Question about the new Public Request system

[JD]

When an article, which has been tagged as having been written for a public request, is approved, as well as being sent to the customer, is it placed in the general list of articles? The acceptance email I received after submitting a tagged 'public request' article earlier today says, ‘If the customer decides against purchasing this article, we automatically put your article into our listings of available articles.' This leads me to believe that the article is not part of the general articles for sale that everyone sees when they come to the site (and I can't see it anywhere there). However, when I look at the articles listed under 'My Profile,' I can see it. Can someone please clarify?

Thanks.

Jane

[Ed]

You are correct. The article will not be available for general sale immediately. It is my understanding that, after the request expires or is closed, the article will then be available for general purchase.

Ed

[JD]

Ok, thanks for that, Ed. My next question then is: how long is the customer given to make up his or her mind as to whether or not they want it? Does the accompanying email advise them that they have x number of days/weeks/months in which to decide?

Thanks.

Jane

[Ed]

I'm pretty sure that this is limited to the expiry date that the customer sets when he or she creates a request for content.

[HayleyWriter]

Aargh! I didn't know this. I have submitted an article that was really general, but could have been appropriate for a request, so I used the new system to link it to that. I thought the article would be available for others to purchase as well, but now it looks as though I could have to wait ages for a sale on this article. Not all the requesters purchase all the articles linked to the request, but I have had other customers purchase the articles. Some of the requests also don't seem to have expiry dates just zeros, so does this mean the article will NEVER be available to someone else to purchase? If so, I think I'll continue with the old system and just send the requester a link to the approved article, which is available for everyone to purchase.

[Celeste Stewart]

Yeah, for public requests, perhaps a user-generated time allotment or some sort of control where we can manually move it for general sale might be good. I've had many articles sell to people other than the original requester and would hesitate to give a customer an undetermined amount of time to review an article exclusively. I can see that it would be good for the customer to have a few days to review the articles before making a decision and not having to worry about someone else coming along and buying the content before he has a chance to do so, but I'd like to be able to have some control over how long I'm willing to let the article sit (say one week instead of the entire length of the request which could be who knows how long) before it goes public.

[Ed]

There was some discussion about this issue before the system was rolled out. Let me pass along your concerns.

[JD]

I would support these comments. Another point I’d like to make is that I liked the transparency of the old procedure and don’t know why it’s not present with the new one (the articles being placed in the general list of articles). It was good to know how many writers were writing to public requests, which topics they were choosing, what they were pricing their articles at, and so on. Also, as there's no guarantee that a customer will buy an article that's written for his or her request, keeping the article in the general content list means that there's a chance that someone else will buy it - and if that person buys it before the customer gets to it, then so be it (as far as I'm concerned, all's fair in love and the world of freelance writing).

I think this new procedure would be more suitable for private requests. At least with a private request, a writer has a guarantee of sorts that his or her article will be bought so probably isn’t that concerned about it appealing to a wider audience (for purchase by another if the customer it’s intended for doesn’t buy it). Also, with private requests, it’s not important to know what a writer is writing about or how much he or she is pricing articles as it’s not something that any other writer is really going to be interested in.

However, having said that, if we can choose not to check the 'public request' button when we submit an article (that is for a public request), then that means that we can carry on as we did before...?

Thanks.

Jane

[Ed]

It's also my understanding that the Q/A system will be done away with, or at least become inoperable.

[Celeste Stewart]

The thing I don't like is being at the mercy of the request's expiration. Sure, the request will expire in a few months time, unless the customer chooses to keep renewing it. For example, I see one request expires in 60 days, which is way too long in my opinion to wait and see if the customer will buy the article. I'd say if the customer hasn't purchased the article in a week's time, then he's not interested and I'd like to have the article available for other buyers. But, the way it is now, the article would be locked until the request expires in 60 days. Plus, if the request is ongoing, conceivably, the requester would renew the request and I assume the article would remain unavailable to others unless there was a way to release it back to the general public.

On the other hand, for private requests, yes, this is exactly what we've been wanting! There's nothing worse than finding out that an article sold to the wrong person - both for the writer and the customer. But for general articles, a little control on how long we give exclusive review time to the requester would be great.

Here's another question, when the article is released, will it be buried within the category or will it go on top, as if it were just written? I imagine some customers regularly browse certain categories for content and if an article is buried based on the date it was originally submitted, it would likely be overlooked whereas if it's placed as a new submission, it would have a better chance of getting noticed.

[Ed]

I can see both sides of the issue: If I was a customer, I would want to wait until I got all of the submissions, and then choose from the ones that best suited me. If I was an author,I would want to be able to get the sale, no matter who it was from.

I've emailed Support and I assure you they hear your concerns. I'm sure they'll check in and add your brainstorms to their own. It may take a couple of days for a solution that works for everyone to be created . . . and I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything.

[Celeste Stewart]

I have no problem with letting customers review the article for a certain amount of time, if reasonable, before the article goes public. But what amount of time is that? It would be great if we had a way of specifying how much time it would remain for the customer's exclusive review when we submit the article - like a choice of one week, two weeks, or the duration of the request. That way, the customer gets first dibs, but the article won't sit forever doing nothing.

[HayleyWriter]

I agree with Celeste. I don't want articles sitting around indefinitely, especially ones that are more general and could possibly be picked up by another customer. One or two weeks should be enough for the public request customer to have exclusive views of the article. That gives the customer time to review the article and decide if it is worth purchasing, or if it doesn't really meet the customer's needs. If the requesting customer doesn't purchase the article, it goes back to the general articles section so that other customers can review and purchase it. I am already regretting linking my article to the request. I hadn't realised it would make it unavailable to other customers for the next month!

Also, what happens if there are similar requests at the same time? If you link your article to the first request in, but the customer hasn't purchased it, are you able to link it to the second and new request for a different customer. An example would be the driver articles - in the previous requests list, there were several requests for driver articles, and the requests appeared to be from different customers. If I had written a driver article for the first requester, but mine wasn't purchased because it was similar to other author's submissions at the time, would I be able to link it to the second customer's request, even if the first request had expired yet?

[JD]

Hayley

From what I can see, yes, you can link an article submitted for and tagged as a public request to another customer (at least I think you can). This is what I find a little confusing. If you look at your list of articles under 'My Profile' you should see the articles you have submitted and tagged as public requests. So while those articles are actually in the system, they're just not showing in the general articles content list (which is undoubtedly what most customers browse through when they come to the site). Therefore, I imagine that if a customer were to search for an article using keywords and those keywords matched your article then it would come up for their viewing. That's my understanding anyway.

Jane

[HayleyWriter]

Hi Jane,

I checked by searching for the keywords, as if I was a customer browsing and my article did not show up. It looks as though I have to wait until the request has expired to get the article to be available to other customers. Unfortunately, this is another month away! If the article is then buried instead of showing as a newly available article, as Celeste has suggested could happen, I definitely won't be happy! I wouldn't have submitted this particular article to the request, if I had known or I would have linked it to request after approval.

We definitely need to be able to put some kind of time limit to how long a public request customer has EXCLUSIVE access to the article!

Thanks for trying though, Jane, I appreciate your comments.

Hayley