2011 Year-End Online Writing Summary

With 2011 drawing to a close, I find myself reflecting on the online writing experience of the past year - on my own online writing adventure. Online writers faced some big changes and upheavals in 2011. Some (now former) "cash cow" sites, where writing quick, easy articles brought in a livable wage, crashed. Search engine changes left many writers who counted on residual earnings based on page views or ad clicks wondering where the readers and the money went.

As part of saying "Goodbye" to an interesting and challenging year, I thought I would offer a review of my online writing experience of this past year.

Paid Surveys

While not actual writing work, I tried a couple of paid survey sites and found them very time intensive for very little pay. Then, with payout around $50 on the sites, I gave up without ever reaching payout.  Two thumbs down - waste of time. (Though I did a few surveys on MTurk, and while still time-intensive for low pay, the pay actually came through quickly. So - my suggestion - if you want to do surveys, check out the surveys on MTurk Also, request permissions for the writing jobs, and transcription if you are a good typist. Finally, if you have other better- paying work, it makes sense to only spend fifteen or twenty minutes a day doing the extremely low-paying HITS offered until you get access to some of the higher-paying jobs. You won't get a shot at the higher paying tasks unless you do some, but if you can make more elsewhere it doesn't make sense to invest all of your time making 60 or 70 cents an hour either. Once you have over 100 HITS approved, they open up a few more options for you and over 1,000 even more tasks become available.)

Cloud Sourcing

For the most part, I am not a fan of cloud sourcing. The cloud sourcing sites I tried, MTurk, Cloud Croud, and Clickworker were all legitimate: all actually paid as promised. The problem was, for me, the wages worked out to be dismally low. I had the most success with MTurk after I was approved as a writer for one of their customers. At 2 cents a word, it wasn't getting rich, but the money was there quickly after approval, and so far, nothing has been returned for a rewrite and nothing has been rejected.

Wikio Experts to Overblog

Good while it lasted - current state - gone. The site owners have replaced Wikio with Overblog. Overblog did not hold my interest, but, since Wikio always paid honestly, Overblog is probably worth checking out for those interested in writing for residual-type earnings.

Factoidz

I don't have one bad thing to say about this one. It seems to still be going strong. The pay is not sky-high for general submissions but product reviews pay well, and for a site that pays for page views, the up front payments and activity bonuses are higher than average for an online content site.

Skyword

Another good one. Decent upfront payments. Good residual/page view paymets. Excellent editors. All around good experience. (No clue why I wrote that in non-sentences)

Demand Media Studios

Oh my! What a ride! I somehow managed to ride it out through all of the "layoffs" for lack of a better word, and I'm still writing for the site occasionally, but the titles are down to almost nothing and the editors seem to have upped the ante on unpredictability. They claim to have changes and new formats coming as well. It should be, at least, interesting to ride it out a little longer and see what they have to offer and what they ask.

Suite101

Suite and its writers have taken a really hard hit with the search engine changes this year. It should be interesting to watch as changes unfold over the next few months.

eBooks

eBook writing is moving to the forefront as one of the higher online writing niches. The two eBook publishers I can personally review are Amazon Kindle Direct and Smashwords. I have heard good things about Smashwords, though my own results were tepid. For me, Amazon KDP outperformed Smashwords by about double. My most recent eBook, released December 8th, 2011, is in KDP Select, so it's exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. In exchange they offer the use of some of their best promotional tools. If it proves worthwhile, I'll share more info on that later.

Smartphone Apps

I suspect smartphone app writing will pass eBook writing as the next big earning opportunity for online writers. Google has a drag and drop style app building program to help non-code-writers build their own apps.

Blogging

I really like blogging, but I tend to focus on other paying work rather than add content to my blogs. I know a lot of people make good money blogging, for me, probably because I don't invest enough time in it, the money is not there. I suspect blogs built around supporting or selling a product or membership are far more lucrative than blogs like this one, with occasional posts geared around providing information for writers and nothing actually for sale.

So, I'll close this post, along with the year 2011, by wishing everyone reading here a safe, happy, and prosperous new year.