate in the PWRLN to help Bianca Raven the freelance writer achieve her goal.

List update

2009-03-21T01:04:00.001-07:00

Added Bianca Raven's blog (http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/) and Athlyn Green's blog (http://www.writeandearnaliving.com/) to the list under the "Sites Where Publishers Will Post Jobs Requests" section. Both are freelance writers with years of experience and they do post writing leads on their blogs. Athlyn Green's writing leads are quite frequent, and you can view them via a JobThread widget she displays on her blog. While Bianca Raven's writing leads are less frequent, she does focus on high paying gigs which she'll cover in detail in a blog entry.

I'm planning to split the "Sites Where Publishers Will Post Job Requests" section, since it appears to have grown quite long, and quite a number of sites are not exactly sites "where publishers will post job requests". Probably into a blog/forum section for those sites where you can find writing leads and a true "Sites Where Publishers Will Post Job Requests" section for bidding sites and other sites that do fall into this category.

Qassia

2009-03-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Just recently, Qassia has started charging new users a one-time fee to sign up for an account with them. For those of you not familiar with Qassia, it's a site where you can post information and for each piece of information you post, you get a backlink to the site of your choice. You can also earn via Google Adsense on Qassia. Guess I'm lucky I signed up with Qassia before they implemented the change, though to be honest, I haven't gotten around to using it much. For those of you you are interested to read more about Qassia, read this review that I published here.

Murphy's Law

2009-03-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

I was contacted by the owner of a copywriting and copyediting company today. Which would have been nice, since I'm a freelance writer. Well, it would have been nice if that phone call had just come 5 minutes earlier today. Or 5 minutes later today. However, I just so happened to be cutting through my local mall at that time, while en route to the train station. Which just so happened to be having a hip-hop dance competition today (the mall, not the train station)

Guess where I was standing when I received the call :P

Anyway, I did manage to catch her name, and after my attempt to maintain a conversation failed miserably, I established that I would call her later.

So, I called her after 5 minutes and a couple of questions later, she asked about what type of assignments I took. I replied that I usually wrote SEO articles.

She then asked me what was SEO. (I presume her company hasn't taken online assignments before, though she didn't directly state that, so I might have been given the wrong impression) After "search engine optimisation" drew a blank from her, I was kind of at a loss where to start.

I am fairly confident about explaining the term to someone online, where I can provide links to various articles and examples of SEO articles. I think I could probably manage it face to face, since I can tell from the blank look that someone gives me that I have been using too much tech-speak. Plus I'm the sort of person who tends to use a lot of hand gestures when I'm talking about something(not the rude kind), so I'm just more comfortable with face to face.

Compared to explaining over the phone.

So, I eventually fumbled my way through some semblance of an explanation that I'm not sure I would have understood if I had been the one it was being explained to.

She did bring up something else in the course of our conversation that had me thinking. She mentions that her company wants to know the profile of her clients, what industry they are involved in, the deadline and so on before taking an assignment, after I mentioned to her that I don't always know the profile of the clients that I worked with, and that I only know what they want, their requirements and the deadline.

I have to admit that I'm often quite curious about just what my clients are doing. I have concluded that I don't ask mainly because of two reasons.

1. I'm not sure how comfortable a client I'm working with for the first time feels about revealing information that he or she feels that a writer doesn't need over the web. I might get around to asking what the publisher actually does after I have worked with him or her for some time. But generally, I don't ask publishers who I'm working with for the first time just what it is that they do unless they provide that info themselves. Which brings me to my second reason.

2. I don't need to know. Writing a SEO article is mainly about selling the site to search engines. What I need to know is what the publisher wants, and what the search engines want.

Anyway, I was so inspired by this series of unfortunate events that I put together a Hubpage explaining the difference between online writing and offline writing.

List update

2009-03-11T01:54:00.000-07:00

Updated the descriptions for most of the sites under "Sites Where publishers will post job requests" Should have done that a long time ago, but I kept putting it off.

Renamed "Sites which offer a one time payment for articles" section to "Sites which pay upfront for articles"

Moved Bright Hub up to "Sites which pay upfront for articles"

Freelance Writing Income From Home

2009-03-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

I just came across a woonderful, wonderful blog today. It's Freelance Writing Income From Home at http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/

The blog's by an Australian freelance writer who's been in this business for 6 years and is earning a 6 figure yearly income. She does reviews on sites with writing opportunites that she has come across and blogs about her experiences in freelance writing, plus other related stuff. In other words, her blog is what my blog aspires to be when it grows up :P

She does feel quite strongly that revenue sharing sites e.g Triond, Associated Content are to be avoided at all costs though. I don't quite agree with her on that, but then my only credentials when it comes to online freelance writing is that I have managed to survive solely on my earnings from writing online and have written for less than a year.

That's about the only thing that I disagree with her about. Her blog has plenty of great advice and leads for those looking to make a living for themselves writing online so be sure to check it out!

List update

2009-03-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

Added Oondi and Knol to my list of sites under "other sites"

New Hub

2009-03-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

I just started a new hub at Hubpages listing online publishing sites, their page ranks, and whether links were allowed and if those were nofollow links. What I was going after was a list which writers could just glance over and gauge which site was better for gaining exposure and creating backlinks. Of course, there are other factors that will affect traffic besides the main site's page rank, but I would say that Page Rank is a pretty good indication. Here's the site http://hubpages.com/hub/pageranks

List update

2009-03-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

I added a total of... 1 site to the list. Whoa, I sure am effective. Bright Hub was added to the Other Sites section. Oh, and moved Rate It All and Shared Reviews up to Review Sites. After keeping an eye on Shared Reviews for these few months, I think it's safe to say that it has gotten over it's financial troubles.

Life Tips

2009-02-23T05:28:00.001-08:00

Moved Life Tips down to the list of suspicious sites. On the one hand, they are selling e-books with 101 tips for $9.99, promising writers 20% of the commission, and on the other hand,they are telling writers that they can be paid $10 per tip. Anyone see anything wrong with that?

Bukisa

2009-02-04T00:41:00.000-08:00

Just published an article about Bukisa at Triond. Bukisa is a new writing site which came out in late 2008. Currently the site itself has less than stellar English and apparently doesn't care about the quality of published content itself, so long as said content has a word count of at least 250 words and is in English. This has resulted in stuff like "(body of article)get paid to write get paid to write get paid to write...." and poems that keep repeating themselves. I'm guessing that the word count stipulation is for them to ensure that they get higher PPC (pay per click) ads based on keyword targeting, and not to ensure the quality of an article.
That's just a guess though, and I'm not about to go around spreading this theory of mine. They already have enough going against them without me adding to it, lol.

I also found the site itself too liberal with the use of words like "exciting", "revolutionary", "innovative" for my taste. There's nothing "revolutionary" about their revenue sharing system. It's a 3-tier referral scheme. There's nothing "innovative" about the "Bukisa index". It's just what everyone else in the industry calls PPI (pay per impression) which they instead call "the Bukisa index" . It would be like you stepping into a hotel and being introduced to their "innovative luggage transport system" which consists of a bellhop taking your luggage up. They sound like one of those scam sites "with an exciting chance to get a free iPod". As far as I can tell they're not a scam site (at least not yet). Why are they sounding like one then?

About the only thing that I can see going for them is that they are new, and things may get better.

Here's the link to my article, which takes a look at their payment scheme in more detail. I focused more on numbers in the article, and explained why payment-wise, things won't get better at Bukisa. Let's hope other aspects, like quality control, does though.

http://writinghood.com/online-writing/bukisa/

Shared Reviews will soon be back

2009-01-19T07:14:00.000-08:00

Shared Reviews used to be one of the sites on my list but due to funding problems, they had to put revenue sharing on hold in September 08'. It seems that they have taken care of that though, and have scheduled Feb 11th 08' as the official launch date for their new revenue sharing program. If they don't run into any problems, we can expect to see this Paid To Review site making a comeback next month.

The New Helium

2009-01-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

In the world of online freelance writing, there's sites like Demand Studios which offer a one time lump sum payment for each work you publish, and there's sites like Triond which let you earn passive income from your work. And then there's Helium, a site which's somewhere in the middle. It's undergone quite a few changes over the past few months. It used to be that an article you submitted for Helium was either an accepted Marketplace piece (earning a one time lump sum payment) or not (earning passive income), never both. Now, it's possible for those articles falling in the latter catergory to actually earn you upfront payments. Being the first to write to an empty title on Helium earns you $1.00. And depending on your writing stars, you'll earn anywhere from $0.50 to $2.50 for each article submitted. (Although certain categories, like creative writing, are excluded from upfront payment)

But there's a catch. Now there's actually a need for you to rate if you want to earn at Helium. It used to be that rating stars only came into play when it came to Helium contests. Now, you'll have to maintain at least 1 rating star to earn passive income (and upfront payments). No rating star, no Helium income. This means from now on, only active (and rating) members will be paid. As an added incentive for rating, you'll get a $3 bonus if you hit (or maintain) 5 rating stars at the end of a given month.

Finally Back

2009-01-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

Well, after taking a (I would like to say well-deserved, but even I don't believe that) break from my blog, I'm finally back. Expect more posts from me in the next few days.

List update

2008-09-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

I did some changes to the list, so the categories actually showed up in the table of contents. Also moved up some sites to "Sites where publishers will post job requests". Some of those sites on my "to be checked" list have been sitting there for quite a long time. Some of those, like Blog Posts for Sale are sitting there since "paid to blog a advertisement" doesn't appeal to me and I have been putting looking at those sites off to look at new sites which I have more interest in. I really should stop putting them off. Think I may start a new category and find a day to review all those sites in one shot.

Sites moved to "Sites where publishers will post job requests"

Online Writing Jobs.net

Accentuate Writers Forum

Freelance Writing

Craigs List

Triond article published

2008-09-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

Another Triond article published. This one's on how to tell if a writing site is a scam. The article link

http://www.writinghood.com/Online-Writing/How-to-Tell-If-a-Writing-Site-is-Legitimate.256087

Update : Added to list

2008-09-16T02:19:00.000-07:00

Addded Freelance Writing.com , Accentuate Writers Forum and Online Writing Jobs.net to the list, under "Sites which I intend to take a closer look at". Thanks to Triond writer Allison West for writing an article highlighting these sites. Here's her Triond profile and the link to her article.

New layout for blog

2008-09-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

Just "upgraded" my template. While the abilty to add widgets without doing much coding is nice, I do wish that it's possible for me to access and tweak the widget code on the edit widgets panel. Looks like I'll have to hunt down the specific widgets on my blog template and tweak it from there. I'll do it next time.

Made it to Triond Hot Content

2008-09-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

My humour article about cats made it to the Triond hot content! I find it ironic that it was written when I wanted to take a break from research-intensive articles, see this blog entry here. I'll still be concentrating on writing about writing sites though, as I think my research will help fellow writers. I'll probably do a humour piece every now and then.

Here's the link to it.
10 Reasons Why Every Home Should Have a Cat

List update

2008-09-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Added Dooyoo to the list under review sites. It's only available to a few European countries though.

List update

2008-09-12T12:23:00.001-07:00

Added Get A Coder to the section "Sites where publishers will post job requests". Although most of the assignments there are programming based, there are still quite a number of writing assignments there. You can filter your search results to only show wrting assignments.

Moved Xomba up to sites "Which let you earn pasive income". Basically, Xomba lets you place Google Adsense on your articles and splits the revenue 50/50 with you. It doesn't sound all that attractive, but Xomba does make up for it by holding frequent contests where winners stand to earn cash prizes. In addition, Xomba articles can also be used to generate backlinks to your other blog/site/other articles.

Shared Reviews running into funding problems

2008-09-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

Shared Reviews will stop paying members revenue from the end of September onwards. They put up an announcement in the forums saying that they have been having funding problems and as of September 2008, they will be putting the revenue-sharing model on hold. They have promised that they will still any outstanding amount that are owed to writers. The link to their forum announcement

http://forum.sharedreviews.com/forums/1/topics/1728

As Shared Reviews will be putting writers on hold indefinitely, I'll be taking Shared Reviews off my list for the time being.

Another Triond article

2008-09-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Just wrote another article for triond today. It's a humour piece on why every home should have a cat. Wanted to do something different after all those articles requiring research that I had been doing. It was a nice change to write something which didn't require research and only needed me to be creative.

The link to my article is here.

10 Reasons Why Every Home Should Have a Cat

Oboulo.com

2008-09-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

Compumom from MyLot started a discussion about Oboulo.com, a paid to write site she discovered recently. I went to take a look and the site has a large number of grammar mistakes and weird sentence strutures.

Which raises one red flag for me.

The site claims it has been around for 3 years and for the top 10 most popular experts, the most popular expert has earned $255 and the "expert" in the number 10 spot has made a whooping $10. Yes $10.

2nd red flag.

Their most popular article ---> Business case study: Panera Bread

Summary of the article as copied and pasted from Oboulo

"Panera Bread began back in 1981. It started out as a small sandwich shop. After going public the company grew in size with the addition of more stores. It is currently headquartered in Missouri. Revenue has seen a tremendous change for the better. This year alone revenue is expected to come out near one billion U.S. dollars. In order to achieve its great success the company had to implement many successful strategies. These strategies include; identifying the opportunities and threats, analyzing the target market, determining position in the market, deciding on a growth strategy and figuring out the marketing mix."

Hmm, not a very well written article for "most viewed documents in the past 30 days"

3rd red flag.

On articles they are accepting

"We are looking for a wide variety of documents, so it is easy to make money as a Ambassador. Among other documents, we will consider: term papers, essays, articles, market surveys, college and graduate school application essays."

Does graduate school application essays mean what i think it is? Hmm, so customers can't actually complain about the poor standards of work that they are getting, since they shouldn't be doing that in the first place...

4th red flag.

I could probably uncover more stuff, but there are way too many red flags already. I would rather concentrate on researching sites that might actually have a chance of being legitamate. For now, I'm flagging this site as "Highly Suspicious".

Linkfilter.net article published

2008-09-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

Just did an article on Linkfilter.net

A Look at Linkfilter.net

I'll be following that up with an article on my experiences and interaction with the Linkfilter.net community. Link Filter kind of reminds me of those villages in those stories, where any outsider who steps in for the first time is automatically mistrusted and he or she has too work to prove that they are trustworthy and be accepted into the community.

Constant Content rejection

2008-09-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

Just had my article rejected by Constant Content. Reason given was "Please submit in one of our accepted file formats: rtf, txt, or doc. We do not accept odt files." I had to ask in the forums to find out, as they seemed to be having problems with e-mailing some writers. Kind of relieved to know that it wasn't for grammar or writing errors.

List update

2008-09-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

Well, Academia-research got moved from "suspected" to "to be avoided". Moved Ciao up from "sites I have been meaning to check" to "Review sites" and updated a few site descriptions for this week.

Finally, another article published on Triond

2008-09-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

I just had another article published on Triond. It took me 4 attempts.

The first time I submitted that article, I did a pretty silly thing. I submitted a blank file with the same name. There's a story behind it, while I was working on my article, my comp crashed. I hadn't saved it, and I have a habit of starting and saving an article with just the file name. Now I restarted my comp, opened my file to see if my word processor(Open Office.org) had managed to save during the crash. It was at that moment that my word processor informed me that it was retrieving the data. So, I waited and then the pop-up says that it has been retrieved. So, now I'm looking at an empty page with just the title, so I close it, with the intention of reopening it again. Open Office tells me that "changes have been made since I last saved it" and would I like to save or discard changes. I'm not sure whether by changes it means the empty file or the retrieved file, so I make a slight change to the file name so I can save it without over-writing. So you can probably guess by now where the "empty file" i submitted came from :P

The 2nd and 3rd time, my submitations got rejected by Triond as "submitted file is corrupt". I'm not sure if my comp crash had anything to do with this. I do know that I have no problems opening and viewing the file, but apparently the people at Triond can't read it. After the 2nd submitation, I copied and pasted everything from the old file to a new Open office document and submitted it. Apparently this didn't work as well, since Triond rejected it again with the "submitted file is corrupt" and so I saved the file as a .doc instead of .odt and apparently that did the trick, as Triond has finally accepted my article.

So now that my article is published, I'm going to have to submit a fix for my article. The formatting has turned out weird and one of the links has been misplaced to the next paragraph, so it no longer makes sense...

Wow, the fix happened quite fast, it's already been fixed. I do have to commend the people at Triond for this one. I just went to check my article and get the link to it and it's already been fixed. I submitted the fix a couple of hours ago.

The link to my article is here. It's about academia-research and all the stuff I found about it which leads me to conclude that it's a scam

http://www.writinghood.com/Online-Writing/Academia-Research-Exposed-as-a-Scam.240057

Academia-research on watch-list

2008-08-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

Academia-research has the dubious honour of being the first one to be put on my "To be watched" list, meaning I have turned up enough cases and reports of misconduct on the site itself to be wary of it, but have not gathered enough conclusive evidence to put it on "sites to avoid" list.

What I have found so far.

- Lied about address being in the US, despite it being a Urkaine company

- While Academia-research won't blatantly not pay a writer, it may delay and fudge to avoid payment.

- Academia-research was by started by someone who split from Essaywriters.net, the notorious freelance writing scam also located in Urkaine.

Which is part of what makes my search so hard, as there is apparently quite an intense rivalry between Essaywriters.net and Academia-research and Essaywriters.net is not above telling outright lies to smear the competition, so I have to sift through my intel and establish it's reliability. I do the same for other sites I look at, but there's quite a lot more sifting to go through for this site.

Daytipper, scam? Not worth the effort?

2008-08-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Checked some sites on my list of "Sites which I intend to take a closer look at". Except for Daytipper, all of them got moved up to their respective categories. A search on Daytipper revealed that it used to offer $3 per tip, which got cut down to $1, which got cut down to cash handouts to the top 3 writers of the month. On top of that lots of writers during the $3 per tip period didn't get paid for tips that were published, due to Daytippers "unique" way of defining "published". My search also revealed that an article by a Susan Corbett from Associated Content, saying that Daytipper was a scam, has been called a scam by Nathan Preheim, the founder of the site. Huh? That is also a new definition of the word scam for me.

Stay away from the site.

Did an article on Daytipper and a few other sites here.

Top Sites You Should Not Write For

Massive list update

2008-08-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

Well, added quite a large number of sites to my list, especially under "Sites where publishers will post job requests"

New Squidoo Lenses (For List)

2008-08-20T03:12:00.000-07:00

My Squidoo lenses is up. I finally arranged Iakul's List (calling it List of Freelance Writing Jobs is such a mouthful), and categorised them, instead of the haphazard way I just placed the sites all over the list before. The list is now available at

http://www.squidoo.com/writingfulltime

I'll still be keeping the list on my blog for now. There's still a lot I plan to work on for the list and until then I'll be keeping it here also.

Another list update

2008-08-20T01:27:00.000-07:00

Added Feed the Village, Epinions, Review Party and Letter Rep to the list.

Descriptions are up for all of them except Feed the Village. Still not sure about it yet. Epinions and Review Party are both review sites, although Review Party sets itself apart from other review sites in that it doesn't pay a lump sum, but offers you the opportunity to earn through ads displayed on your reviews. Letter Rep is a niche market website, specialising only in letter assignments.

List of list updates

2008-08-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

Added Qassia, Tutorial Tub, How to Do things.com, Xomba, Rankrz and Rate It All. Haven't done any site descriptions for them yet, although Qassia and Xomba look promising to me.

Both are sites that generate income through Google Adsense.

Qassia appears to be a cross between a promotion tool and an article publishing site.

Xomba appears to have quite positive feedback from what I gathered after searching the web about it.

List Updated

2008-08-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

Added the site Shared Reviews. Thanks to Ruth Belena for mentioning it to me.

Also added Genuine Jobs and Online Writing Jobs.

First Payout From Associated Content

2008-08-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

I got my first payout from Associated Content! 10 USD. It was for submitting at least 5 articles in July.

Shvoong and Squidoo

2008-08-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

Been checking out these two sites. Squidoo I joined quite some time ago (along with the rest of the freelance writing sites I joined like Triond and Helium)but just left it sitting there cos' there was so much to figure out there and I had so many other sites to take a look at...
Shvoong I just checked out and joined. Added my Squidoo referral link here. Will update on my experience with them after I have had more publishing experience with them.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/iakul

To do list: Check out Hubpages and Review Stream when I'm done with these two
To do list after I'm done with the to do list: Check out Storymash, Informative Post, Newsvine, eHow, Academia Research, Ground Report...

List of Freelance Writing Sites

2008-08-15T02:58:00.000-07:00

A list I complied of freelance writing sites. I haven't checked all of them out yet. Have yet to decide whether I'm going to add sites like Get A Freelancer to the list or start a seperate list for them. Will be updating this and moving this all the way to the front whenever I find more sites

Sites which offer a one time payment for articles

Constant Content
A site where writers can showcase their articles with a preset price tag and have interested publishers buy them. Has strict standards for submitations (free of grammar mistakes etc) so check to make sure that you are submitting a flawless article.

Demand Studios
Offers upfront payments for articles. No passive income though and you lose your rights to your articles once they are published. Only available to US residents.

Textbroker
Only available to US residents. Pays on a "price per word" basis, with higher rated writers being able to command a higher price.

Sites which let you earn passive income

Triond
A site where you can publish your work and earn a passive income through page views generated by your articles. One of the better paying sites for passive income.

Suite101
A site where you can publish your work and earn through page views. Requires writers to publish at least 10 articles every 3 months.

Shvoong
A site where you can publish your work and have them earn a passive income.

Squidoo
A site that lets you build your own web pages, called "lenses" on squidoo and earn from them.

Hubpages
Another site that lets you build your own web pages and display your articles on them, letting you earn passive income.

Helium
Has a very active marketplace where publishers will request specific articles and frequent contests, both of which offer writers the opportunity to earn lump sum payments. Articles published will generate passive income.

Associated Content
Has contests every now and then, and specific article requests every now and then, so writers have a chance to earn lump sum payments. Also offers upfront payment for articles, but this is restricted to certain topics and only available to US citizens. Articles published will generate passive income.

Gzyn
Site that lets writers place their work there and generate revenue using Google Adsense. Takes a 10% cut from your profits.

Sites where publishers will post job requests

Online Writing Jobs

Genuine Jobs

Writing Career.com

Sunoasis
More suitable for US residents, as most jobs are based in the US. There a few jobs that require writers in other places like the UK or Canada, or even internationally but writers will have to seive through lots of job offers to find those.

iFreelance

Elance

Get A Freelancer

Writing Bids

Writers Weekly

Freelance Writing Gigs

About Freelance Writing

Funds For Writers

oDesk

Journalism Jobs

Writer's Market
Paid subscription needed for this site. They do however offer a free trial period.

Editorial Freelancers Association
Paid membership needed.

Freelance Daily
Has a daily newsletter with job listings. Offers a free trial period of 1 week, after which you have to pay $3.95 per month for subscription.

Absolute Write
Has a free newsletter listing jobs for writers. Also has a forum section devoted to paid writing assignments.

Freelance Free

PoeWar.com

Writerlance

Guru

Sites which specialise in certain writing categories

eHow
A site dealing in "How to" articles.

How to Do Things.com
Another site that publishes "How to" articles.

Tutorial Tub A site which lets you earn by displaying your tutorials (another way of calling "How To" articles) and earning through Google Adsense.

Newsvine
A site that publishes only news articles.

Ground Report
Another site that only accepts news articles.

Student Network Resources
This site specialises in research work.

Storymash
A site specialising in works of fiction.

Wisebread
A site that focuses mainly on financial topics, though it does publish articles that focuses on other issues.

Life Tips
Site where writers can apply to be paid for tip writing assignments.

Letter Rep
As you might guess from the name, this site focuses only on letter assisgnments.

Review Sites

Review Stream
Offers either $0.40 or $2.00 per review( depending on how valuable the site thinks your review is).

Review Party
A review site, this site lets you earn by letting you place Amazon affiliate links and Google Adsense on your reviews.

Epinions
Another review site. Pays $10 for 10 reviews. While the site does pay to non-U.S residents, only U.S residents are eligible for the contests held by the site. Payout is also set higher for non-U.S residents.

Ciao
You earn on this review site whenever another member reads and rates your reviews.

Sites which I intend to take a closer look at (But haven't)

Feed The Village

Qassia

Xomba

Rankrz

Rate It All

Gather

Craigs List

Informative Post

Buzzle

Print N Post

Help Your Money

Oocuz

Blog Posts For Sale

Common Ties

Sites on my to be watched list

These are sites which I have found quite a lot of negative stuff about, but have not yet gathered enough conclusive evidence to take them off and put on my "sites to avoid" list. If you have any links or information regarding these sites, please leave a comment so I can look into it.

None, at the moment. The last one here was Academia-research, which I took down after I had done my research and concluded that it was a scam.

Scour, a Scam?

2008-08-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

Scour is a paid to search site that offers to send users $25 Visa cards once they reach 6500 points. Over the past few weeks, I have seen quite a few MyLot users posting on it and whether it is a scam. Due to the numerous users who have said that it was a scam, I have never joined it.

Recently took another look at it again and did some searching about Scour, and assuming that it is a legit site, here are the major problems that you are likely to encounter.

1) You won't get paid when you hit your points and request for payment. Yes, you won't. You'll have to send quite a few e-mails, post comments on their blog, and try a few means to contact them, before you get a chance to get paid.

2) It is possible that you'll get banned by an automated banning system when you reach payout, and then you'll have to send quite a few e-mails, post comments on their blog, and wait a few weeks to wait and see if the problem is resolved.

All these problems, ASSUMING it is legit. Now operating on the assumption that it is legit, the site already throws several obstacles at you when you claim your payout. Now the whole idea of joining a paid to search site is that I'm paid to do something that I'm already doing everyday. I don't mind waiting a long time for my payout, but when you have to actively hound the company for your payout, to unban you and jump through so many hoops, it is no longer " something I'm paid to do that I'm already doing". The effort spent is frankly not worth it.

Who cares whether it is a scam? Even if the company is legit, that $25 needs way too much work. I'll stick to My Homepage Friends for now.

Links to my articles

2008-08-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

Nothing new. Just adding article links here from before this blog was born.

http://www.socyberty.com/Philosophy/Why-Altruism-is-Not-a-Myth.164399

http://www.writinghood.com/Writing-Business/Why-Ebooks-are-Unique.197013

http://www.writinghood.com/Online-Writing/Helium-Triond-and-Associated-Content-Which-One.166031

http://www.bookstove.com/Autobiography/Ugly-by-Constance-Briscoe.199375

The rest are on my Helium and Associated Content profile pages, so I'll be lazy and not add them :P

My Homepages Friends

2008-08-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Discovered my Homepages friends, which is a Paid to search site. Tried searching for anything negative associated with them and didn't turn up anything. I'll join it and see how it goes, especially since I'm doing quite a lot of searches per day now. Added my referral link here.

http://www.myhpf.co.uk/apply001.asp?Friend=174057

Blog started

2008-08-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Started this blog to blog specifically on freelance writing. My other blog will be for personal stuff and I haven't updated it in a long time anyway, lol.