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| Credit:R.D. Hayes |
What would you do if you woke up one day and discovered that
all your hard work was gone?
I can tell you from being an experienced writer that,
putting it mild, sucks! I have had two different online accounts with two
online companies that both shut down without much notice and all of my
articles, my staying up until the crack of dawn articles, were gone and I wasn’t
going to be getting them back.
Let’s take a look at these two online sites and how they met
their demise shall we?
First there was Associated Content
Associated Content was where I actually got my big break in
online freelance writing. It is also where I met some of my coolest writing
buddies, where I had my first rejection, and where I earned my first dollar
from online writing.
I loved Associated
Content. I actually won the 2007 People’s Media Award for Best of AC
content back when there wasn’t so many would-be writers. I began writing with
them when they were first growing their wings. I loved their entire set up and
that they actually paid their contributors, not just in pennies but in a nice
little payment that you could possibly earn an income from. Associated Content
was around for a while and they did what they could to make good on everything
that they had promised.
Then there was Yahoo Contributor
Network; Yahoo! Voices
Associated Content sold out to Yahoo! and this is where the
real dread of being a freelance writer really began. Yahoo! had different rules
for the way they wanted people to write, they tried to make it big but failed
miserably.
In 2014, they shut the contributor
program down and hundreds of people lost that part of their income,
including me. Well, the story is a bit longer than this. Yahoo! was nice enough
to allow their contributors to download all of their articles so that they
could resell them; Yahoo! would no longer own the rights and gave all of the
rights back to the original owners. My problem was that during this time I was
away doing military training and wasn’t able to download any of the articles in
time. All my hard work was lost just like that.
Bubblews comes into play
There weren’t very many websites that had a contributor
network the way that Yahoo! or Associated Content did, that is until Bubblews came along. At first, Bubblews allowed
its writers to make pocket change and cash out within a nice time frame but,
then it seemed that they became greedy and the amount that you had to earn
before you could “cash out”, went up. The cash out amount went from $25, which
could be earned in a month to, $50 and made it almost impossible for people to
earn money through them.
There were a lot of complaints surrounding Bubblews and some
even called it a scheme. I personally had $48 that seemed to never grow any
bigger. This amount stayed the same for almost a year and I had written a few
articles with them and had been paid by them when they first opened the doors
to writers like me. After they raised the cash out amount, no one seemed to get
paid.
Those who argued with them or said that it was a scam, would
get their accounts banned and all money earned was lost in their system along
with their articles.
Today was the first day that I had went on their website in
about seven months. I wanted to see if anything had changed. To my surprise,
their virtual doors were closed as well, my articles were also gone.
What I learned in this process
I have written thousands of articles and you would have
thought that I would have learned after my incident with Yahoo!, to always back
up my articles but, I didn’t. All articles that you write online should be kept
for instances like these. I could have resold those articles and made a nice
chunk of change.
I’m not sure how many new websites like those listed above
will be made but, I hope that someday there will be one that keeps its doors
open and continues to help struggling writers like myself.
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