For Canadians: E-how only has a compensation program for those who live in the U.S. – in other words if you’re a Canadian you can’t make money at all at E-how. Too bad. It looks like a great site to write for.

I’ve been with 451 since the beginning, and the hiccups were a bit rough at the start, but things are great now. I’m paying bills, I enjoy what I do, and the post requirements have become quite reasonable. Plus, the community is great.

I started writing for 451Press in December of ’06. I think my total earnings for the first three months was enough to by myself a bag of chips and a Coke.

But I kept writing, networked with other blogs (both within 451Press and with other sports related blogs), and eventually the traffic and money came with it. It’s been a GREAT experience.

Oh, and I’ve never had a problem with payments either (they are a few days late from time to time, but nothing to flip out over).

One of the reasons why most people got paid practically nothing in the beginning (including myself) was that the pay was all traffic share based and when the network started up there wasn’t a lot of traffic. It took a lot of time before it was even worth it because I had to draw traffic to my blog. When the new pay model hit, it became even better.

And Ann, it isn’t against copyright to take a screen shot of a show you are discussing. If that was true there wouldn’t be any television blogs out there with pictures of the shows they are discussing. That’s covered under fair use. If you are taking a screen shot of a television show and are talking about the show it’s totally fine to have a picture of said show. If you take a screen shot of a show and use it to sell a product, then that’s illegal.

I have no idea where you got the idea about “screen shots” on blog posts because that was but that was never a requirement. One photo was, yes, but we have an account with WireImage to use those photos that are paid for and there are several places where you can get copyright free photos.

This is not an attack on you or your experience, but I only think it’s fair for others to hear a different side of the story.

I think you misunderstood what I said. The misinformation I was referring to was that CURRENT expectations for the network are not what was being posted above. I have no doubt you had a lousy experience, several people do at all kinds of networks out there. My post was to clarify what is CURRENTLY happening at the network. It has been quite some time since I’ve seen anything negative on the message boards over there and the new expectations are not unreasonable any more for the pay and we’ve been paid on time and in full for the past few months. Just because you started out when the network was new and going through changes doesn’t mean that it will always be that way. There are currently over 100 bloggers there who have no problems (at least not publicly). You have every right to express your displeasure with the company during the early stages, but you also have to let others express current opinions and counter examples. The current expectations are very reasonable: 250 words per post (or 2 125 word posts a day), one picture per post (which is a good blogging practice anyway), and a minimum of 15 posts a month of any size, even if they don’t meet the paid post requirements. You get paid per post and a flat CPM.

I’m not saying 451Press didn’t have growing pains, but currently everything seems to be on track.

??

I didn’t post anything about about.com

A few months later, there was a lawsuit that came out about bloggers using photos without permission. http://www.redherring.com/Home/21434 In this case the blogger was a big name, but you never know…

I talked to a number of others who left 451 Press and never received any payment.

While things may have changed since the site launched, I still had a lousy experience with them and resent hearing that I’ve “misrepresented” anything.

http://www.about.com/gi/pages/pform.htm

And no problem, you’re welcome.

I do some stuff for blogcritics too. It’s fun to do politics there, and I’ve done some family articles and game reviews too. Good place for “visible” exposure (they have a lot of page views). And you can get some good clips.

@Heather,

I doubt you’re seeing “mis-information” here. And to be honest, I somewhat resent that you are implying that the statement I made about my experience was anything but accurate and would ask that you refrain from further insinuated digs at my character in the future. Mkthks.

You seem to be one of the few who are having success at 451Press. Listen to them in their forums. They (used to) talk about it all the time, I’m sure they still do.

Constant Content does not buy your articles itself, but you post them for sale at prices you choose. You can write on spec or respond to public requests, which are plentiful and varied. Constant Content takes 35%, so you get 65%; price accordingly. They pay their upkeep and marketing costs with their part, and since they bring the buyers to the authors, I find this very fair.

You can choose to offer usage, unique, or full rights. Most articles sell for full rights, but there are some authors there who have made a niche of writing short articles for usage rights only and earned a lot.

There’s a great forum with highly responsive staff (editors included) and active writers. They hold their authors to very high standards, and they will reject articles that do not follow their submission guidelines. This keeps the site very professional because all of the articles have been approved by Copyscape and a human editor. (Also, if you follow guidelines, you’ll have no problem, and if an article is rejected, you will get a reason so you can edit and resubmit.)

Here is a link to Constant Content: http://www.constant-content.com/?aref=13413. It is my referral link, and if you sign up through it, I receive 5% (not taken from your commission but from CC’s). I’m saying that upfront so you can erase the referral part if you disagree with it; however, if you honestly haven’t heard of it and decide to sign up, I’d appreciate being credited with referring you! And here is a second link to the submission guidelines: http://www.constant-content.com/area/writerguidelines.htm.

I’m happy to answer questions here or at lauren dot alyssa at gmail dot com. Happy writing!

One place I haven’t seen mentioned is HowToDoThings.com. It’s where I started out when they were in Beta, so I got some great money that way. I think now it’s a revenue share for your articles there. I haven’t written anything new in a year or so, though, so I’m not certain on that.

Helium pays you via Paypal. At some point, I terminated my Paypal account and got a new one (because I terminated the e-mail account). I had the darndest time finding an e-mail address on the Helium site to send the question of how I can tweak my records there so that they send payments to my new Paypal account.

In fact, I believe I had to post a question about this in their forum, because nowhere on their bloody site is an e-mail address for tech help.

One of their staff responded, but after several e-mail exchanges with his feeble attempt to direct me in how to change my Paypal account in their system, I gave up. He was inept and kept sending me vague instructions that failed to work.

Also, do you realize just how many articles you must have on Helium, and over what length of time they must be up, in order to start qualifying for payment? It’s ridiculous.

I am registered with Helium. Don’t even bother. Every time you write something, you must either peruse pages and pages of topics to see if your article fits in one of those topics (and this is time consuming, because their type-in-the-key words thingie isn’t always efficient), OR, you must create a brand new topic.

So suppose I have a slew of articles I’d like to write about building shoulder muscles with dumbbell exercises. I have to keep creating new categories and getting increasingly specific. This really is a drag and I soon ditched Helium.

If I did a search on their site to see if a matching category was already in there, like I said, this didn’t always work.

Whereas with AC, you just submit the article; takes seconds, and that’s that. Also, AC has become more strict with what they pay for. Yes, they’ll print anything as long as it’s not obscene, but they will NOT pay for anything.

I’m also surprised nobody here has reacted to my scourging criticism of suite 101.

451Press was just plain worthless. I was getting a few dollars a month. When they changed their requirements, I stopped posting.

Suite101 was Ok for what it was. I did about 30 or 40 articles there and am still getting (only) about 10.00 a month from them from page views. The experience was ok, the support was terrible. It took nearly 8 months to get the categories I wanted, and by the time they did that, I was getting articles flagged for some of the stupidest reasons so I stopped writing there, too. Suite101 was good for the experience and the portfolio, but that’s about it.

About prep. Well, it was interesting if nothing else. I tried out for two different but similar topics. The first topic was given to someone else who is doing a great job, the second topic was not used, so I took that one a bit personally. I equated it to the fact that my slightly conservative beliefs were trumped by the New York Times’ extensively liberal slant. The experience was good, and I was able to use most of the content I created for both prep sites in other venues. I don’t know if I’ll apply for another topic. It’s a lot of work, but as Deb (and some others) will attest to, it’s a great stepping stone for a writing career. I’ve watched this site absolutely explode once Deb started writing at About.

What email have you used? Or what portion of the website could I go to to find the right contact person?

Doesn’t guarantee there’d be a topic I could do yet, but it might help me to understand what they are doing with that whole area (or what hope I might have).

Thanks for trying to help me out!

Erika

I write one blog (which I took over from another writer) and co-write another (which my co-blogger and I built from the ground up) for b5media and am very happy there. I think the compensation is fair and the team is very, very supportive. It’s extremely community oriented and has been a totally positive experience for me for the whole 14 months and a few days that I’ve been there at http://www.livelywomen.com and 5 months at http://www.bizchicksrule.com.