Choosing Self Publishing Writing Sites
There are lots of places to self publish your articles on the internet. You should be careful in choosing any one of these writing sites that offer to pay you. There are warning signs that you can look out for when choosing a site. Some of these you can find out before you even submit an article and others you may have to look out for as you go.
First of all, remember that you should have confidence in the site that you entrust your articles to. If you do not feel confident in the site that you write for, it is hard to be trusting in submitting articles and subconsciously, you may be holding back. If the administrators cannot be reached nor do not respond to your questions in a reasonable time frame, you may see your very first warning sign. There are writing sites that completely ignore their users, the very people that are bringing in the dough for them. This you can test out early in the game by emailing a site administrator to see when and if you get a response. Don't waste their time but ask them a legitimate question.
If the site does not disclose how much revenue they will pay you specifically, don't even write for them. No matter how much a site pays, if they don't disclose this detail, it can lead to no good down the line.
Making improvements on the site is beneficial. If the upgrades or improvements never benefit the writers, you will see where their heart lies. There are lots of sites that forget who brought them where they are and even who can keep them there. A bad reputation will travel a long way in the gossip trail of the internet.
When writers are encouraged to flag each other this is not a good thing. Flagging becomes more of a vengeance then holding the purpose it was meant to be. If a site is having a flagging War, you will read about it in the forums. This is when writers flag each others articles "for the good of the site". In fact, most things that are happening to the site will be talked about in the forum.
You want to find out and go back for months into the archives in the forums, what kind of bugs the site has. Do the administrators address the issues or are there always tons of bugs? This will slow up your progress and kill your drive to want to publish. Run from these sites, they are a waste of your time. They will only hold back your potential in your writing.
Take care to find out about the guidelines of the site. Are they doable guidelines or are there gray areas that really are vague in what they mean. If there are gray or unclear guidelines, you should steer clear of the site.
You should find out what kind of procedure they use for accepting articles. Do they screen your articles for a short time or just delete articles monthly. Monthly deletions can be frustrating and causes the writer too much lost work. All the indexing gets lost thus all the work that was done. Some sites will steal the link and rewrite the same article. Beware of these types of sites as they will suck the life out of your writing. You will spend so much time being frustrated that it will drag you to a place that you cannot write or do not want to write at all.
Try to determine if the guidelines are double standard for some writers on the writing sites you choose. If the site plays favorites, you will notice that not all articles fall into the guidelines even though yours must. This is unfair practice. You should very cautious of writing for this type of site. There are lots of choices out there and plenty of good sites that have fair practices.
Any writing sites that waste your time, ignore your questions, or make its own rules as it goes along is not the type of site that benefits anyone but the site itself. Don't allow self serving writing sites to inhibit your content articles. Do your research.
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to refer to any certain site but is just a guide to help you choose the right site for you. This article is geared to help you decide the makeup of a healthy writing site and how to recognize self serving writing sites that suck the life out of your writing.
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Comments
very well written! :)
Thanks, I appreciate your input!
Stay away from ReviewStream they will steal your articles then accuse you of cheating to avoid payout. Good article by the way.
Thanks for your comment. I haven't heard of Reviewstream but thanks for the warning. I think I like it here best!
Thank you, again! :) I followed your advice and entered some site names on their own forum, as well as on other sites - very interesting ...
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