New Examiner.com thread

Shadow_Ferret · Jun 21, 2009

blueobsidian said:
I'm guessing that is exactly what the problem is. I've never had an employer who would pay me before I filled out that information.

Thrillride said:
I'll be interested to hear because I don't think I've filled mine out yet and I get paid....

Seems to be a contradiction here. I guess I should contact someone, but who?

herdon · Jun 21, 2009

Have you been successfully paid by them before? If not, I'd make sure you are over the minimum payout amount, double check your paypal info, and fill out the W9 just in case.

stldenise · Jun 21, 2009

I'm catching up here...
Crystal: try to keep at Examiner just a bit longer. This is my 4th month (I started in mid Feb) and my June numbers will finally hit the $25 mark for a single month. It might take a while to find an audience and build up an article base.

I just started a 2nd Examiner topic, and I was very sad to see that nobody read my 1st post. But I'm going to start crosslinking between the two topics and maybe I'll get a few people to read it!

Shadow_Ferret · Jun 21, 2009

herdon said:
Have you been successfully paid by them before? If not, I'd make sure you are over the minimum payout amount, double check your paypal info, and fill out the W9 just in case.

No, I haven't been paid before. I thought I had just reached $25 this week.

herdon · Jun 22, 2009

Shadow_Ferret said:
No, I haven't been paid before. I thought I had just reached $25 this week.

The payment on the 19th was for May. If you hadn't reached the minimum on the last day of May, you won't get paid.

Shadow_Ferret · Jun 22, 2009

Crap! Really? That sucks.

Agee · Jun 28, 2009

Tweaking publishing page?

Hey - does anyone have any tips for tweaking the publishing platform for the Examiner? It seems like half the articles I publish look really funky once they're published. It's very frustrating. I've tried to tweak the html and I've had some success but it seems like I spend more time on the publishing part than I do on the writing part sometimes.
For best results, what do you do?
A

Orientalist · Jun 28, 2009

You can't do too much without getting reprimanded by the channel manager, in my experience. I think/thought the body font is too small, so I increased by one size. It took weeks before the channel manager noticed and told me to stop.

I still get by with an initial subhead in the larger font and bolded but I leave the other subheads in the standard size. Subheads help your SEO ranking.

As far as captions for photos, I think any friggin' way you can produce one must be fine. A few times I've managed it, but duplicating the feat would just take too much time. I usually end up putting something like "AP photos" or whatever at the end of the story in italics.

WriterKM · Jun 28, 2009

Photo captions

I was having a hard time with a long photo caption recently (the text would move to the left of the photo and it would all push the main text down) and I found that if you click on the box when you add the caption and pull the arrow down, you can make that box bigger and increase the amount of text in the caption. The text will also wrap around the photo box properly when you do that. I'm glad I worked that out because it was driving me crazy.

Health_Geek · Jun 28, 2009

Agee said:
Hey - does anyone have any tips for tweaking the publishing platform for the Examiner? It seems like half the articles I publish look really funky once they're published. It's very frustrating. I've tried to tweak the html and I've had some success but it seems like I spend more time on the publishing part than I do on the writing part sometimes.
For best results, what do you do?
A

I just took a look at your pages, and want to clarify if you're talking about the double spaces between lines. When I pasted from Word it would do that to me, even if I used the special paste tool in the Pub Tool. What I do now is write from Word Pad, and everything has come out nicely since then. I paste the links right next to the words because Word Pad doesn't let you hyperlink, and then when I paste into the Pub Tool I just cut and paste the hyperlinks there.

@Orientalist: I think the size is too small, too! They need to have a tool on the screen that allows you to adjust the font size so you can read without the eye strain.

Agee · Jun 28, 2009

double spaces between lines. When I pasted from Word it would do that to me, even if I used the special paste tool in the Pub Tool.

Yes, double spaces between lines, occasionally single spacing for no reason, weird font size and color, picking up the format from the credit for the picture...etc., etc.

I'll have to keep playing with what word processing software works best.

Thanks -
A

veinglory · Jun 28, 2009

It pays not to format until after you paste, then you only have the html you want.

bootcampmommy · Jul 2, 2009

My experience with Examiner

I currently have two sites in Examiner. When I first started in December, I had just the SAHM site and I didn't get paid the first month. There was something wrong with the system (I submitted my w-9)and it just didn't pay me. After a ton of emails, I finally received payment but it had to cycle through again, meaning I didn't get paid till the following month.

I have found that if you have a National site, you do pretty well, but the local ones take a lot of work. I almost resigned too a few months ago but decided to dig in again and really found some success. I like it because you are free to write about what you want. Live or die by your article. With suite, I became a feature writer and I was so excited. I had some 'issues' with the editor who was extremely rude to me in several emails and I decided it was time to move on.

herdon · Jul 2, 2009

Again, local vs national does not make much of a difference. The only extra views you would get one way or the other is through drive-by traffic (i.e. people going directly to the Examiner and browsing) and if you are relying on that, you are probably not going to make much regardless.

Both national and local will look exactly the same to Google, and that's where 80% of your page views should be coming from.

* * *

On formating, I would advice not using a word processor at all. More often than naught, it will cause problems. If you do use a word processor, paste it into notepad first, then copy it back out and paste it into the editor. This will strip all the extra formating 'noise' that word processors will put into it.

I wrote an editor for web writing:

http://www.myquicknotepad.com/

It's not fancy. It uses a quick wiki-like markup language and only saves the last article, but it is relatively easy to write something and create bold/italics/links/etc. You have to switch to the source view of the Examiner tool to paste in the HTML.

I work just as easily in HTML, so this stuff isn't tough for me. If you aren't familiar with HTML, you might look around for a solid web-based editor.

Thrillride · Jul 2, 2009

herdon said:
Again, local vs national does not make much of a difference. The only extra views you would get one way or the other is through drive-by traffic (i.e. people going directly to the Examiner and browsing) and if you are relying on that, you are probably not going to make much regardless.

Both national and local will look exactly the same to Google, and that's where 80% of your page views should be coming from.

* * *

On formating, I would advice not using a word processor at all. More often than naught, it will cause problems. If you do use a word processor, paste it into notepad first, then copy it back out and paste it into the editor. This will strip all the extra formating 'noise' that word processors will put into it.

I wrote an editor for web writing:

http://www.myquicknotepad.com/

It's not fancy. It uses a quick wiki-like markup language and only saves the last article, but it is relatively easy to write something and create bold/italics/links/etc. You have to switch to the source view of the Examiner tool to paste in the HTML.

I work just as easily in HTML, so this stuff isn't tough for me. If you aren't familiar with HTML, you might look around for a solid web-based editor.

It's really just easier for most people to write it in Word and then past it into Notepad before taking it to Examiner (or anywhere else online actually). It has never let me down once.

JNS · Jul 3, 2009

Write in Word, paste it in the Source not the Visual Editor tab and it will come out just fine. Flip back to the visual editor and add any spacing or bolded text you need.

Orientalist · Jul 4, 2009

So, when you quit Examiner do they immediately shut down your site? In other words, how long might one keep making money? Veinglory? My current system is to do just one post per week, usually on an event or something else that doesn't take too much time.

Herdon: I use a text editor (TotalEdit) and still can't get the caption right if the image isn't running across the whole page, though I'll admit I haven't tried that hard. Now I don't care ...

Can't imagine doing Examiner without knowing elementary HTML. Folks, look for a website tutorial. Spend 30 minutes a day for a week. A week from now, you'll be saving yourself so much time.

herdon · Jul 4, 2009

Can't say anything about captions. I usually don't use them, and when I do, I do everything from HTML. I take the first DIV tag that is there with every new post and modify it for all the images. If I need a caption, it's got one, and if my caption is too long to fit on one line, I use a BR tag and sometimes CENTER tags if it would look better centered.

But that's all HTML.

I agree, well worth it to learn some of the basics in HTML and be comfortable modifying what's under the hood.

inkkognito · Jul 5, 2009

Ouch, it's ugly when a story hits home in a bad way. I am the Orlando Theme Parks Examiner (for those who don't know), and this morning one monorail hit another at Disney World and killed one of the drivers. I know many of the drivers, and this particular one was very close to a family in my town and graduated from the high school two years ago. I posted the story and a follow-up, and actually was the first one to post it so I got as many hits in one day as I normally do in a month. But it just breaks my heart to make money that way...I know it's news, I know someone else would have posted it, but this is the first story that ever really got to me. I tried to handle it tastefully...the link is here: http://bit.ly/RITRQ (the driver was only 21 years old...the photos alone tell the story).

stldenise · Jul 5, 2009

I was wondering about you when I heard the news this morning. I'm sure you can do story justice by following up with any details on a memorial service or fund, and talking about monorail safety.

I wonder how fast those trains go backwards? It's been a while since I was there. Do they normally only travel in one direction, like a train, or do they go back and forth like a street car?

inkkognito · Jul 6, 2009

They go back and forth; supposedly (and this isn't confirmed yet), the one that struck the other was going backwards because it was supposed to be transferring to another track. When they do that, they turn the safety override off (why, I don't know).

I might talk to a former driver here in town to do a safety article. I know a few people who knew the driver who was killed, but I'm cautious of doing personal things because I can't even imagine how badly the family is hurting...I know his friends are devastated, so I've kept the articles fairly "generic." It's just so weird when a tragic article is so close to home. It sort of reminds me of the space shuttle disaster. At the time I thought it was very tragic and upsetting, but in a more detached way. Now that I live in Florida I can see them go up from my house. I hold my breath every time because now it's like I have a personal emotional investment in them. I don't even want to imagine what it would be like to see a disaster with one personally.

starbirdy66 · Jul 6, 2009

inkkognito, I know how you feel. As the Shop at Home Examiner I wrote about Billy Mays and the fairly new show Pitchmen a week before he died. It was only my second article on Examiner. I must have been the only one with a Billy Mays article in Examiner and I got over 5,000 hits in one day, probably just on that one article.

Of course when I went in and checked my earnings I was so shocked and elated to my success until I figured out why I had so much money in my account.

Shadow_Ferret · Jul 6, 2009

Cool! If you Google Patrick Cudahy under "News", my article appears! There's a fire at the plant and I wrote a historical piece on the man behind the company name.

I know I'm not getting much money for this gig, but its still neat seeing your stuff that prominently displayed.

stldenise · Jul 6, 2009

I've had a lot of formatting errors on Examiner...so I've just given up on doing anything fancy. I've found it best (for me) to write directly into Examiner and hit the save unpublished a lot. Most of my posts are pretty short and straight forward, so they're pretty easy to write.

I used to be able to write using the Firefox browser for the spell checker. But that doesn't seem to work anymore. Sometimes I'll take the finished piece and copy it into Word to run a spell check, then just correct the bad words by hand. (And sometimes I use my Google search box as a dictionary when I spot a word I can't spell. Can anyone explain why someone who wants to make a living writing can't spell? It's like a cruel joke.)

As for captions, I gave up on using descriptive captions when I found out I couldn't get them to wrap. HTML makes my eyes cross. So now I type the photo credit only. I do put a description in the "descriptive text" box when I upload the photo.

Does anyone else have problems loading photos? It's very buggy on my end, sometimes it doesn't want to put the photo in the little template box.

Shadow_Ferret · Jul 6, 2009

stldenise said:
I used to be able to write using the Firefox browser for the spell checker. But that doesn't seem to work anymore. Sometimes I'll take the finished piece and copy it into Word to run a spell check, then just correct the bad words by hand. (And sometimes I use my Google search box as a dictionary when I spot a word I can't spell. Can anyone explain why someone who wants to make a living writing can't spell? It's like a cruel joke.)

As for captions, I gave up on using descriptive captions when I found out I couldn't get them to wrap. HTML makes my eyes cross. So now I type the photo credit only. I do put a description in the "descriptive text" box when I upload the photo.

Does anyone else have problems loading photos? It's very buggy on my end, sometimes it doesn't want to put the photo in the little template box.

I can't use Google CHrome or IE with it, I HAVE to use Firefox. It's the only one that seems to work consistently with their publish tool.

As far as captions, I don't think they do wrap, you have to make a hard return using shift+return.

And I do all my writing in a WP program then past it into their publishing tool.

New Examiner.com thread

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