Archive for July 2009

Demand Studios Now Offers Writer Scorecards

July 29, 2009 Kecia Upfront Pay 2 comments

For a while, Demand Studios has been promising a way for writers to see their articles’ ratings. Well, today they included a Writer Scorecard in the account dashboard, which displays your ratings in 3 categories.

The first is the “My Ratings” section that offers a score from 1-5 on the grammar and research of your articles. The second is “My Statistics” which displays the number and percentages of your articles that have been approved with no rewrite, approved after rewrite, abandoned, flagged, and rejected. I have heard these percentages are part of what Demand uses to determine which writers to let go. The last section is “Productivity” which shows how many articles you have written for the company each week.

Many people have expressed various opinions regarding this new addition. Some love feedback on their work, and are excited to be able to see just how well they are doing. I personally fall into this category, as I like knowing how I stand with the people I work for. Others, however, don’t care all that much. At this point, your ratings aren’t pertinent to how much you earn with the company. Maybe in the future there could be incentives to keep your ratings high? It’s a nice wish anyway!

What do YOU think about Demand Studios’ new writer scorecards?

Almost Vacation Time!

July 6, 2009 Kecia Life in General No comments

My husband, James and I, have decided last minute to take my parents up on their offer of letting us go to Panama City Beach with them later this month. We will be heading out on July 18th, which has me frantically completing assignments to ensure payment before we leave. Anyone in need of some writing help?? Feel free to contact me, as I plan to earn as much as I can in the next two weeks! I’ve been working on Demand Studios articles the entire time I’ve sat in front of the computer today, and have only 5 completed. As much as I’ve been trying to focus, thinking about laying on the beach in a couple weeks has me a bit distracted!

This vacation  is a much needed break, as I have been working my butt off most of this summer. I say most because I have taken the occasional day off to be lazy or to relax by the pool.

I will try to keep the blog updated as much as possible before we leave for the beach, as I have plenty of ideas for posts that I really want to get on here. When I return, however, expect most updates from me!

eHow – Still Worth your Time?

July 2, 2009 Kecia Residual Income No comments

eHow has been doing a bunch of “house cleaning” lately, getting rid of several hundreds articles written by its members. This has outraged some of the writers, as it appears that many of the articles removed were their highest earners. Some are still seeing their articles appearing on the website, and others are having their article link redirect to another article written by eHow’s in-house editors or writers paid for their work directly by eHow’s parent company, Demand Media (through Demand Studios). This is beginning to worry and infuriate some people…to the extent that they are moving all of their content to other residual income sites.

So, should you scratch eHow in favor for other sites just yet? I’m currently at 16 articles with the site, and luckily have not lost any of my content. I am making about $8/month, which I know isn’t great, but some of the articles are rather new. Plus, I was planning to set a goal to add a certain number of new articles in July. Now, I’m not so sure I want to. For the moment, I believe I am going to wait it out and see how it goes for the writers who have lost their work…and also to see what eHow’s ultimate intentions are. Are they really trying to scrape their site of useless or repetitive content, or are they seeking to make more money by scraping all the high earning articles of other writers and replacing them with own writings?

What’s your thoughts on the current eHow scrape?