Why Are The Writer Pools Suddenly So Slow?

[cathleengarvey]

I am in several writer pools and only submit content to them rather than to the general catalogue. For the last few years the work has been great as there are always plenty of requests to claim and the customers always purchase within a few days of the due date.

BUT, for the last two months all clients have suddenly started purchasing much later than the due date for the articles. Some articles are waiting 2 and 3 weeks for purchase so they miss the pay date for the period that they were written in and it rolls over to the next 2 weeks.

I'm starting to panic now because I have many articles waiting to be purchased at the moment and really need the money for Christmas. Usually I will just struggle on to the next pay date but now its kind of an emergency.

I'll admit I am terrible for submitting articles late, sometimes a few hours and sometimes a day or two. Is this my punishment or just karma? I hate submitting late but have a 1 year old daughter who seems to only play up around deadlines.

Anyone else noticed this? I know we can't force or even ask clients to buy their articles before payday but it would be so much nicer for the writers if they knew that whatever they claimed would get bought within the two weeks.

Just wanted to have a bit of a rant really, its my daughter's first Christmas (that she is old enough to enjoy) and am feeling sad about being poor all the bloody time. oh well

[LMasterson]

I have to admit, I grinned a bit when reading your post because it reminds me so much of me! I'm exactly the same as you in this regard. I work my behind off to complete some of those writer pool orders by the four-day deadlines given.... and then they sit there for two or three weeks un-purchased. It's quite disheartening sometimes, isn't it?

If it helps any - I live in a time zone that is 18 hours ahead of the US, so I never get paid until very late on the 16th and the 2nd of each month - unless there's a holiday. Or a weekend. Or a vague reason why they need to delay payments yet another day. When you consider all my bills are always due on the 15th or the 1st it makes budgeting less than fun at this end and makes it a really attractive option to work for private clients first over worrying about meeting four day deadlines where the client doesn't buy anything for weeks on end after you've submitted their work.

I'm really glad you had your mini-rant. It gave me an opportunity to do the same!

[cathleengarvey]

Oh good so its not just me getting frustrated with this!

I could understand if it was just one customer that buys late. Then we could make sure not to pick up large amounts of requests from the one customer so not to end up out of pocket at the end of the month, but when I wrote the original post I was waiting on 3 different customers to purchase. One has since bought the articles thank god!

I understand completely how difficult it is to budget, especially when after you get paid you still need to wait 2 or 3 days for the money to clear into the bank. At the moment I'm working two weeks behind, everything I wrote in November was bought this period and all the work from the first half of December looks like it will be bought in January.

Although CC still has not paid yet and if the customer *cough*pbrooke*cough* buys her articles before payment i will be back here to do the happy dance.

We'll see!

[LMasterson]

ha ha ha!! Yeah. That client. I currently have 26 articles sitting un-purchased for *that* client that were all completed on the 3-4 day deadline specified - and I was threatened to have my account penalized by two separate CC account managers for being a few hours overdue on some of those in the interim (sorry - I was sleeping. 18 hour time difference in waking hours and three to four week pay out difference to factor into considerations for work priorities!!)

Long story short - I'm a mom with kid and a large mortgage in Australia. I wait for the kid to be at school or asleep and then I work like crazy to meet the insanely tight deadlines...... and then they sit there untouched for weeks on end. Un-viewed. Un-purchased. Yay.

Meh.

If I get paid on the 17th of the month instead of the 15th like everyone else (because it's already after 11.30pm here on the 16th) I still have to wait a couple extra days for money to clear into my account. It's frustrating in the extreme.

The delay in payments from *that* client seems to be at odds with the really short deadlines they impose on us!

[cathleengarvey]

And the client didn't buy before payment. Again

I guess we will do Christmas in January....

[LMasterson]

Sigh. So frustrating.