Newbie needs DS help please!

I kind of asked this in another DS thread but maybe it I'll have better luck starting my own thread.

I was rejected by DS when I applied about a month ago. I submitted a rather long research paper (maybe 1500 words or so) from a sociology class I am taking at my university as my sample to DS.

They told me they weren't looking for my type of writing (or something along those lines) in their email.

Are they looking for more seo type of stuff? I've done quite a bit of that since I've started freelancing. Or what kind of content articles are they looking for?

I checked out a contributing editor on ehow (someone on here mentioned that the contributing editors articles are the ones that come from ds writers) and, to tell you the truth, they seem very long. For instance, the Ehow of the Day today is How to Survive a Scandal and it is 899 words long. Is that the typical length of a ds article submission?

I would really like to write for ds. It will help me reach my goals for 2010 and, I hope, eventually make it possible to focus on my other writings.

Could someone please give me some pointers on what they are looking for? Please help a newbie out!

Thank you for your help TB. Do you write for DS?

I am on textbroker and have done a number of things for them. I dropped the ball with Internet Brands and need to submit my sample to them still.

DS is attractive to me because of the $15 an article pay rate and the biweekly pay. I have a Textbroker article in my queue now that is worth up to $14 but most aren't worth that much.

I can't remember the pay rate for IB. I'll have to follow through on that one though.

Thank you for all the ideas everyone!

I posted an article in SYW that I think is closer to what ds is looking for. Could some of you go check out please?

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4406506#post4406506

lonestarlibrarian said:

In the resume, I included a broad spectrum of writing experience, most of which had little to do with the kind of writing DS deals in. For the sample itself, however, I modified an artsy-crafty how-to I'd written for a newsletter so that it was closer to DS's guidelines. I'm sure if you try submitting an article similar to what they publish, you'd have no problems.

Click to expand...

When you send it your resume, do you include links to your blog or somewhere else that you have your samples posted?

Thank you for the advice Ang.

I'm going to work on the article some more and maybe I post it again to see if it is better in other people's eyes as well as my own.

Thank you for your help.