Constant Content

Hello all,
I very recently joined Constant Content and look forward to writing for this site regularly. It is my ultimate goal to write enough to earn a part-time income.
I have two quick questions:
1). Is anyone else finding Constant Content to be slow right now? I usually receive an email re: public requests every other day or so (and have for the past month). However, I haven't received any emails from them since October 27th. A number of new public requests have been posted between Oct 27th and now. What happened to my email notices?
2). I submitted my first article for review on the morning of Nov 1st. As it is after business hours now, tomorrow will be day 8 and counting... This article was also for a public request (which has not yet expired fortunately). I've read through the forums and most people say wait times average 2-4 days and no one has said they had to wait 8 or more days. If I need to make any revisions, this will add up to be a very long time before one item can be posted for sale. Should I be concerned yet?
So.. i just wanted to touch base and see if anyone else is finding Constant Content to be inconsistent and/or slow right now, or is there something wrong with my account (everything else on my account appears normal)? I am looking forward to making a real effort here, but at the same time, I am formulating my "newbie" first impressions and so far...
Thank you all who post on forums, I've found your input and advice very helpful!
Fern.

Hi and welcome. Email alerts are notoriously inconsistent. Try following CC on Twitter (they're much more consistent than email) or logging in and checking for new requests each day. Review times really do vary. While 8 days is a tad on the long side, it's not unheard of.

Ok, thanks Celeste. Logging into CC for public requests is no problem, but waiting this long for reviews is not great. Hopefully the article will be reviewed within another day or so and that this review time is not going to be the norm.
Thanks for your reply.

I was contacted by a person who had made a public request. His message quoted an e-mail he had received from CC informing him that an article titled "MY TITLE" was under review for his request. So I *think* that if you submit it within the requested deadline, it will go to the requester even if it is not reviewed on time, for whatever that's worth.

jellygator wrote:I was contacted by a person who had made a public request. His message quoted an e-mail he had received from CC informing him that an article titled "MY TITLE" was under review for his request. So I *think* that if you submit it within the requested deadline, it will go to the requester even if it is not reviewed on time, for whatever that's worth.

That is correct.

Whew! It took 10 days, but my first article was accepted! Now I'm happy again... Thanks for your support.
Fern.

I think the queue is backed up right now. It used to take a few days, then CC put up a message that they were taking longer. After the message came down, they started taking even longer... My last article took ten days to be reviewed and approved.

Long story short, a ton of writers from another site may be trying their hands here. Not complaining, just explaining a likely reason why the wait is longer. The editors are busy! The good news is everything gets reviewed eventually.

I also wonder if writers wanting to make a little extra money for the holiday season are submitting a bit more right now. Wouldn't blame them!

It's the zombs from the DMS site. DMS is basically kicking a good portion of their contractors, so people are scrambling to write somewhere. CC is one of the places that keeps getting thrown around by other writers, so there is an influx of noobs. I'm seeing about a week wait. If you write at least a few each week, you'll see continual reviews.

I've had one that's been there for 10 days and still nothing. Hopefully it will be reviewed soon. I've had six approved previously and it never took this long. Of course, since I'm a DMS Zomb, maybe they've put my articles into a special category. Hard to say.

It is running at 11 days at the moment.

How do they handle it when this sort of thing happens? Do they increase the amount of editors they have? Or just plow through?

Probably have to wait out the influx of the DMS zombs. They had 20k writers (I think?) and there's a lot of them that only wrote for DMS and they are searching for a place to spam up. Content farms are dead, so CC is one place that's been tossed around their forums. I'm in one of their sections that is taking a longer time to die, but DMS is basically "firing" people in a clever, indirect way.

They took away the counter, claiming that it caused glitches, but when I started there were 30k titles. They went up to 300k, Panda hit and it's estimated that there are around 50k titles. Anyone without special permissions has 0 work. That's a whole lotta writers scrambling to find somewhere else.

ETA: Textbroker is also getting flooded with zombs and they pay like crap. Suite101, Writer Access, and some others I can't think of are getting flooded with canned zombs. I think CC will continue to have long wait times until things settle. It might even get worse. There are a couple DMS sections still alive, but once the whole ship sinks, online places will get more people.

We are facing longer than usual wait times right now, but will be adding additional staff to bring wait times back down to normal levels very soon.

I'm not bothered by the review times on spec articles. If you produce every day, you'll have reviews every day. Just be sure to submit time-sensitive spec work well in advance.