Frustrations searching for titles on DS

[Cassiopeia]

Okay so I'm getting ready to pull my hair out. What is up with DS. I haven't written any articles for a while but man, I can't seem to find anything when I put in keyword searches that only pull up garbage titles.

Is this a plot by DS to weed us less active writers? :D When I even browse by topic, I get the most bizarre titles that have NOTHING whatsoever to do with that category.

Anyone got tips for me on how to find articles I can actually write about?

Thanks :)

[caromora]

It's feast or famine there, depending on which channels you're in. Right now, there aren't many decent titles in any of my channels (and I'm in a lot!).

It goes in cycles. My advice is to apply for one of the titling positions, like QA. That way when it's hard to find good topics, you can make money from titling instead.

[Cassiopeia]

what do you mean by channel?

[caromora]

what do you mean by channel?

Tech Beta, eHow Home, eHow Business, Tyra, Livestrong, Livestrong Nutrition, Local.com, WhiteFence, Green Living, etc.

[triceretops]

It has been very dry at DMS--I can't find anything auto related, and I'm resorting to science and weather as a last resort. My production is down 33 1/3%, and has been for about three weeks.

[Cassiopeia]

Thank you for responding, tri. I have been trying to get myself into writing about different topics as well but the problem I have is that, then, it requires more research time than it's worth the $15.00 they pay for the article.

Maybe I try to hard but when my name goes on an article, I expect to know what I'm talking about and not just chewing up and spitting out old information.

[rhymegirl]

I know it's terrible, but since being accepted to write for DS I have not written a single article for them.

None of the titles they offer deal with anything I know anything about.

[cnbrath]

I can relate. Often, the topics are not things that I know all that much about. My background is in technical writing, web development, web design, digital media - where I live is a pretty popular vacation spot and I am in the process of fixing up my house. I pretty much look for topics that are even tangentially related to these topics (or some other topic that I've neglected to mention here).

I do keyword and category searches - and I search when I think lots of other people probably aren't searching. Sometimes I just browse the list with all of the topics. I usually find something. As soon as I get the topic, I do a quick google search to look for low hanging fruit. I spend no more than 5 minutes - often even less than that. If I can find the answer to the question posed within a page or two of results - particularly if there is more than one hit then I keep it. Yes, it does mean that it takes a bit longer to write the article, but as long as I can get my hands on the research quickly, I can complete the topic. The bonus is I also have my references when I start.

Hope this is helpful!

[Cassiopeia]

Thanks, cnbrath for your response.

[triceretops]

We've still got a huge dry spell at Demand. Jesus, I was making $1,400 a month for the last year writing for them, and I'm a damn slow researcher. It's now dwindled to around $800 a month and going down a bit further.

I hear that this is a normal, albeit unusual drought that is affecting all the writers. I just sent an app into LoveToKnow and hope it gets accepted. I'm primarily interested in flat fees per article, so I'll hunt down some more. I'm thinking about BrightHub, and About.com sure looks like a real pro site.

Good luck to all!

Hang in there, Cathy, I know its bad right now but it has to pick up. We're the #1 content site.

Tri

[Cassiopeia]

I am too discourage with DS. I haven't written for them in a year. I just come up empty.

[juniper]

I haven't written at DS for many months. Just lost interest. Logged in last night just to see how things were, saw the CE queue was really low, looked at titles in home/garden - rot. Just rot stuff.

Saw a notice in the forum that they've changed up the guidelines, loosened them apparently, but didn't even look at them. The titles just looked like crap. Couldn't figure out what some even meant, or why anyone would possibly be searching for those keywords together ... ???

I only wrote sporadically, but right now there's just nothing for me there.

[scorpiodragon]

I'm having the same problem myself. I haven't written for them since April and right now all the topics are just not even in my frame of reference and would take too long to research for the pay rate.

[triceretops]

Im damn lucky to finish two articles a day, and sometimes only one a day or nothing. Supposed to be a large articel drop, but I think that's bullshite. Have you seen their stock share prices lately? They've dropped from 24 bucks a share down to 8 bucks, in a fourth-month period. There's no more spellcheck on the site, probably trying to save money or bandwidth, and they've thrown a hundreds of writers in the writing program gulag, from which only a few have survived.

I see a company in dire need and trouble. Can't say that on the DMS forums, though. They'd lynch me for negativity.

Chris

[Cassiopeia]

I wasn't at all charmed when I got an email saying I'm on a new program where I have to write three articles under the supervision of an editor.

I've not done an article for them in over a year. If they want to drop me from inactivity, they should do so and stop with the nonsense. If my articles were good enough before they certainly can only have improved as I'm a better content provider now than I was in 2009 when I started with them.

I've enough hoops to jump through. $15.00 per article isn't worth the headache.

[Angie]

Last year, I got accepted to write for Livestrong without even applying. They had tons of titles available at the time dealing with camping/outdoors/fishing, and were still paying $25 per article. I made good money for a few months after that -- then they dropped that entire category from Livestrong last summer. I haven't written a thing for them since. As others have said, the available titles are crap, and I can't justify researching something I know nothing about, organizing it into something meaningful, and writing it...for fifteen bucks.

I checked in there a couple weeks ago, when work from another client hit a lull. Didn't find a single title I felt qualified to write about. I have no plans to go back again.

[egoodlett]

I noticed this too... seems like eeeeverything is weird technical crap. When you search animals, you get "How to repair my CAT construction equipment" or annoying stuff like that. Haven't written for DS for over a year, so I was hoping to find a few articles to shoot off in the last couple weeks. But I've literally found nada...

[Emilie]

Hi!
I've been writing for Demand Studios for about two years and I agree, it's gotten alot more difficult to find titles that don't take forever to research or are too complicated to write-like how to change the engine in a car or build a building. Plus, I write alot of gardening titles and many times lately I discover the titles are really about growing marijauna better or growing some type of mind-altering fungus. Ugh!
But why I just joined this forum tonight is to post something that happened last night.
I received an email from an editor at DS telling me they received a complaint about an offensive resource link in an article I wrote in 2009! Yes, the resource link is offensive now, but I don't believe it was then. The url is different in the article link than what you are directed to. I don't understand the workings of websites, but I would never include something like this.i
I have now had my writing privleges denied, all claimed titles wiped out.
I have written a new email to them trying to convince them that I had nothing to do with this. No word yet.
I have wrtten 100's of articles for them. If I was going to slip in disgusting sites in the references and resources, wouldn't I do it more than once, two years ago?
I need to find a new source of income-quick!
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest!
Emilie

[triceretops]

Emilie, that's atrocious behavoir on their part--not yours. They've gone to great lengths, and I mean extraordinary lengths to weed writers out--fire them--discourage them for trivial reasons. Thousands have been let go, particularly in the writing program. They ARE suffering a major decline in business, and attacting new clients. The die-hards are claiming this is par for the course and it will diminish eventually.

Not true. I think this boat has got a leak that nobody can patch. Sorry to see it too. I'm hanging on by a thread, not willing to give up just yet. I have no replacement alternative for this type of content writing at the moment. Take a look at their stock shares from April to the present and tell me company is solvent.

Tri

[Emilie]

Thanks for the support and insight. I wrote the editor again today (haven't heard anything-it's the weekend) with information I found out about how pages on a site can easily be redirected to another page on the site.
This DM guy is acting like I placed this link in an article written last week, not over 2 years ago. Alot can happen with a website in 2 years. Every once in awhile I look at an old eHow article to see what references were used. More time than not, the links do not work. Also, I hate the demand media sites-they load slow with so much junk on them. Not user friendly. I don't know who would tolerate it.
Hopefully I can report more about my cancelled writing privileges on Monday.

[triceretops]

Well, with this lastest announcement, it's no wonder this company is tanking. I don't care how they frost it--DMS is finished, and I'll wager that most other content sites will be affected negatively by Google Panda. I should have realized this with the stock share prices plummeting since April that DMS was on it's way out. Now I have to really hit the internet looking for gigs. This is awful. Thousands of people really did use this as a full-time income source. And that's certainly our fault for not diversifying.

[Cassiopeia]

I am sure you will do alright Tri. I stopped writing for them some time ago and haven't enjoyed online content providing since. I am moving in a direction.

[triceretops]

Thanks, Cassi. I'll do all right, I'm sure. I didn't really know what the content gig was all about, and I'd like to gravitate away from it, as I've learned tons more about it and what it does and does not entail for a serious freelancer. Fortunately I made hellacious sums of money and had the good sense to tuck a lot of it away, fearing that it was too good to be true or last.

Tri

[Cassiopeia]

I never got the hang of writing the articles quickly. It was cost prohibitive to write them if they weren't in my area ofmexpertise due to the amount of research I'd put in.

[scorpiodragon]

The recent announcement they sent out had me side-eyeing them really hard. They talk about new clients like Livestrong.com but they have no topics at all for either them or a few other of the new clients.

[Angie]

Just found this announcement in the Demand forums:

Dear Writers and Editors,
*
We realize there has been recent concern around assignment availability. We know many of you rely on Demand Media Studios as a regular income source and as a way to grow your careers. For those reasons and others, we want to be as transparent as we can about the future.
*
In just a few years, we’ve worked together to grow the eHow.com library to an astounding 3 million articles. While eHow has been the main publisher of content produced by DMS writers, we’ve also developed other writing outlets on our own properties like typeF.com and LIVESTRONG.COM as well as through partnerships like Chron.com and USAToday. With our eHow.com library already so comprehensive, we saw the opportunity to shift our focus to more targeted categories and other forms of content such as slide shows, video series and feature articles. Good examples of these new formats can be found on eHow and LIVESTRONG.COM.

None of this would have been possible without having spent so many years working with you, our writers and editors, to build our comprehensive library.

Looking ahead, as we continue to publish articles for eHow and our other sites, we want to be sure we are building on what already exists, not replicating it. This is not to say we will stop assigning standard titles in How to and Topic View format for eHow.com. But it does mean that we will have fewer eHow.com assignments for the foreseeable future.

However, we will continue to add more publishers and sections as we’ve done over the years, and ultimately the work and opportunities will grow for our best writers and editors. We are also excited to completely execute on our vision of having the most qualified writers and editors working on titles within their areas of expertise.

In order for this to happen, we need to make sure of a few things:

That only executable, valid and unique titles make it to your Work Desk.
That every article is written and copy edited by a qualified professional with background, knowledge or experience in the topic.
That every article has the appropriate format and word count for the topic to be comprehensively covered.

We will also be putting additional focus on helping you grow within your fields. This means offering ways for you to gain exposure on our sites and new tools for you to promote yourself and your work. We will send additional updates and information on assignments going forward. We will also set up some new avenues for you to ask questions and offer feedback.

Best Regards,
Demand Media Studios Team

Sounds to me like the "easy" 15-dollar titles are soon to be a thing of the past, if not pretty much gone already.

[triceretops]

It's definitely slim pickins there. I think all channels will be affected, except for their new slide show, video and feature article writing. I think publishers have lost faith in them, as result of Panda and expressed negative opinion. No work equates to major slow down for us, writers lost to attrition and staff layoffs. It seems every content site was hit and impacted in some way. My additional applications elsewhere aren't being responded to.

Tri

[caromora]

AW's own Jenna Glatzer has a fantastic book called Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer. If any of you are interested in branching out from content writing, pick it up! It's fantastic. Full of good, practical advice.

[Angie]

Also, Renegade Writer. And, if copywriting is more your style, you can't do better than Peter Bowerman's Well-Fed Writer.