Newbie - need advice

[Oxymoronica]

Hmm. How best to put this so I don't sound like a crazy person...

I'm a full time college student and have been part-time freelancing for various (relatively worthwhile - I won't touch the places that pay pennies anymore) content mills pretty successfully for the last year. I stumbled onto CC and I've been impressed with how much it SEEMS like people can make here... I don't know whether it's an issue of politeness or what, but whenever anyone asks "how much can I make here?" the answer is always "well I write here full time/part time/etc" instead of an actual dollar estimation... I know it's mostly based on how much effort you put into it, but it would be nice to get some dollar amounts from real people in comparison to the amount of articles they write and sell, along with how many hours they spend doing it, etc... Someone should make a chart.

In any case, I've had ten articles accepted so far with one currently in the review process. One has sold for full rights, two for usage, for a total of $110.50 last month after CC's cut. I've heard the ratio of articles sold to articles written improves over time so I'm not terribly concerned...yet. Even with the low percentage of my articles that have sold so far, I'm still making about the same amount of money per hour I would have at one of my other gigs for the hours I put into all ten of them (earnings for just the three that sold divided by the hours for all ten). I did not put a whole lot of time toward it, admittedly (I'm still focusing on my other gigs for now because they have actual deadlines).

I would leap for joy if I could scrap everywhere else I write and write purely for CC. I'm afraid to do that, though, without some security. My problem so far is that, with school and my other writing, I don't have a whole lot of spare time to devote to testing out CC. I'm hopeful about my success so far, but I want to get some answers before I start doing away with some of my other gigs and focusing here. Hopefully you all can help me

How "secure" is writing for CC? I know they have a three strikes rule. I have had the majority of my ten articles accepted with no problems so far, but a couple have been returned to me because I'm terrible at writing conclusion paragraphs. I don't want to think I have hit it big here after a few months and then discover that, oops, I screwed up three times in a row and now have no source of income anymore. I've heard both ends of the spectrum - there are posts on the forum that reassure writers that the three strikes rule is more of a "weed out" for insufficient writers and that writers who regularly have content accepted should be fine, but I have also heard that somewhat successful CC writers have been banned for the three strikes rule. What's the real deal here?

I know that, as long as I can dodge getting banned for making careless mistakes, my income will be largely based on my own time and effort. I guess I just need someone to hold my hand and tell me that, yes, CC is sustainable for years at a time for people who may make an occasional human mistake and, yes, the income around this joint is steady enough to make (I'm aiming low here so i don't get my hopes up) about $500 bucks a month reliably... <input encouragement here>

[carpenjoyce]

The problem with trying to answer your question is that there are so many variables. More sophisticated articles on legal, scientific, and medical topics are going to sell for way more than " Ten tips for a great first date" or similar things that almost any decent writer could write. Demand also enters into it. Write a highly technical article on some disease no one has ever heard of and it may not sell at all, no matter how much technical expertise it took to write it. When I started here about a year ago, I was so skeptical I only wrote two articles. Months went by, and I heard nothing. Then one day I got an email saying I'd sold a usage for $25. I visited the website, only to find I'd missed an offer on the other article as well. That got me interested, so I raised my prices and started writing things that seemed to go for higher rates. Sales gradually rose. Last month, I made over $1400, with most articles selling around .15 a word. I have fewer than 100 articles on the site, so you can see the potential. (I don't expect to be able to do this well every month, however--a large number of these sales were to one individual) There are a few people who make a living just on what they make at cc, or so I've heard.

Having said that, though, there is always a danger in relying on any one source of income. The site could get bought out, merge with some other site with different ideas, or whatever. Unfortunately, I haven't found any other site I'd be willing to write for. The pay is just too low. The only exception is the occasional private marketplace requests on Helium, which sometime offer decent rates. There are way too few of them to amount to much, though, and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to qualify for them in the first place.

[Oxymoronica]

Thanks for your reply! That helps me get a picture of it. Even if $1400 a month isn't the norm for you here, it's nice to know it is possible after a year here- and with fewer than 100 articles to boot. That's encouraging to me in a big way.

Yeah, I do guess it is risky to put all your eggs in one basket, but... I'm the kind of person that tends to forget which baskets are lying around with eggs in them. Plus even if I had a "real" job, there would always be the same danger of getting laid off/company going under, etc. That probably never goes away. I'm just looking for the most profitable basket to gamble on, if that makes sense.

Again, I really appreciate your actual numbers, even if it was probably rude of me to ask. Anyone else? And also, any information on the three strikes thing? That worries me a bit...

[Celeste Stewart]

And also, any information on the three strikes thing?

If you have 10 articles accepted and several sales under your belt, you're off to a great start. Sure, we all worry about making mistakes, but it sounds like you're doing just great. Since you've had a couple returned for problems with conclusions, you know you need to work on that, so go ahead and focus on writing great conclusions. CC wants you to succeed. It's not like CC has a bunch of editors hanging out with their clipboards just waiting for you to mess up one more conclusion so they can kick you out.

As far as security goes, freelancing isn't the most secure choice on the planet but as you said neither is working a regular job. I've been writing for CC since 2006. I believe the site began in 2004. So, in terms of Internet longevity, CC's been around a while - and it keeps getting better.

The money -- it's really up to each of us. If you have ten articles that earned you $100 in a month, it's reasonable to assume that you can replicate that next month or multiply it. Since you want to make about $500 in a month, you can reasonably assume that you need to submit five times as many articles as you did initially. So, can you submit 50 similarly priced articles in a month? Fuzzy math, but that's about 12 articles a week. If you can do that, you're on track to meet your goal. Conversely, if you only submit a few articles next month, then those four figure paydays aren't going to arrive any time soon.

Of course you can tweak your results and goals by trying different things like submitting more articles to public requests or pricing your articles differently, but at least you have a benchmark. Here's what I like to do: I take a dollar figure as my monthly income goal and then divide it by the number of business days in a month. That's how much I have to write at a minimum to reach my goal. So, if I want to earn $1,000 and the month has 20 business days in it, I know I better submit at least $50 worth of content (after the CC cut) each day (or $250 per week). Of course this doesn't account for articles that don't sell right away, so be aware of that when you set your goals. The point is to figure out what you need to do in order to reach your monthly income target and break it down into daily goals - and then write

Sounds like you're doing just fine, so jump on in... CC is the real deal!

[jadedragon]

Celeste has a useful spreadsheet for tracking your submissions, prices and sales.

I'll add that you can reasonably expect 70% of your articles to sell over time. So if you submitted 10 articles, already sold 3 and are happy with your hourly rate based on those 3 sales than you will be really happy when another 4 of those sell eventually.

One of the keys to regular cc income is to build up a bank of articles. Think of it as stocking the shelves of a store. The more variety you have for sale the more sales you will have.

[jellygator]

I'm as new as you are, Oxy, so I can't speak to your sales question.

I was a tad paranoid about the three strikes thing, too. After another poster mentioned something to the effect that it was only mentioned on the forums, I went back to review and sure enough, couldn't find a reference to it elsewhere. Between that and the number of people who have said it's not hard and fast, but gives CC an out to get rid of bad writers, I've relaxed.

[nichewriter]

CC does mention the three strikes rule thing, although I imagine most people don't really read TOS's in their entirety. It's stated in the author registration page at http://www.constant-content.com/area/registerauthor.htm - third paragraph.

"I understand that Constant Content reserves the rights to decline any work they feel does not meet their requirements. I am welcome to submit other work for approval even if one article has been declined. However, I understand that, if three articles are declined, Constant Content will accept no more submissions of my work."

~S