Highest Earning in Examiner.com

I write for Examiner. They pay regularly, and on time. It's work for hire; it's not art. I write for money; they pay.

There's one thing I don't get... you guys who dislike the content mills (and I understand why) always say you can make as much with your own blog. But how do you get traffic to your own blog? Somebody has to read it in order to click those ads. And what kinds of blogs are getting revenue? Is it interesting work, or ad friendly stuff on the disease of the week?

Blogs get traffic the same way most Examiner sites do, from search engines.

My point isn't that there is anything wrong with Examiner onjectively speaking, but to know--specifically--what the pay rate is and what traffic you can expect. Just the same as with any e/publisher, know what you are getting into and if you can work in that system and get what you want, that's great. But just as with epublishing I have seen people get into grief through unwarranted optimism and shakey guesswork when the bare facts are available.

So to work with content it is best not to round up the pay rate to estimate earnings, or to make up traffic figures rather than project from what you are actually getting. If you are counting on long tail money in deciding how much writing to invest, a bad estimate will put you a mile off. Not a big deal if that is not your bill-paying money--but for some people it is.

Being a little familiar with veinglory's and Shadow_Ferret's posts on here from the other threads, I won't argue with them. They've made up their mind.

I'll simply say that if you know what you are doing, you can make decent cash from Examiner.

I also wouldn't lump About.com into a list of content mills. It is a content site, but not a content mill. I.e. it doesn't follow a long tail strategy of quantity over quality. 99% of Examiners simply couldn't write for About.com. Might not be the bastion of great writing on the web -- but then again -- is there a bastion of great writing? I see good, quality writing as few and far between whether it is on the web or in print.

Medievalist said:

I write for Examiner. They pay regularly, and on time. It's work for hire; it's not art. I write for money; they pay.

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I've been thinking of applying to Examiner, just so not all my weekly paid-writing eggs are in a single basket. Seeing that people I respect and admire have Examiner pages and consider it a useful investment of time certainly pushes me in that direction. About how much time a week would you say it requires?

NicoleJLeBoeuf said:

I've been thinking of applying to Examiner, just so not all my weekly paid-writing eggs are in a single basket. Seeing that people I respect and admire have Examiner pages and consider it a useful investment of time certainly pushes me in that direction. About how much time a week would you say it requires?

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Hi Nicole. I think the time investment is so hugely variable that there is no good answer to your question. To remain an "active" Examiner, you would need to submit at least one article every 30 days. To get a payout each month, you need to have accumulated $20 in rev share or it rolls over until it finally reaches $20.

As far as how often you would need to submit to make decent money, or how much time you'd need to spend on each piece, well that's the $64,000 question. Some Examiners write daily, even posting more than once a day. Others post a few times a week, some far less often than that. It is possible to get a little residual income coming in once you have built up a substantial number of articles, but I doubt anyone who posts only once a week or less frequently is making more than pocket change. Even those posting several times a week may only be making $1 a day regularly.

It also depends to a great extent on your topic. I will never have a chance of making the kind of money covering Tucson Pets that someone covering a popular celebrity or a controversial topic will have. But I can influence my earning potential by posting more often, trying to establish a relationship with readers (it seems we're rewarded based on number of subscribers and such, not just page views), and doing effective SEO.

I personally don't enjoy the SEO piece and have to put most of my time into endeavors that I know will help me pay the bills, so I am not making much. But think of it in this way: the topic and venue you choose determine the range in which you can earn, and what you do determines where you fall within that range.

Wow, that was a ridiculously long-winded answer to your question. Let's just say that the time investment could be anywhere from a few minutes a week to an hour or more a day, depending on your objectives, topic popularity and the types of pieces you post.

You might peek through some of the other Examiner threads on this forum to see what various Examiners have shared about their experiences. Also, keep in mind that if you list an AW Examiner as the person referring you, that person will get a nice referral bonus. If you don't already have a specific person in mind, you could look through the threads and decide who provided the most useful information for you.

Hope this helps!

Heidi

Niki: I try to post once a day. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, and sometimes I post twice a day. Depends on my mood.

Examiner has a newer bonus program for local writers where they give you a dollar for each local post you write, with a cap at $5 a week. So if you do 5 local posts a week, you'll get the payout. I think the word count for these posts are a min of 150 words, max of 400. (Examiner encourages short frequent posts.)

I'm a mom examiner, so my posts are very easy for me. I report on activities to do with kids, where the good parks are...I basically go about my normal mom business with a camera in hand and blog posts are easy to come up with. My town doesn't seem to generate a lot of traffic, so I'm only getting 150 views a day. I also do some social networking, with my posts getting auto feed to twitter, and I belong to an Examiner group that reads each other's stuff and helps promote it (Digg, stumble, that sort of thing).

The trick is to take on a title that you would like to write about anyway, something that goes with your hobby or normal routine. Examiners who have to do a lot of research or reporting will get annoyed with the lack of payment if they don't make the big time.

Also, Examiner allows you to own your own work, so its easy to reslant anything you write for Examiner for another blog or content site like Suite101. They also don't have a problem if you link to your own work located on other sites.

Hope that helps.

I'd say the topics with the most potential are broad, bland topics like 'pets' or 'carpentry' or 'health' etc. They lend themselves most to evergreen content.

Obviously, it is important to choose a topic about which you are both knowledgeable and passionate. You need to be knowledgeable to write quality articles, but you also need to care enough to write on a regular basis.

How much time to invest? **If you know how to write for the web and know SEO**, the more time you invest the more money you can make. If you don't understand how writing for this type of writing works, the amount of time you spend on it might not amount to a hill of beans. Which would mean a higher time investment if you are willing to put in the hours studying how to write for the web and basic seo.

Thanks for all the feedback. I personally can't convince my brain to even begin to spend neuron-firing time on SEO, so residual income things never look very tempting. On the other hand, I have a local topic that I think I could post on often. So I've been waffling back and forth, and meanwhile making sure my other blogs stay reasonably up to date in order to look good on a resume if I do submit.

I probably will go ahead and apply, if only because the pressure to update one's page sounds reasonable.

Thank you!

NicoleJLeBoeuf said:

I've been thinking of applying to Examiner, just so not all my weekly paid-writing eggs are in a single basket. Seeing that people I respect and admire have Examiner pages and consider it a useful investment of time certainly pushes me in that direction. About how much time a week would you say it requires?

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Meh. Maybe two or three? I've got s very targeted niche topic, which helps. I pretty much do the minimum to establish regular pay, and note that older pieces are still generating income.

I don't view it as "art." I don't use it in my resumé. But I like being paid. I note that, like some of the other places I write for, there's a lot of crap out there. You have to be prepared to write with blinders on.

etrader said:

Nice point Medievalist. Writing for content mills does not add to the writer reputation to include it in his/her Resume. Is there a content-based website which is worth of this action? (to be included in the writer's Resume)?

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About.com seems to fit that bill. I can't really think of anything else though.

etrader said:

1. about.com is usually considered in the same category.
2. The fame of about.com is its guaranteed payment.
3. IMHO, the content of about.com has the same quality as similar sites like suite101.
4. about.com is not widely available for all writers, and it hires for a specified topics.

I think of a websites which accepts submission freely, but the articles are strictly edited.

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Personally, I don't see why Demand Studios wouldn't fit that category. Articles have to be ok'd by an editor before they are accepted, and they frequently get pretty picky and ask for re-writes, or even reject an article that doesn't meet their standards.

The pay is between $7.50 and $15.00 per piece. That's low, but wouldn't that just be equal to a "low paying market"? I'm sure some of you subscribe to "Funds for Writers Small Markets Newsletter". If markets pay even a few dollars, they are considered worthy of the newsletter, and I'm sure a writer with few clips to their name would include an acceptance by one of these markets on their resume.

When I was starting out, I found an online 'zine through either Writer's Weekly or Writing for Dollars that accepted one of my poems. The pay was a whopping $5.00. Did I put that 'zine on my resume as a market I've written for? You bet I did.

I honestly wouldn't list Examiner.com on my resume, since I could probably write "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" 10 times, post it, and it would appear on my Examiner page. Yes, maybe someone would eventually flag it, but the fact that I could do that at all is a result of "no one guarding the door" at Examiner.

At least Demand Studios has some sort of "gatekeeper" to keep out the schlock.

I would definitely put DS on a resume, depending on where I was sending the resume. DS work says "can regularly distill varying sources into coherent, informational articles which received editorial approval." It also says "is as self-starter; can reliably get work done without external guidance."

Thanks for the responses about Examiner, y'all.