Google made a move, but the content sites are safe (at least for now)

Matt Cutts, the search-quality guy from Google who posted the now infamous promise to crack down on "content farms" last week, announced that Google made a change to its algorithm today.

It's a small change, which Cutts said affects "less than half a percent of search results ... enough that someone might really notice."

Experiment:

Yesterday, as part of a forum discussion on this topic, I had googled the phrase "how to cure an ingrown toenail" (without quotation marks).  Most of the top results were from content sites.

I googled the same phrase now, after the Google algorithm had been tweaked -- and I got essentially the same results.

So whatever Google did today, it did not eliminate content sites from the top of the search-engine results.

Does that mean content sites are in the clear?  That depends on what, if anything, Google does next to curb the problems mentioned in Cutts' earlier post.

What Google said:

Here's what Matt Cutts wrote on his blog today:

I just wanted to give a quick update on one thing I mentioned in my search engine spam post.

My post mentioned that “we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.” That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week.

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content....

This does not seem to have to do with content sites, which usually post original, though often shallow content.  Does this mean that Cutts was never going after content sites in the first place?  If so, what, exactly, did he mean by "content farms"?  Or is it that Google is first going after the worst of the spammers, and then working its way up the food chain, with the content sites to be dealt with later?

Cutts does mention that they were evaluating "multiple changes," so it sounds as if they are not done yet.

For the moment, at least, the content sites seemed to have dodged a bullet.  I still think that content-site writers should proceed with caution, because we don't know what is ahead.

Demand Media IPO raises 34.5 percent more than expected!

The Demand Media IPO took place today (Tuesday, January 25, 2011) and took in an astonishing 34.5 percent more than expected. According to Reuters, Demand Media sold 8.9 million shares at $17 each, for a total of $151.3 million. The company was expected to sell 7.5 million shares and had announced the price per share would be $14 to $16.

Will any of this extra money trickle down, somehow, to writers? One can hope, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Editing to add: The Tuesday sales were to institutional investors. Share trading will open to the public on Wednesday under the ticker symbol DMD.

Yahoo stock fell 4 percent today

From Barron's Tech Trader Daily:

Shares of Yahoo! (YHOO) are down 59 cents, or 4%, at $15.43 after the company this afternoon reported Q4 revenue and profit ahead of analysts’ estimates, but forecast the current quarter’s revenue well below expectations.... 

For the current quarter, the company sees revenue in a range of $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion; analysts have been modeling $1.13 billion.

CEO Carol Bartz remarked, “We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo!, where we saw our plans to turn around the company gain momentum."  ...

It's hard to wrap my brain around the idea of a billion dollars in revenue.

What I'm guessing this means for AC/Yahoo writers is that the company will be under pressure to do better financially, and that could mean it will look for ways to pay AC/Yahoo writers less -- perhaps by relying on incentives that are more about "fun" and less about cash.

Demand Media IPO on Wednesday?

Hold on to your wallet!
Photo by MpegMan / Wikimedia

Rumor has it that the controversial Demand Media IPO will be tomorrow!

Expect Demand Media Studios, and perhaps the content-site world in general, to be in the media spotlight for the next few days.

Editing to add: Sales to institutional investors took place on Tuesday. Share trading will open to the public on Wednesday on the NYSE. The company's ticker symbol is DMD.

Google cracking down on content sites? An official Google blog post seems to say "yes"

Photo by Karora / Wikimedia

Google is the lifeblood of content sites.  The sites get most of their traffic from Google searches and have developed elaborate -- and highly successful -- strategies for snagging the coveted spots near the top of the search-result pages.

That puts a lot of power in Google's hands.  If Google decided it wanted content-site articles off of its top search-result pages, it could choke off most of the traffic it sends to the sites.

For a while, there have been rumors that Google was going to do exactly that.  Now, the rumors seem to be confirmed.  In a post today on the official Google blog, Principal Engineer Matt Cutts wrote:

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. We take pride in Google search and strive to make each and every search perfect. The fact is that we’re not perfect, and combined with users’ skyrocketing expectations of Google, these imperfections get magnified in perception. However, we can and should do better.

The critical question is what, exactly, does Google consider "shallow" and "low-quality" content?  Low quality is relative -- for any bad article that exists, there is always another, somewhere, that is worse.  Where is Google drawing the line?

It's possible that Google may only be going after sites that are far worse than the content sites.  But Cutts's use of the term "content farms" seems significant.  The term is commonly used to refer to sites that buy large quantities of material from freelance writers for prices far less than those traditionally paid to professional journalists -- exactly the kind of content sites we've been discussing on this blog.

If Google is targeting content sites, there's another crucial question for writers:  will Google be filtering out the sites as a whole, or will it be filtering articles individually?  Critics who dismiss all content-site articles as dreck are wrong.  The quality varies.  Will even good articles posted on suspect sites be penalized?  That remains unknown.

What this all means for content-site writers, I think, is that we need to be cautious.  Content sites love to dangle in front of writers rosy visions of the future, especially visions of revenue share payments that will last forever and fund retirements.  Hang out in any content-site forum, and you will hear "the sky's the limit," and " how much you make is entirely up to you and how much work you want to put in." The reality is that a handful of people at Google changing some numbers and symbols in a formula could be enough to make the whole content-site industry go "poof."

My advice?  Enjoy the content sites for now, but don't bet the whole farm on an uncertain future.

Ask a question

1910 poster / Wikipedia

If you have any questions about content-site writing, ask them in the comment section below, and I and/or my clever readers will do our best to conjure up an answer.

Tip for getting up-front payments at AC/Yahoo

Tip:  For the best chance of getting an article accepted for upfront payment from AC/Yahoo, make sure that the topic is not something that will soon be out of date.

I recently submitted an article about a future event, but by the time the article was reviewed, the event had already happened.  The article was rejected.

It took 19 days for the article to be reviewed, an unusually long time for AC.  There were some atypical glitches along the way, which I won't go into here, but I also realize now that I underestimated what the review time would have been even under the best of circumstances.

Except for the featured contributor articles, I hadn't submitted anything to AC/Yahoo for upfront payment for over a year and a half, so I was rusty in working with the process.  My  featured contributor articles had been approved very quickly, usually within a few days.  I thought the same would be the case for the "regular" articles -- but now, I realize, it's not.  So a longer review time has to be taken into account when deciding on article topics.

Here's the message I got from the CM in the rejection letter:

Unfortunately, this subject is too time-sensitive to be relevant long enough to justify Up-front Payment.... In the future, you are encouraged to submit articles like this as Display-Only.... This allows your content to be published while it is still very relevant.

The CM has a good point, and from now on I will avoid submitting articles for upfront payments on topics that will go out of date quickly.

"Display only" is not a bad option.  In fact my personal-best record-breaking article for single-day page views (over 12,000 in a day) was submitted "display only" and made about $20.00 in revenue share.  "Display only" is also an attractive option because you keep total control of your articles -- you can change them or remove them from AC at any time.

Sometimes, though, it might be easier just to post a time-sensitive article elsewhere.  That's what I ended up doing, in the end, with my rejected article, which I put on my personal blog.  I was going to have to rewrite it a bit anyway to give an update, and that just seemed easier to do in Blogger than on AC.

Out-of-date articles are not the only ones likely to be rejected for upfront payment.  The AC/Yahoo upfront payment guidelines has a complete list.  Here are the things to avoid if you want to snag an upfront:

-- Creative writing and (alas!) humor
-- Recipes
-- Opinion
-- Movie, music, television, or video game reviews (except, sometimes, for special assignments or featured contributor articles)
-- Anything too general or too common -- especially on topics that have already been published on AC (use the search box to check)

As for articles, like mine, that will quickly go out of date, the guidelines say that articles are likely to be rejected for upfront payment if

[t]he content has a short shelf life. Some subjects, such as breaking news or sports results, may be hot for a day or two but then don't attract search traffic again. We can typically offer Up-front Payment only for content that will stay relevant for weeks, months, and even years.

So that's my tip of the day: Don't assume that articles will be reviewed quickly.  In fact, it's best to factor in the possibility of glitches occurring that may slow the process down.  Avoid any topics that might be obsolete by the time the articles are reviewed or shortly after.

Mid-month update on content-site work

What I've been up to this month so far on the content sites:

Associated Content/Yahoo -- Around the end of December, I felt a burst of new enthusiasm for AC, mostly because a bunch of fellow disgruntled Heliumites were excited about joining AC a/.nd moving their Helium work there.  Their excitement was contagious.

I thought that in addition to doing my featured-contributor articles, I would start moving over more of my Helium articles and also start writing new "non-exclusive" articles.  I started c.ompiling a list of topics I wanted to write about, and I wrote the first two.

I ran out of steam, though, when I hit a snag.  One of the articles that I submitted on December 29 (almost three weeks ago) seems to have fallen into a black hole, after a site editor sent me a question via an email address that didn't accept replies.  The article is in limbo now and getting increasingly out of date.  I may just pull it in a few days and put it on a blog.  (Editing to add --> Update: The article was reviewed and rejected.  See my next post for a tip based on what I learned from the experience.)

The transplanted Helium articles are making a bit of money, but I'm not sure if it's enough to make cleaning them up and putting them into AC format worth the time.

I've always felt frustrated by the glitchiness of AC, but just got swept up this time in the ex-Heliumite's enthusiasm.   I'm pulling back a bit.  Not out -- just back.  AC might still be a good place to post articles about things I do around NYC that might have a wide appeal.  I also may try putting up some "slideshows" there, as I'm not doing anything with my photographs now anyway.

Constant Content -- Yesterday, I wrote a guest post on Doreen's freelancing blog about Constant Content, as part of a content-site-review project she is doing.  Writing that guest post prodded me to get off my duff (or rather to stay on my duff but start moving my fingers) and write a new article for Constant Content, something I have been meaning to do for a while.

I wrote an article about the top 5 free things to do in New York City in February, which I think came out well, if I do say so myself.  If it sells, I may do a series of free-in-NY articles, one per month. If it doesn't sell by, say, the end of January (when its shelf life will start to decline), I can change the licenses offered to "usage only" and post it elsewhere.

Right now, Constant Content is the site I'm most enthused about.  Whether that continues probably depends on how much and how often I make a sale.

By the way, most of the links to Constant Content (except for the one that goes directly to the NYC article) in the guest post on Doreen's blog and here on this blog are affiliate links.  CC has a good affiliate program, where referrers get 5 percent of the gross (not the net) sales price of the articles, which comes out of the company's share of the income, not the writers'.

If you do decide to sign up with Constant Content through one of my affiliate links, I will have a vested interest in seeing you do well -- the more you earn there, the bigger my commission -- so if you join CC, feel free to contact me via email (my address is in the sidebar here, to your right) or via the Constant Content "Contact This Author" button if you have any questions -- or simply to say "hi."

Demand Studios -- I'm still writing for them, but I'm feeling burnt out and have only done three articles so far this month.  Of the three articles, two were sent back for rewrites.  One rewrite request was reasonable, the other was not.  Comparing notes with other DS writers showed me I wasn't alone in getting bizarre requests.

I went to a webinar that DS put on this week about citing sources.  The webinar itself was neither terrible nor great, but I enjoyed hearing the presenters' voices in the middle of my writing workday.  It made me realize that working alone at home is getting old.  As much as I've always liked working by myself, at least in spurts, I think I've taken it too far this time, to an uncomfortable extreme.  Enjoying a DS webinar, of all things, made me realize that I must be  really craving more human contact when I work than email and forum communication alone can provide.  Maybe it is time to go look for a "real" job?

Or maybe I'm blowing this up too much, and it was simply pleasant to hear staffers talk to us directly, human-to-human, instead of being barricaded behind layers of robomails. ;-)

Helium -- If you've been following this blog, you know how I feel about last month's massive changes, but I still have one foot in the door there.  I'm doing a few of their special-projects articles  (what I used to call "Marketplace assignments," until they opened up yet another branch of Marketplace and made the term too confusing to use).  I'm also thinking about entering a contest, as one of the contests has literally no entries right now -- something I've never seen before on the site.

First though, I'll wait to make sure they haven't skipped town.  They missed a payday yesterday and gave no explanation -- something that has never happened before, as far as I can remember, in the 4 1/2 years I've been a member there. (Editing to add:) At about 7:00 pm, someone from the company showed up and said they were aware there was a problem.  Looks like they are still in business!  (Editing again to add:)  They paid everyone.  Seems to have been a minor glitch.  It's odd, though, that they didn't say anything for so long.

Demand Media worth over a billion dollars?

Swedish rock band Billion Dollar Babies/ Wikimedia

Poor Demand Media can't get no respect from the financial press.  A post by the New York Times DealBook blog this morning started off with a dig: "Demand Media, the controversial online content publisher ..."

This morning's news is that DM gave a price range of $14 to $16 per share for its upcoming IPO in an amended filing with the SEC today.  DealBook said that at the midpoint, DM would have a market value of about $1.25 billion.

That's a lot of $15 articles!

And yet another new content company: CopyPress

Photo published by Bain News Service,
circa 1910s / Wikimedia

All of a sudden, new content companies are springing up all over.  I wonder why.  Is it something in the air?

In any case, this is another one that I heard about via the often-useful Demand Studios Sucks forums. According to a post in the DSS thread, CopyPress pays 1 to 4 cents per word.  That doesn't sound very good, but according to the same DSS poster, the assignments are easy, and the company has a lot of work right now.

The company's website says:

 Every author and editor at CopyPress understands the value of quality content, teamwork and community. A basic understanding and passion for these things is required. If you’ve never created quality content, don’t value teamwork, prefer not to interact with others or can’t tell us the difference between an adjective and noun, this isn’t the company for you. 

 Apply here: CopyPress careers

Another new content site: "The Content Factory"

Photo by Chris Murphy / Flickr

Many content sites have been called "content factories," but this small online public-relations company uses that as its actual name.

I heard about them through a blog comment they left yesterday, where they said they were hiring freelancers, and that they "pay more than content houses like Demand Studios."

I took a look around their website. The company started a few months ago, in October 2010.  They look legitimate.  That's about all I can tell you, but if anyone knows anything more, please share.

They are looking for people to write website landing pages and SEO articles.  Their application process is refreshingly direct -- no forms to fill out, just an email "detailing your content writing experience."  The information is here: Writers wanted for "The Content Factory."

Another new content site looking for writers: Skyword

Skyword is a company that I first heard about today (via Demand Studios Sucks).  It's  founder was also the founder of Gather, so it seems very legit, though the relationship between Skyword and Gather is hard to untangle.  It sounds like Skyword was a spin-off of Gather, but is now Gather's owner. In any case, the content-creation part of the business appears to be new, launched just a few weeks ago.

They are taking the Demand Studios' approach of creating articles to answer search queries.  They are actively recruiting new writers.

If anyone tries it, I'd love to hear what you think.

You can apply here: Skyword writers

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Photo by David Shankbone

Reminder: Invent-a-buzzword contest deadline is January 2

The deadline for the invent-a-buzzword contest from the Gotham Writers' Workshop is tomorrow, January 2, 2011.  This is an easy contest to enter (if you like playing with words), with a prize of a free 10-week writing course, which you can attend online.

More info.

December 2010 content-site earnings

Happy New Year!

There's been lots of drama this month in the content-site world, as Helium announced on December 2 that it was totally changing its system, requiring writers to give up all rights in order to get upfront payments, and throwing the upfront-eligible titles into the formerly high-paying Marketplace system -- all to take effect a mere four days later on December 6!

That ridiculously short notice, it turned out, was deliberate, an attempt to limit the amount of outrage expressed by the writers.

Despite frantic cheerleading from some of the site's most loyal members of the volunteer corps, the new system appears to be a bust with the Helium writer population at large, including the volunteers who quit.  Expect to see some tweaks to the system in the new year.

One change I haven't mentioned earlier -- and this is actually a good one for the writers -- is that Helium changed its payment schedule from once a month to twice a month.  This benefits Helium as well, because it is leaving the payment minimum of $25 the same, and the twice-a-month payment schedule is likely to motivate writers who used to make more than $25 but less than $50 to write more in order to make both payouts.

The payment change meant that during December, we were actually paid for two months worth of income, as the two payment systems overlapped.

That makes it trickier to report this month's statistics in a way that I can compare them to past months.  On December 10, I was paid for income from November 3 to December 3.  On December 15 I was paid for income from December 3 to December 14, and on December 31, for income from December 14 to December 30.

I'm going to break that down into two months -- calling them Month 1 and Month 2 -- where Month 1 is for the income generated Nov. 3 to Dec. 3, and Month 2 for the income generated Dec. 3 to Dec. 30.

Here's what the stats look like with all the payments combined, to reflect what I actually received in payment during December:

December earnings (all)