Today has been a major "angry author" day. I'm not kidding, from the time I woke up this morning, all I've had is interaction after interaction that makes me incredibly angry. Maybe it's the planets in the wrong alignment that have me reacting this way, because I feel like I'm overreacting by being angry (and my poor husband seems to be very very sure I'm overreacting). Then I realized - hey! I have a blog! I can go vent about it!
First thing I woke up to this morning was a note that if I want to be paid for my blog entries, I need to have three more in today for the current month. Buh? It's only the 17th, how can that be? Well, see when Mahalo says "month" they mean "four random weeks that have nothing to do with a calendar month". Only, they don't actually TELL you that. Yesterday ended week 28 of the Mahalo "year", and apparently was the last day of a Mahalo "month" as well. It makes me kind of feel like I'm living in an alternate universe with a different way of spinning around the sun. This probably wouldn't have bothered me if someone had maybe told me ahead of time. But then again, maybe that's asking for a little too much. I mean really, I'm sure "psychic" is a requirement of all writing jobs, no?
So okay, whatever, I can deal with randomly numbered months. But then I learn that the work that I did during the hourly paid IRC shifts has to be finished on our own time. For free. Going in, I was told to get three done an hour, which was pretty much impossible because they were all a wreck, but I was told time was the most important factor. So, okay, I did what I could to update the pages in twenty minutes each.
Turns out, the goal is actually to bring the page up to current Mahalo gold standards. It would have been really helpful to be told this beforehand. It also would have been helpful to be told that any further edits would have to be done for free, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. The parts I'm told that I have to edit are the parts that the original author of the page completed rather than my own work, so it's not as though my updates are a problem, it's that they want me to work as an editor. Without getting paid. All told, it's going to take me a minimum of four hours (probably more like six) to do these edits. And I have to make all my other minimums this week, but I cannot take any more IRC shifts until I finish all the edits on my previous shift work. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this without becoming bitter and resentful. Oh, wait! I'm already bitter and resentful so I guess it doesn't matter.
Third, someone with access to my spreadsheet deleted one of the pages I did this week. Why? I have no clue. But today was the deadline for payday. When I alerted the management to the issue, I was told to replace it, and since my page scores were high, I'd be paid through for it as it would surely be fine as it was. That I appreciated, and it definitely made me feel (slightly) better, but I'm curious as to why someone would delete the page. It seems really weird. It made me wonder if they do that regularly and writers don't catch it, and then just don't get paid for all their pages. Suspicions, I have them.
Next, two of my DMS articles came back for rewrites today. One, I was pretty sure would come back. So why did I submit it? Cause I got too close to the deadline and didn't have a choice - it was submit it, and get it sent back, or let it expire and waste the work I put into it. So, I'm not upset about that one. I'm upset about the one that was rejected by someone who obviously shouldn't have chosen the article to copy edit.
The article title was "How to make a Beaded Choker Necklace" and that's what I wrote. I got back edit requests, including asking me to explain what a choker necklace was and what made it different from long necklaces (really? REALLY?), what memory wire is (okay, maybe not everyone knows that), to put in every step that it was a choker necklace I was making (uh, really NO WAY, I'm not going to say "Open the jump ring with your flat nose pliers. To make your choker necklace. Slide the pendant onto the jump ring, and close the ring with the pliers. To make your choker necklace. NO WAY). Lastly, they asked me not to use references that led to commercial, bead selling websites. BUH? My resources were three books. No websites. I don't know if the copy editor was just having a bad day or is just not very bright, but they peppered their notes to me with their own grammatical errors which made that inner editor in me snicker madly.
I may finally have my first article to sell on Constant Content! I don't think there is any way to write an article that satisfies what this copy editor wants without writing an article I'd be severely embarrassed to have my name associated with.
What's an angry writer to do?
Showing posts with label Constant Content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constant Content. Show all posts
Monday, 17 January 2011
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Fear and Loathing in Grammar-land
I have a few spelling and grammar bugs that get to me. One is when people type "loose" when they mean "lose". Another is misuse of the term "literally". Really? Really friend? Your ass literally froze off? What are you sitting on while you type???
Okay Katie, breathe, breathe....
Anyway, we've all run into those forum posters who correct some poor distracted person's misuse of the apostrophe or "teh" typos. I have never, ever in my life, seen that run as rampant as it does on the Demand Media Studios forum for writers. I just watched a thread about the rejection appeal process get completely hijacked by an "imply vs. infer" dogfight. I guess that's what happens when you throw a bunch of writers and copy editors into a pit.
So, speaking of rejection appeals... Everyone fears the rejected article, especially me. Especially since at DMS you only have one chance at a rewrite before something is rejected. For many writers at DMS, rewriting isn't even an option; they would rather let the rewrite expire than risk having a rejection on their record. (By the way, I'm not so nervous, as I haven't had any rejections, and my rewrite requests have always been really simple. My last one was "This is twice as long as required, please remove half the content". Ack! But an easy fix.)
When I first started at DMS, one of the other writers there gently guided me toward a site called Constant Content. It is the preferred site, it seems for reselling rejected orphan articles. I registered immediately in grave fear that I would soon have multiple articles on the market. I haven't taken a job there or sold an article there yet, but I may soon.
Along with allowing writers to put articles up on the site for purchase, Constant Content allows site owners to put up writer-wanted listings for content articles they need. These often pay extremely well - I've seen $100+ articles listed on a fairly consistent basis. The trouble is, you're essentially writing on spec. You write the article, and so do the other twenty people who saw the ad and want the bucks, and you all submit. The client chooses the one that suits their needs the best, and pays that person. The others are left to possibly re-list their articles back on Constant Content, or just suck it up and accept the loss.
If I really needed another source of income, I might try some of the articles. Some have really sparked my interest, especially those on Photoshop techniques, since Photoshop is one of my favourite "toys" but I have been struggling - since I've been sick off and on since Christmas - to meet my minimums at Mahalo and write the titles I really like over at DMS before they expire (once you claim a title, you have to write it within the week or it returns to the queue for someone else to claim). Not to mention that this week, I started a new phase at Mahalo.
I left training four weeks ago. Once you're done with training, you move into a separate group of spreadsheets which, unfortunately for me, had wayyyy less options in the way of titles. Most are video How-To, like "How to say tomato in Korean" and things of that ilk. I thought they would be easy and fun until I did two of them and found myself scratching my head trying to figure out how on earth to meet the minimum word requirements of a page based on a twenty second video of someone repeating a Korean word. All of the other titles were cities, so I've been learning an awful lot about relatively obscure American cities. Like that Gainesville, Florida has the largest bat house in North America, or that Duluth was founded by some French fella named du Lhut. Apparently no one could spell his name. Too French I guess. Or hey, didja know that there is a museum devoted entirely to the history of the RV in Elkhart, Indiana? You can learn more about Elkhart here: http://www.mahalo.com/elkhart-in if you're so inclined.
So now, after four weeks, I start doing updates. This is hourly paid work, and you're required to do at least three 2-hour shifts per week. Guides get paid $8.50 an hour and senior guides get $10 an hour, which isn't terrible for work from home shifts. And you get to write about stuff like what happened on the Bachelor that night or who wore what to the Golden Globes. It's a little more fun than writing about the downtown revitalization project in Greenville, SC, but if you're so inclined to READ about it... http://www.mahalo.com/greenville-sc
Okay Katie, breathe, breathe....
Anyway, we've all run into those forum posters who correct some poor distracted person's misuse of the apostrophe or "teh" typos. I have never, ever in my life, seen that run as rampant as it does on the Demand Media Studios forum for writers. I just watched a thread about the rejection appeal process get completely hijacked by an "imply vs. infer" dogfight. I guess that's what happens when you throw a bunch of writers and copy editors into a pit.
So, speaking of rejection appeals... Everyone fears the rejected article, especially me. Especially since at DMS you only have one chance at a rewrite before something is rejected. For many writers at DMS, rewriting isn't even an option; they would rather let the rewrite expire than risk having a rejection on their record. (By the way, I'm not so nervous, as I haven't had any rejections, and my rewrite requests have always been really simple. My last one was "This is twice as long as required, please remove half the content". Ack! But an easy fix.)
When I first started at DMS, one of the other writers there gently guided me toward a site called Constant Content. It is the preferred site, it seems for reselling rejected orphan articles. I registered immediately in grave fear that I would soon have multiple articles on the market. I haven't taken a job there or sold an article there yet, but I may soon.
Along with allowing writers to put articles up on the site for purchase, Constant Content allows site owners to put up writer-wanted listings for content articles they need. These often pay extremely well - I've seen $100+ articles listed on a fairly consistent basis. The trouble is, you're essentially writing on spec. You write the article, and so do the other twenty people who saw the ad and want the bucks, and you all submit. The client chooses the one that suits their needs the best, and pays that person. The others are left to possibly re-list their articles back on Constant Content, or just suck it up and accept the loss.
If I really needed another source of income, I might try some of the articles. Some have really sparked my interest, especially those on Photoshop techniques, since Photoshop is one of my favourite "toys" but I have been struggling - since I've been sick off and on since Christmas - to meet my minimums at Mahalo and write the titles I really like over at DMS before they expire (once you claim a title, you have to write it within the week or it returns to the queue for someone else to claim). Not to mention that this week, I started a new phase at Mahalo.
I left training four weeks ago. Once you're done with training, you move into a separate group of spreadsheets which, unfortunately for me, had wayyyy less options in the way of titles. Most are video How-To, like "How to say tomato in Korean" and things of that ilk. I thought they would be easy and fun until I did two of them and found myself scratching my head trying to figure out how on earth to meet the minimum word requirements of a page based on a twenty second video of someone repeating a Korean word. All of the other titles were cities, so I've been learning an awful lot about relatively obscure American cities. Like that Gainesville, Florida has the largest bat house in North America, or that Duluth was founded by some French fella named du Lhut. Apparently no one could spell his name. Too French I guess. Or hey, didja know that there is a museum devoted entirely to the history of the RV in Elkhart, Indiana? You can learn more about Elkhart here: http://www.mahalo.com/elkhart-in if you're so inclined.
So now, after four weeks, I start doing updates. This is hourly paid work, and you're required to do at least three 2-hour shifts per week. Guides get paid $8.50 an hour and senior guides get $10 an hour, which isn't terrible for work from home shifts. And you get to write about stuff like what happened on the Bachelor that night or who wore what to the Golden Globes. It's a little more fun than writing about the downtown revitalization project in Greenville, SC, but if you're so inclined to READ about it... http://www.mahalo.com/greenville-sc
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