For those who work for DS, how long to write an article?

[Kem]

I know each article would vary, but in general, how long does it take you to research and write an article for DS? I am new to DS and just learning the ropes. I am curious what those who have been doing this a while are experiencing. Thanks!

[stldenise]

I've heard some people do them in 15 minutes, but I'm not sure how. I think my top was 30 minutes, but it's closer to 45 or even an hour sometimes. If you can get a couple titles that are similar that can use the same research, you can speed up your times.

You get faster as you have more practice and get better at scanning the web pages for info you need.

[writernow]

I try to choose titles I think I can complete in an hour or less. If my initial research indicates it will take much longer than that, I let go of the article so someone with more expertise in that area can claim it.

[Kem]

Thanks, that gives me hope. So far, it is taking me a lot of time, but I am sure it will get better. I enjoy the writing.

[treehugger]

If I can't get it finished in an hour, it's not worth my time to write. Most DS articles take me about 45 minutes to research, write, proof and upload. My "problem" recently is that I've been accepted to write for Garden Guides, which is nice because I like the topics and this is one of my niches, but then when I'm researching the article I get distracted and end up reading garden books and sites for waaaay too long, and then I remember, oh yeah, I was writing. :D

[Kem]

If I can't get it finished in an hour, it's not worth my time to write. Most DS articles take me about 45 minutes to research, write, proof and upload. My "problem" recently is that I've been accepted to write for Garden Guides, which is nice because I like the topics and this is one of my niches, but then when I'm researching the article I get distracted and end up reading garden books and sites for waaaay too long, and then I remember, oh yeah, I was writing. :D

I LOVE gardening! I am already looking through the seed catalogs and my seed packets so I can figure out what I want to make starter plants of. When I have worked for DS for a while I will have to check out the Garden Guides. Like you, I would get caught up in the reading! :)

[WildScribe]

15-20 minutes. If it takes longer, I am doing SOMETHING wrong. If I'm unfamiliar with the subject, add around 10 minutes, maybe.

[wyntermoon]

I believe this thread would find a greater audience in our content forum. Thanks everyone for your replies! :)

[Fatal Serenity]

I've only been writing for DS for about 4 or 5 months, but I've already developed a system. With a routine I can usually research, write, and submit an article in 45 minutes to an hour. If its a topic I've written on before or already am familiar with the time is sometimes quicker. I try to make sure I am making at least $15/hour, so if I claim a $7.50 article I don't expect it to take more than a half an hour.

Trust me, it will get easier and you will get faster.

Good Luck,
Kate

[KT Golightly]

My "problem" recently is that I've been accepted to write for Garden Guides, which is nice because I like the topics and this is one of my niches, but then when I'm researching the article I get distracted and end up reading garden books and sites for waaaay too long, and then I remember, oh yeah, I was writing. :D

this is my problem often too. But it happens with almost anything I write. lol

[jeffo]

Indeed, it does get quicker with practice. I almost always complete mine in 10-15 minutes, but I also only pick topics that I know a great deal about and don't actually have to research. Heck, half the time I spend is in finding a good resource. :)

[Kem]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the comments!

[Caroline]

I'm at 30-40 minutes, and I've only been doing DS for about a month. I'd like to get faster, but realistically, I don't see myself being able to go much under 30 minutes before the article turns into a typo-ladden rewrite.

[Kem]

I'm at 30-40 minutes, and I've only been doing DS for about a month. I'd like to get faster, but realistically, I don't see myself being able to go much under 30 minutes before the article turns into a typo-ladden rewrite.

WOW! That is impressive. If I could even get down to 1.5 hours after a month I will think I am doing well! :)

[AmyHill]

99% of the time it's under an hour; most of the time it's under half an hour.

The main time consuming activity is looking for titles, not writing them. Sometimes it can take me just as long to find a writable title as it does to write it.

[upsidedowngrl]

I find that doing list articles are the easiest. Each one usually takes about 15 - 20 minutes to write. I do fact sheets sometimes just to pick up a bit of extra $.

[Satori1977]

To research and write? Most take 30 minutes or less. If I am not as familiar with a topic, it takes a little longer. I like to find really good resources, even if I know what I will write beforehand....that might take longer to do than the writing.

[WildScribe]

99% of the time it's under an hour; most of the time it's under half an hour.

The main time consuming activity is looking for titles, not writing them. Sometimes it can take me just as long to find a writable title as it does to write it.

Amen. It's a good part of the reason I quit DS.

[WriterintheWind]

I'm about an hour with all the uploading. I am really into quality not quantity, so I probably stress over my DS articles more than I need to! I am much quicker with eHow articles, as they do not go through the same rigorous editing process. I do enjoy both sites, though.

[Nefertiti Baker]

30 min, tops. I set my cell phone timer. That way, it's a guaranteed $30/hr. Any longer than that, it's no longer worthwhile.

What I find kinda odd are the people in the forums who talk about taking several hours for an article. They do interviews, make phone calls. If you do all of that, how in the heck is DS going to actually pay off?

[Crystal Lewis]

I shoot for $15 per hour... When I'm really moving, I make $22.50 an hour... Like the others who have replied here, I don't even blink at $15 titles that will take me longer than an hour to research/write/upload.

[Brycescribe]

I started at DS the end of November and as most others commented, it's best not to claim anything that will take over an hour. When I first started I'd pick the titles I was most interested in researching and writing about.

Now I go for the simplest topics--this also cuts down on rewrites. The only thing is I've written over 160 of these things and I am fried on it.

Find the threads on the DS forums: Super Earners Unite, and a new one on doing them faster. There are some good pointers on speeding the whole process up.

Good luck.

[inkkognito]

I do two to three an hour, depending on the amount of research.

[jana13k]

I've been writing PT at DS since last August. (I work full time) I only write articles that I know the topic well, and almost always have my own library of reference material, so I don't have to go looking for anything. It takes me 15-30 minutes to write an article depending on complexity. I do mostly accounting, tax and home improvement.

[Kem]

I started at DS the end of November and as most others commented, it's best not to claim anything that will take over an hour. When I first started I'd pick the titles I was most interested in researching and writing about.

Now I go for the simplest topics--this also cuts down on rewrites. The only thing is I've written over 160 of these things and I am fried on it.

Find the threads on the DS forums: Super Earners Unite, and a new one on doing them faster. There are some good pointers on speeding the whole process up.

Good luck.

Thanks, I will check out those threads. I noticed that most of my time is spent trying to find credible references that are within the last year. I am still well over two hours into each article. I have to do something to speed this up.

[April]

Do ya'll calculate your taxes in your hourly rate? Is the $15 hour (that is the one I hear the most) your gross or your net? Cuz, in the US, $15 gross is about $9 net, if you are getting a 1099. Unless...is DS an employer?

[stldenise]

April:
Don't work for DS do you? They hire you as a contract worker. You get a 1099 and they don't take out taxes.

You get paid by the piece. Writers often try to figure out how many artices they can crank out and base a per hour pay rate on that, but it's just for personal reference. So if you can do two $15 titles in an hour, you're making the equivalent of $30 an hour. Not bad. If it takes you two hours to write one piece, then you're making minimum wage. Not good.

[Brycescribe]

Try using site:.edu and site:.org for finding refs. Keep a list of good refs in a file on your desktop. When you can, write titles in groups by subject. This helps cut the time down.

Check out the favorite apps thread. There's a link to Focus Booster, a pomodoro technique timer for productivity--you can download it from cNet.com; you need to have Adobe air first. Train yourself to write with the timer. I keep a worklog on my desk so I can track how much time I'm spending on each task. My first month each title took me about an hour and a half, now I can do most of them in about 45 min (including pic, refs and upload), though I still get carried away on fun topics and go a little over an hour on a few.

Enjoying research is my weakness, so it helps my bottom line to write in series. I'll do 6 articles on fences. As long as each article is unique you can use the same refs on most of the articles. I've also started using typeracer.com. I increased my typing speed by 15 wpm in about a week and continue to work on getting faster. I use title search to practice speed-reading. Reading DS titles word for word could cause insanity. Good luck.

[Brycescribe]

For those writing two DS items per hour, do you have any pointers?

I'm fried on DS, but I really need the money right now. I've been doing everything I can think of to speed it up, and they still take me about 45 min each.

Thanks.

[Kem]

Try using site:.edu and site:.org for finding refs. Keep a list of good refs in a file on your desktop. When you can, write titles in groups by subject. This helps cut the time down.

Check out the favorite apps thread. There's a link to Focus Booster, a pomodoro technique timer for productivity--you can download it from cNet.com; you need to have Adobe air first. Train yourself to write with the timer. I keep a worklog on my desk so I can track how much time I'm spending on each task. My first month each title took me about an hour and a half, now I can do most of them in about 45 min (including pic, refs and upload), though I still get carried away on fun topics and go a little over an hour on a few.

Enjoying research is my weakness, so it helps my bottom line to write in series. I'll do 6 articles on fences. As long as each article is unique you can use the same refs on most of the articles. I've also started using typeracer.com. I increased my typing speed by 15 wpm in about a week and continue to work on getting faster. I use title search to practice speed-reading. Reading DS titles word for word could cause insanity. Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am speeding up somewhat, but have a long way to go. I have been reluctant to take titles that are similar in any way but I may need to. I know they just need to be unique articles. I see you can do an article in 45 minutes. Does that include pasting it into DS and uploading pictures? I would be thrilled if I could complete one in an hour! I have only done about twenty articles so far though. Hopefully the speed will come with time.

[Brycescribe]

You're doing fine. It takes a while to learn all the tricks and find your own shortcuts.

I check the DS forum for everything I can find on productivity, speed, fast, etc. You can use the search function in the forums to help find topics. It took me two months to get it down to an hour, and yes, I mean every part of the process including the pic and uploading and the research. The times some people post can be misleading-- check the new thread on doing three $15 articles in an hour. Some writers do all their refs and pics and keywords ahead of time and are only counting the writing time. For my purposes, I'm looking at how much money I can make per hour, which is why I want to get it down to 30 minutes per title to give myself a raise to $30 an hour. The only thing I don't count in my time is title searching. I do as fast as possible while watching TV.

Yesterday, I wrote all the overviews, outlines and parts of the drafts for 8 articles with an overage time of 10 minutes each. Much faster than I worked my first few weeks there. I use the timer to make it a game with myself. Breaking the writing into tasks goes a lot faster for me than writing one title at a time. I usually do three or four at a time, and yesterday as an experiment I did 8.

Don't trip on taking longer than others at the beginning. There's a lot to learn. As it gets familiar, you'll speed up.

[Anastacia]

Would someone please explain to me why the following sentence apparently (according to a CE) sucks:

"A popular French hangout during the 1920's, today La Couple is an ideal place to go for classic French bistro cuisine."

While this sentence:

"A popular French hangout during the 1920's, La Couple is today an ideal place to go for classic French bistro cuisine."

is apparently a shining star of good writing?

Because the first sounds fine while the second rather awkward to this lowly writer peon.

Thank you oh grammar gods!

I will be in the corner weaping and taking vows of no more travel articles ever again. You don't pay someone twenty bucks for what amounts to three hours of very skilled work.

GAH.

[jana13k]

I will not touch the travel articles with a ten-foot pole. There have been FAR too many complaints about rewrites and rejections. It's shades of the Overstock project all over again.

I can write 2 to 3 articles an hour, but this is how I do it:

I find all my titles at one time and usually at night when I'm too tired to write. I usually find titles by keyword search. I have a list of good keywords for me that I keep next to the computer.

I choose only title I know and can write with minimal or no research. (I do this part time, so I can be picky)

I write accounting, tax and home improvement articles mostly. I have my own library of reference material, so I don't have to go looking for references most of the time. Finding a suitable reference can definitely slow you down.

I put in ONE keyword for a picture and if I find nothing in the first three screens, I type in a reason and leave the photo blank. They are not paying me enough to surf gay porn (which I got a lot of with my how to caulk a bathtub article)

I type 120 wpm and use a dual monitor setup for work. So the cut and paste does not come along with reducing/enlarging. I copy from one screen, move to another. The dual monitor setup also helps when you use an online reference.

I stick mostly to one format (How To) and don't do any of the cheaper articles, which in my opinion take almost as long for less pay.

[Brycescribe]

Jana --

Thanks for the pointers. You're right that it pays to be picky about titles. I learned that the hard way.

I like your tip about speeding up photo search. I'm still wondering what kinds of articles are supposed to go with the pics of a woman in lingerie posed with a skull for a dozen shots.... your description of looking for a pic for caulking a bathtub cracked me up. That's where they keep the gay content on DS. Who knew?

I'm going to graduate to dual monitors as soon as I can. I can see that will be a major time-saver.

I have to hold myself back from some titles due to the time-suck factor. I finally made a rule that if I spend more than 10 minutes looking for references I have to throw it back.

You're right about the lower-pay articles. Early on, I did a few factsheets and came to the same conclusion--they're nearly as much work for half as much money. I set the filter for $15 and stick to those.

So you're using nearly all book references? I got the impression from the DS forums that CEs send articles back if they can't fact-check them online. Is there something I'm misunderstanding? I have my own library, but most of my books are several years old, so I thought I might run into hassles using them as references. I finally reduced my rewrite percentage to 14% and I do my best to give CEs nothing to question.

[jana13k]

Bryce - I am a degreed accountant with over 20 years of experience, so I use my own accounting books, and Principles of Accounting pretty much covers anything DS comes up with. For the other stuff, I am an amateur woodworker and do all my own home improvement, so my library is much better than anything found online. I make sure I write in notes to the CE that I am an amateur woodworker. My bio also says that is my hobby and that I have years of real estate development experience. So far, I have had no issues using books as references.

The CEs I have spoken with say they check out the book on Amazon.com, etc. and if it looks like it would cover the material, fine. Some have done a random google to check what the Internet says against my books and that's fine. I know I'm right - I'm getting my info from the experts on woodworking. :)

[zoomusic]

I started DS in October. At first, I was really working slow, sometimes taking as long as 3 hours to write one article! I'm now aiming to choose/research/write/and hit submit within 1 hour and 15 minutes for each piece. Sometimes it takes 45 minutes, sometimes it takes an hour and a half, but if it goes over the latter, I look to see what the problem is--why it took so long.

I aim for at least 10 dollars an hour gross...I figure that at least earns as much as I'd be making at a local bookstore or packy, and that justifies it for me. I look at DS as stop-gap income, the income that comes in when nothing else is available.

Tips that have helped me:
-do a quick search when choosing a title--if you can't readily find sources, don't choose it
-try to choose articles in 'clusters'...that way you can recycle research and sources (for instance, I did 4 articles on pinball machines...used the same resources)
-it helps to choose material you are familiar with, but not always the case (heck, I did about 15 articles about repairing ice makers a couple months ago--I am not handy at all, lol!)
-take a break if you feel yourself getting frazzled. Frazzled=low productivity. I'll take a break and do a house chore or have a cold drink or a snack...just to refresh.


And, this is key (for me, anyway): don't give them your 'best' work. I have worked and worked and worked on a piece, only to have it come back for rewrites that were impossible...it's like the CE had to find something, and since it was good, they found nit-picky things. I often send in pieces where I can 'see the errors' myself. Often they go through 'as is.' If they do come back for re-writes, it's the stuff I already saw, and it's easy to fix. For $15 an article, do not give them your best.

[cllorentson]

ZooMusic,

Thanks so much for the tips! I just started with DS a couple of weeks ago, and was feeling a little discouraged because of the time it was taking me to write these articles. My husband also told me to stop "overdoing" the articles, and that I could probably be a little less detailed and still get the articles to go through.

I haven't had any re-writes, yet, but maybe they're going easy on me since I'm new. :)

One tactic I've been trying is to do my DS articles at the public library. I like to do travel articles, especially in list format, and if I have access at my fingertips to current guidebooks for my references, I feel like I work faster than if I'm searching the web for information.

Thanks for all the tips, everyone.
-Callie

[Sarashay]

I just started with Demand (turns out they'd accepted my application but the acceptance got clogged in my spam trap) and I've picked up one dinky article that will probably take me WAY too long to write so I can get a feel for it.

Any additional suggestions on useful, citable sources for information? I suspect Wikipedia ain't quite gonna cut it.

[jana13k]

Sara - Read all the guidelines before submitting. There is a blacklist of sites you cannot use and the CEs have zero patience for people who just start writing and don't bother to read the guidelines. Read the DS styleguide AND the guide for the format you choose. Also, if you don't have a copy of the AP styleguide, you can usually find a free download somewhere on the Internet.

[cllorentson]

Any additional suggestions on useful, citable sources for information? I suspect Wikipedia ain't quite gonna cut it.

Sarashay,

They don't like Wikipedia, but they do like references from web sites that end in .org or .edu or .gov. Also you can see if your public library has databases online, if it does, you can do a search for information, and that will help, too.

I belong to the King County Library System, which is in the Seattle, WA area, and it's a huge library system. I can log in to their website, use their databases, and I can find good, workable quotes from reference materials that way. The cool part is, I don't even have to leave home.

If your library system offers "Ask a Librarian" chat, or something similar, you can use it to enlist a librarian to help you research. Usually the librarian will direct you to sites that are reputable. I used this service the other day to find out how many miles of beaches there are in Texas.

Using services like this helps cut down on research time. When I just start searching the web for information, I end up on so many different tangents. Library services tend to be more pointed.

Hope that helps,
Callie

[Brycescribe]

Jana --

Thanks for your post about using books as references and the suggestion about notes to the editor. It makes sense that most editors would accept your qualifications.

I write a line to the CE about my background in whatever the topic is, even when it seems silly.

Thanks for taking time to respond. I'd rather use a solid book as a reference most of the time. If I need an article on woodworking or accounting, I'd look for one of your articles based on actual experience and books that you use--or wrote.

I've been finding it difficult to maintain productivity at DS. I manage to churn out a few a day, but it's an act of will. I need to find other writing opportunities that don't require such severe simplification. It took me a few mind-bending rewrites to grasp that some of the editors expect explanation of the most obvious, mundane tools and tasks. Is it possible that the average reader is that stupid? I'm looking for work that involves communicating with competent people--or at least writing for editors who allow writers to credit the reader with intelligence. I wish that aspect of DS didn't bother me, but it does.

Now I'm curious--are any of your fictional characters woodworkers?