Skyword sources content for Gather News, Daily Glow, ImpreMedia, Pampers Pregnancy, and IBM Infoboom.
I have personally only written for Daily Glow and Gather News, and I really enjoy writing for them.
The editors are beyond nice, if that's possible. I have had a couple of things come back for rewrites, and the explanations were clear, and were written in a friendly way that made me feel positive about the articles.
The different channels have different approaches to pay:
- Daily Glow pays upfront with small residual payments based on page views. Daily Glow covers celebrity, health, and beauty topics.
- Gather News pays no upfront but has higher residuals, also based upon page views. This is a great place to share business and technical news.
- ImpreMedia pays page view-based residuals only. ImpreMedia is the site's spanish-language channel.
- Pampers Pregnancy pays an upfront with lower residuals, similar to the amounts paid by the Daily Glow channel.
- InfoBoom pays the highest upfront and residuals of the channels, but they require a high level of technical knowledge that is harder to find in an Internet content writer.
I have to say my experience with Skyword is not good. I believe they are a scam. You can write for Skyword and never hear a thing for weeks while your article is in review and your earings lounge in your account, a "to be paid" imaginary account, and then they will come back at you on a Friday and request changes that have to be made within 48 hours. You show up at work on Monday and realize you are supposed to make changes, but it's too late. By this time the "nice people" at Skyword have stolen your article, deducted your "earnings" from your account, and are off happily laughing that they got another sucker to write free content for them. Skyword sucks.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear your experience with them was negative, I've had experiences like that with other sites. I think you should contact them about your concerns, because they're most assuredly not a scam. I'm actually paying all of my living expenses on my Skyword earnings now, and treating writing for them as a full-time job. They have long-standing contracts with some large international companies, and they would not be able to maintain those contracts on a long-term basis if they were a scam site.
DeleteJust to touch on your points, because other interested writers might pass up writing for them based on this:
They have live help available every weekday for writers, there's a bright green tab in the upper right corner of the editing tool that says "Live Help" - if clicked, someone comes on and answer your questions immediately, and they are also very accessible via email at other times. I've even had questions answered at 3am by one program manager.
I've done well over a thousand articles for them now, and have always been paid promptly after approval, on the first and fifteenth of each month, for both writing the article and for the residuals based on page views after publishing. I did have one article that got lost in their system, but if they don't pay for it, the writer stills owns it and can put it on some other site, so just back up your work to avoid losing it if something goes wrong, but if you've been writing online for any amount of time, you already know that tip.
I agree the editing can be kind of slow, but they have been much faster the last couple of months, and it also depends on which programs you write for - each program has its own editors, pace, and pay scale. The news programs are quick - the evergreen content ones take longer. (I'm in six different programs with them right now, and would recommend any of them to interested writers. I was in seven, but one recently ended.)
I can see where the rewrite time allowed would be a problem, too, if you take time off, weekends, or "days together" during the week. I write every day, so I haven't had the bad luck to miss a rewrite request. I also check my email several times a day, and they always send a rewrite request in the email. It's never a matter of having to log in to see if you have a rewrite. If you take weekends off or don't check your email, then you can lose work, so there again, make backup copies - if they don't pay for it, they don't publish it, and it remains your property.
I have had articles they opted not to publish after approval, and even then, they never deducted a single penny from my earnings. They still paid the agreed-on amount. That part of your comment makes me wonder if we are even talking about the same site. Once it shows up in your "Total Earnings" column (There is no "To Be Paid" account at all on the Skyword site I wrote about above - is it possible there is some knock-off site with a variation of their name?), after the editor approves it, they don't take a writer's earned money away.
Do you still write online? I can tell you are good at expressing yourself from your comment here, and would love to read some of your other work if you feel like sharing.
Skyword is definitely not a scam, as I have received multiple payments from them. I write for the IBM Midsize Program only, as I'm waiting on other tech programs to appear. It's just unfortunate that the return requirement coincided with a weekend. Articles that are not used can indeed be published elsewhere and I have published several in this manner, both on my own site and others. I write my articles in MS Word and save them before pasting on the platform.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, Connie took the same approach. In her case, she could just have resubmitted the article for review. Not sure if the system allows it as I've never missed one of these deadlines. Any other queries, feel free to contact me using Google info. https://plus.google.com/106205740069418569409