Constant Content

Hi people!

Constant Content has been fantastic for me for most of the last eighteen months, but recently, I am having almost no sales. In spite of publishing more articles per week than usual this year so far, I have sold next to nothing since December. In my experience, articles rarely sale if they don't sale within the first week or so of publishing. I can no longer financially support myself from freelance writing, so I'm looking for new things to do. I have a lot of good content on popular subjects available for sale and I am thinking of taking some of my articles down and progressively publishing them over several new blogs (one travel, one tech, one lifestyle and one science) with the hopes of earning money from ad revenue and affiliate programs. Has anyone else had any luck with this sort of thing? Alternatively, perhaps it would be worth posting them on a revenue sharing site. I've tried Infobarrel before, but articles there tend to earn a shockingly low 4-5 cents per month each. Has anyone had success with this or similar sites?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Sales seem to be on a low swing right now, but it's not the first time. I've looked around for CC alternatives to expand into, but I haven't found any with the same business model, which is one that I like. If you're trying to support yourself, you definitely need to sell in as many markets as possible. I highly suggest picking up the latest copy of Writer's Market (the Deluxe version is only a little more and includes a year subscription to their website). Among other things, it includes a very extensive chart of what you can expect to earn in various markets, publications to sell to and many useful articles. A new edition comes out every year.

I also took a look at my numbers and more than 60% of sales came more than two weeks after the article posted. About a third of those (20% of total) were more than two months after submission. There's a lot of cycles involved in selling articles, mostly centered around seasonal events and holidays. In another month or two, I expect sales of spring-related articles to pick up, including baseball, St. Patrick's Day, spring cleaning, etc.

If I have an article that doesn't sell within a time period I am happy with, I change it from full rights to usage and then place it on one of my web sites that is all articles I have written. I do have Google adsense on that site and although it took about three months to start generating income from it, it is now bringing in a monthly amount which varies. The best thing I have done is to tweet each article individually twice a day, and my articles have been picked up and retweeted and brought thousands of new visitors to my site. I have also gained seven new private accounts from these tweets, which is something I hadn't expected. I also post these articles in my Linkedin account, as well as Tumblr, reddit, and Pinterist. Additionally I have been writing for three travel magazines for several years now. If you have decent photography skills and a good camera, this is a market you might want to explore.

I have a good sell % at CC, but I have noticed that average prices are dropping. A lot of the newer writers are happy getting $15.00 or $20.00 for an article because it is so much more than they were getting paid at other sites. If the articles are decent, a buyer can get two or three of their articles for the price of one of mine. I am one of those people who doesn't take offers. I only lower my price if it doesn't sell and I determine to change it to use. I'm not going to stop writing for CC, and I am not going to write for pennies per word. Just keep building your portfolio.

Lifetime earnings at Yahoo(Associated Content) doing upfronts and page views with 200+ articles on the site since 2006 -- somewhere in the $2K range, maybe even $3K but that's about it. Lifetime earnings at CC from 20006 ---> add a whole bunch of zeros to that.

Honestly, I think the whole revenue share/ad revenue thing is long past its prime. If CC's not quite working for you for the time being, the answer isn't to go chasing after those illusive rev-share pennies. Other options exist including marketing yourself directly to local businesses that need writers. Spend an hour writing for possible pennies or an hour contacting local businesses - which do you think is a better use of your time in the long run?

CC is kind of in the middle between content mill drudgery and higher paying markets (which sometimes have their own drudgery factors to deal with but pay a whole lot more for the effort).

Ironically, I have found several writing jobs on Craigslist listed in the gigs section. Still, they haven't paid nearly as well as CC (when I'm actually writing articles). I'd live to see the CC business model applied to a creative writing site.

You might consider writing articles outside your normal niche/genre. I like to write computer and technology articles, but doccasionallyly write outside those topics. An article I wrote on a dare has sold several times for usage here. I even had a couple of my political rants sell here when they were still allowed. How-To articles on many topics sell decently. You might also look into technical writing as a sideline. More and more websites and companies are looking for writers along those lines.

Personally, I absolutely hate SEO writing - especially with the recent changes Google implemented. Those changes have affected quite a few websites in terms of hits (unless they're paying customers of Google). There is only one revenue sharing site I'm a member of that I'm making more than a buck or two a month, so Celeste is pretty accurate in her description of the ad/share revenue business model.

I've been mostly absent from CC for the last year, but I still make money from here. Keep writing and submitting your articles. Consider putting some of them for usage sale only and marketing/posting them elsewhere.

I got really excited last week when I sold four articles at once. But it's been crickets since then. I'm thinking that maybe I've overpriced my stuff...but I hate to undervalue my work. Here's hoping that things pick up soon!