AvantGuild: Writing For Revenue-Sharing Sites

Cathy Jones left a job at a national magazine to return home to Minnesota only to find that, despite having 13 years of experience, there weren’t many options available to her. “When you’re looking and you’re a freelancer, you’re spending a couple of hours a day trying to find stuff. You hit the job boards every day,” she recalls.

Then Jones found Demand Studios, a flat-rate content site that pays $5-$25 an article. She wrote stories for the site, but switched to copy editing because the work was easier and more rewarding, she says. “When I first started freelancing [for them], I couldn’t believe the low rate on these things, but if you can write ‘How to troubleshoot your garbage disposal’ in half an hour, that’s $15. It’s a different kind of writing; it’s different tactics than your ‘real’ journalism.”

Have you been curious about the differences between Demand Studios, Suite101, Examiner, and Associated Content? Do you still wonder why anyone would bother with revenue-sharing sites? You may be interested in our AG-only article by Maya Avrasin.

Maya didn’t include About.com, which, as we understand it, has somewhat of a revenue-sharing model, but isn’t straight up cash-for-pageviews like Examiner or some of the others. Still, if you’ve been wondering what the deal is and how these sites attract so many writers, do read on.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55, and start reading those articles, receive discounts on mediabistro.com seminars and workshops, and receive all sorts of other bonuses.

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