what percentage of content is purchased?

[ardeth]

How do you get into the private request thing?

I've heard on the grapevine that the bestselling articles on CC deal with technogeek stuff and health. Is that true?

So nobody here has any specific other writing websites to recommend. When that question is asked on the AC boards, people seem to come out of the woodwork with websites and their opinion of them (and of course, they often disagree about their merits, or lack of, so it can be confusing).

The print media seems to pay better, doesn't it? I've written a few articles in the past for zines and I've received hundreds of dollars for each of them (although I've had to wait for months to get paid). Why does the Internet pay so little to writers compared to print? Is too much competition driving down the compensation rates?

[Ed]

Web writing pays less because webmasters have to rely on ad revenue tocompensate them for what they've paid for an article. One article may only make pennies a day, and even that can be a gamble.

In addition, there is more creative freedom in regards to writing for print publications, so the writing is often more interesting for readers - therefore commanding higher prices. Web writing requires a certain straightforwardness because search engines have to be able to find the article and people have short attention spans. Most writers spend considerably more time working on an article for a print publication than they would for the web. Website articles are, by necessity, often shorter than articles for print publications, as well.

Ed

[Celeste Stewart]

Yes, and when you see requests that are only willing to pay say $20, you can't afford to spend too much time on them compared to writing articles for several hundred dollars.

You can only get private requests by being noticed by the customers somehow which is generally done by submitting relevant articles to their public requests. When a public requester starts to notice a particular writer consistantly meets their needs, they might send "private" requests their way.

As far as the bestselling articles here -- they vary depending on what's going on at any given time. Right now, a big customer is buying tons of women's lifestyle pieces. This time last year, do-it-yourself articles were hot. The "technogeek" articles usually go to specific writers from just one or two tech-oriented customers - so don't be scared off if you can't write technogeek because its not like that's the main thing going on here. Gardening was really popular when I started. It varies. Travel articles have been good lately.

Just keep an eye on the requests and the recently solds and you'll see what's hot.

[ardeth]

It looks like I need to pick up my writing speed, choose the right subjects (or the right requests), and shorten my content to survive here.

Thanks again for your thoughts and suggestions. Try, try again.