Hi! Newbie with questions here!

[StacyJordan]

Hello everyone! I'm brand new to CC, having finally gotten six articles approved (been trying for 10 days now to get 10 approved but dealing with very slow review times.) Two of the six were written for the requested content list, but apparently the client turned them down as they are still sitting in my content queue.

So my questions are:

1. How long did it take before you sold an article, and how many articles did you have active at that time?
2. Do review times ever get faster than three days? It's pretty agonizing to have something sitting there for 3-5 days only to have it rejected for something small, then change the small thing and wait another 3-5 days for approval.

I want very much to eventually see some income from CC, but I'm wondering if I should plan for it to take, say, three to six months to sell my first article. I have about 700 (yes, really!) pieces to upload, but with review times, should I expect it to take at least two years to get them all approved and posted?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Judith]

Hi Stacy,
I have been here about 3 1/2 months and sold my 17th article today. I have only submitted 32 articles and 3 of them are being reviewed at the moment. With all the articles you have you should sell more and faster. I think inventory is the key and as far as the wait time...well it's worth it for the quality (and repeat) customers. Good luck!!

[jadedragon]

Since you have 6 approved now you should be able to start uploading as many as you want at a time. No need to wait for one to be approved before submitting another. Give them a good proofread and load them up!

[michaelsmoker]

I sold the very first article I submitted to CC. It was to a public request, and it was approved within about 15 minutes. Payment for full rights came about six days later. Since then I've sold one more in the past three weeks.

The statistics I've heard from one source is that 75% of the articles posted sell within two years of approval. One writer I just talked to, however, has sold 14 out of 29 articles over the course of 12 months. Results obviously vary. But patience seems to be the key, because there appear to be customers who make periodic "sweeps" when they buy up every single article they find on a particular topic. Don't be too discouraged if an article seems to languish for a period of time because you never know when the right customer will come along and buy it.

Having said that, no single content writing site is a place to get rich or even make a living wage. It's good to diversify and have a combination of writing sites and private clients, as well as a day job or other source of steady income.

Michael

[StacyJordan]

Since you have 6 approved now you should be able to start uploading as many as you want at a time. No need to wait for one to be approved before submitting another. Give them a good proofread and load them up!

I have 12 in my queue right now. Six approved, six not yet reviewed. When I try to upload another, it says I can't until 10 articles total have been approved. I'm now on day 11 of trying to get to 10.

I was making a really good living at Demand Studios for five months, during which time I wrote a minimum of 40 articles a week and they were approved within a day, sometimes within minutes. Had great scores and was chosen for two special projects. Then, without warning, I suddenly got fired for plagiarizing myself. The articles for which I was fired were, "How to Remove Hair Dye," "How to Remove Black Hair Dye," "How to Remove Black Dye from Hair," and "How to Remove Dye from Black Hair." The only way to remove hair dye is with a soap cap, which involves mixing 1/4 cup shampoo with 1/8 cup bleach powder and 1/8 cup peroxide. Because I wrote that recipe out four times, even though I changed the rest of the articles, I was let go with an email and told not to write back and question it. That was last week and I've barely slept since. I am a giant stress ball at the moment, having had to cancel Christmas in an attempt to keep my apartment, thus my concern about ever having my articles approved or purchased here. Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it.

[aprilk10]

Stacy,

Sorry to hear about your bad luck with DS. I was accepted there back in April, but haven't submitted anything. After being accepted, I found alot of negative comments about them. I am sure some people do very well there, but I haven't felt like dealing with them yet. I'm not sure that I will. Constant Content is a great place to sell work. Some on here make an excellent living from their CC proceeds. I have not yet been able to accomplish that. While I have sold about 50% of my articles, I do keep my options open at other content writing sites. I have found that it is best to have a variety of places to draw an income from in the freelancing field. For example, I have been having a dry month here (though I did have an article sell last night--first one in a month!), but have been able to tap into my other resources for income. Of course, the more you submit here, the more you will sell! Anyway, good luck!

[StacyJordan]

April, how many articles do you have for sale? Hearing the "one a month" report really terrifies me, given that I was having around 40-45 a week accepted at DS. After three days of waiting for review, I just had three CCs rejected this morning. In one case, it was because I left out a single word. In another, a craft article, it was because I wrote "allow glue to dry" instead of "allow THE glue to dry" and "heat plastic bead with a blow dryer" instead of "heat THE plastic bead with a blow dryer." So far, almost all the articles I have submitted have been rejected at first and then accepted once I made changes (I had a single one accepted on first reading.) I'm not someone who's never written before...I have an MFA and a novel coming out from a major publisher in January. (Oh, if only those things made money!) Just had pieces accepted at a national magazine and a serious NYC newspaper, but neither pay, which was a huge shock to me. I don't mean to sound like a braggart, really -- I'm just scared I'm going to get canned again for leaving out words like "the."

Is it true that the editors here don't edit, they just accept or reject? It seems like it would be so much more productive to just insert a "the" rather than write out a long explanation of why they're rejecting (and suggest I brush up on grammar for leaving out the "the!") I really, really want to stick around here, though, so I'm trying to figure out exactly what they want.

[aprilk10]

Sorry Stacy, didn't mean to scare you. That is just my dry spell lately--Not the norm. I also need to take into consideration that I have not been submitting much here lately. I currently only have 115 articles with 58 of them having sold. I imagine if I submitted more I could increase my percentage of sales. The one that sold last night was just approved yesterday and sold by the 5th view (1 of those views was me!). It was actually an article that I had submitted on another site that was sent back for revisions...the client (on the other site) wanted more "finesse" and was a bit rude, saying he/she didn't want a "dictionary definition." So I scrapped the order to let someone else do it and placed it on here. The very same day it was approved it sold for $20 more than the request on the other site! Just goes to show that just because one person doesn't like something, it doesn't mean someone else won't like it! In contrast to my recent dry spell, I sold a large number of articles between July and October. Keep in mind that I do not submit nearly as much here as I should. It sounds as though you have many articles ready to go. I imagine you will do well. At least for me, it seems to go in spurts. I will have a dry spell and then suddenly an article will sell and it seems to set off a domino effect of sorts! I am hoping since I had a sale last night that more will be on the way soon. Like I said, the more you submit the more you will sell. I have really only submitted a couple of articles in the last month, so can't expect much! I've just been keeping busy at other sites. If CC were the only place I submitted to, I imagine I would be doing much better (I hope).

As far as the editors, they do expect you to edit your own work. They are very helpful about pointing out mistakes or making suggestions, but expect us to make the corrections to our own work. I actually appreciate that, as it helps us to improve our writing skills and develop a better understanding of what is expected. Keep in mind though that if a piece is sent back for revision, it does not necessarily mean that they have reviewed the entire piece and pointed out every mistake. Sometimes they stop at the first error they find. If you have an article sent back, be sure to thoroughly proofread it again for further mistakes. Don't let anything you read here about down times or authors not selling for long periods scare you off. There are some here who seem to do very well. They are also the ones who contribute on a regular basis I think!

[StacyJordan]

I'm definitely reading everything very thoroughly and just pulled two down that were waiting for review. I knew they were written in instructional rather than conversational style and would therefore also be rejected. I fixed them and resubmitted. I'm now reading samples of other authors' published content...and just found two separate pieces where sentences were ended with prepositions! There was also one with two incorrect past tense verbs in the sample. If leaving out "the" gets you rejected but ending sentences with prepositions is okay, I definitely have a lot to learn! Right now I'm just living in fear of getting fired again, and waiting for the chance to upload more articles. *crosses fingers*

Oh, and I also noticed that in the message to potential buyers it says authors are required to upload 70% of their article as a sample but on the submission page it says 30%. Can someone tell me which is correct?

[Judith]

Hi Stacy,
Don't get discouraged. I have a masters in English and one in Journalism. I was a book editor for 16 years and have ghost written and published a few books of my own and have another under way. All that plus I was a broadcast journalist for over 20 years. I did my internship at the LA Times. When I started here about 3 1/2 months ago, I had plenty of articles come back for little corrections here and there. CC has to have rules. They have high standards. Even the best writers have off days, form bad writing habits and it's not a good thing to edit our own work. Don't take it personal when you get an article back. Trust me, CC wants your work to sell and they know it has to be better than the writing at other sites to get the quality buyers who will pay $50.00, $100.00 or more for good writing. I still get a return here and there but even if I think it's ok the way it is, I change it. I'm retiring soon and this will suppliment my income. I am selling articles here every week and I plan to sell a lot more. If CC wants a comma or doesn't want it ... I don't mind changing it. Stay positive and keep writing!!!1

[aprilk10]

Stacy,

We must provide at least 1/3 of the article in the sample. It is a really a matter of preference if you choose to only show this much or the full article though. In my personal experience, I have found that clients prefer to see the entire article before purchasing. Only showing 1/3 of it (even split into sections) won't stop a content thief, so I prefer to display the entire article in most cases.

Concerning prepositions at the end of a sentence, there are some instances where it is acceptable. Check out Grammar Girl's Top Ten Grammar Myths. I have noticed a few mistakes slipping through on occassion lately though. It does happen. CC has also been going through some transition lately, as we went from only one editor to a team of editors in July. Whenever there is transition in the workplace, there are generally adjustments to be made.

Keep submitting and good luck!

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/to ... myths.aspx

[StacyJordan]

Concerning prepositions at the end of a sentence, there are some instances where it is acceptable. Check out Grammar Girl's Top Ten Grammar Myths. I have noticed a few mistakes slipping through on occassion lately though. It does happen. CC has also been going through some transition lately, as we went from only one editor to a team of editors in July.

Whoa, there was ONE PERSON editing the work of 10,000 writers?! How is that even possible?

And this was definitely an incorrect preposition usage: it was (nouns changed to protect the author) "the spoon you stir the water with."

[Celeste Stewart]

I'm now reading samples of other authors' published content...and just found two separate pieces where sentences were ended with prepositions! There was also one with two incorrect past tense verbs in the sample. If leaving out "the" gets you rejected but ending sentences with prepositions is okay, I definitely have a lot to learn!

Hi and welcome to CC!

The old grammar rule forbidding ending sentences with prepositions has fallen out of favor.(http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS ... ons03.html).

I've found that it's not productive worrying about the other mistakes that have slipped past the editors. With tens of thousands of articles, the sheer volume alone means an occasional error will slip by. Add to that the site's evolving standards and you'll find lots of older articles with minor mistakes. Back when there was only one person handling submissions, the lack of time to nitpick debatable errors could have led to some minor "errors" being allowed through. What matters most is the current article you're submitting and the current reviewer's thoughts on it.

It may be tough to match the 40 sales per week you were getting from Demand Studios here at first. However, it might not be so tough to match the same dollar figure with fewer sales. From what I understand, DS pays $10 or $15 each. Just in the last day or so, a couple of $100-$150 requests have been issued. The prices here, even after the CC cut, are decent. That said, writing for CC isn't guaranteed. You can't submit 40 articles here in a week and count on an immediate $400-$600 as you might be able to at DS (unless you have private requests). Do any CC writers make $400-$600 a week here? Absolutely, but it doesn't happen overnight. Hang in there, you're on the right track. . .

[StacyJordan]

Thank you Celeste. You are an inspiration! I was web-stalking you and being in awe. Also, you have the same first name as Stewart Copeland's daughter, so score.

I'm still trying to figure out how one person edited 10,000 authors. And I will forever use "with which." I can't help it, I'm a fiend like that.

[Celeste Stewart]

Maybe I AM Stewart Copeland's daughter. . . There's also a basketball player with the same name. I must really annoy those other Celestes when they google themselves.