Iakul's Freelance Writing Musings

Sites paying upfront for articles Constant Content A site where writers can showcase their articles with a preset price tag and have interested publishers buy them. Has strict standards for submissions (free of grammar mistakes etc) so check to make sure that you are submitting a flawless article. If you have articles that you have published elsewhere before, you can still sell them for usage rights here. Content Gather Content Gather is fairly new, and has only been around since Nov 2016. Their parent company has been around for quite a while though. Content Gather (as of now) does look a lot like Constant Content to me. Like Constant Content,there's a marketplace where writers can submit articles to sell, and a custom job where buyers specify articles. Unlike Constant Content though, there's also an upfront payment when your article gets approved for the marketplace. Highlights Highlights is a children's website and they pay for creative stories and articles. Paym...

Added three sites: Content Gather Highlights Listverse Removed a couple of defunct sites (Writeandearnaliving, Review Party)

Just some removal of now defunct sites from Iakul's List. Took down Triond, Squidoo, Helium, Write And Earn A Living.

Just some removal of now defunct sites from Iakul's List. Took down Triond, Squidoo, Helium, Write And Earn A Living.

Ok, that was an understatement. Haven't looked for new writing leads in quite a while, and no new writing leads= no update for my list, which is the main reason I update this blog. Been taking a look at Listverse . It's a site where you get paid $100 to write a list containing at least(pun unintended) 10 items and a minimum of 1500 words. I haven't tried submitting to them yet, but I expect them to be looking for "click bait" topics. There's apparently also a bonus if you manage to write a popular article. So far, it looks promising enough to add to my list.

Took Wikinut down from the list Increasing more and more people were coming forward with reports that Wikinut was a scam. It's been a few years since I last looked at Wikinut, and I suspect that I would have taken it down if I had taken another look earlier.

Early this year, Squidoo locked my account. I'm not the only one who got affected, nor did the spate of account locking happen overnight. Google had reconfigured the amount of traffic that they sent to Squidoo. , causing a tremendous drop in traffic. Squidoo in turn, started setting stricter automatic filters. Fairly certain that my account locking was a mistake(I have a grand total of 2 lenses on Squidoo, so it didn't take long to check that my lenses were following the new Squidoo rules), I emailed them. It's been more than three months and there's no reply from them. And that's why Iakul's List is now back here at this blog.

Well, it's been quite a long time since I last touched my list. Didn't add anything in this update. Just took out some defunct sites (GZYN, Qondio, and Associated Content), and removed Suite101 since they are no longer offering any financial incentive to submit to them.

Added Experts123.com under "Sites which pay upfront for articles", added Wikinut under "Sites which let you earn passive income". Updated the descriptions for some of the links, fixed a broken link.

Added About.com For a Contributing Writer, it's a minimum of $500 a month for the first two years at About.com,with payment incentives based on pageview growth and after that the minimum drops to $250. You are required to publish at least 12 pieces of content per month, which works out to around $42 per article when you are starting out. Removed Factoidz. There have been a number of complaints regarding it by former members, alleging that it's a reverse Ponzi scheme, where the earnings of older members are used to pay newer members. I have yet to ascertain how much truth there is to this, but until I find the time to really go digging into this, I'll remove it for the time being. Changed Helium's description, since they changed their upfront payment structure. There have been complaints about this, and while I do personally know a number of Helium members who will expect to be earning less after this change, I think it was inevitable. It just didn't make sense that...

Just a minor update, regarding Bukisa's change from a multi-tier referral based model to a Google Adsense sharing revenue model. And yes, compared to my previous site description *points below* , Bukisa didn't get much of a site description this time. " Bukisa Personally, I don't like Bukisa. It seems to be a content site that's focused on quantity and not quality. There are quite a number of peole who do recommend Bukisa though. Bukisa has a 3 tier referral system, which means that you get a cut of the earnings of the referrals of the referrals of your referrals. As far as I can tell, that's the reason most of the people are recommending it. But like I mentioned, I don't like it. They even set up a Help page which has nothing on it except "Coming Soon" and a link to their FAQ. It's now Aug 31st 2009. Bukisa was started in 2008. That's a long time to set up a Help page. *Updated on Nov 10th 2009: it has come to my attention that Bukisa no ...

Added a couple of sites under the Blogs and Forums section. There's Writing For Dollars , which isn't exactly a blog or forum, but I guess that's the section that fits it best. This kind of made me realise that I don't have a section for informative sites that are not blogs or forums. Writing For Dollars certainly has a wealth of information, which includes tips and advice, job listings, and a whole lot more. The other one's WAHMs WHo Write . I have to admit that I have been late in adding this one, mainly because I'm not a WAHM (Work at Home Mom). Still the leads and information in this forum are relevant to all writers, even if you aren't a WAHM.

Well, as I prmosied in my previous blog post, I addded two new sites to the list. First one's Firehow , under "Sites which specialise in certain writing categories". It's a how-to article website, and it only pays US residents. The next one's Redgage . While technically it does pay non-US residents, there's a cap of on earnings that they don't mention anywhere on their site. I'll explain. Redgage pays via the Redgage card, a card that they ship to you when you have earned your first $25. THey charge $5 for the shipping. From then on, you withdraw from Redgage via your card. Here's the catch. After your first transfer, you'll have to register with a giftcards site, which you won't be able to unless you are a US resident. And no, you don't have to withdraw when you have made $25. They allow you to withdraw in increments of $25, which given the "invisible cap" they have imposed, means that you are actually better off holding your...

Updated description for Associated Content, since they changed their policy regarding international payments. Took out EHow from list, since they got taken over by Demand Studios. I knew about it soon after it happened, but forgot EHow was on my list and so didn't update it. Doh. Updated description for Demand Studios, since they do accept international applicants now. Leo9 left a commnet mentioning a site called Write For Me. If it's the site that I think it is, it isn't exactly a site where you can find work, and it's more a personal site for a writer rather than a site offering information for writers. That's not to say that writers and would-be writers can't pick up anything useful from there, just that I don't think the focus of the site itself fits with my list, so I'm not going to add it. babygirl3605 mentioned Redgage That's one of the sites I have been planning to take a look at(the other one's Firehow). I do appreciate the heads up ...

Well, Associated Content has just made it public, as of 29th April, that they will stop paying non-US residents from 1st May onwards. Unless... well, I'll come to that later. Apparently,the decision behind this is due to the implementation of new tax laws that affect companies making payments to non-US taxpayers. Of course, no matter whether they actually had any leeway in the matter, there's still going to be irate writers who are not going to be happy about it. And in case you haven't realised what the dates actually mean. Associated Content are only telling people about it two days in advance. Make that lots of irate ex-writers. Anyway, as I was saying, they do offer a way out. First you'll have to apply as a Featured Contributor for Associated Content under one of the various categories (sports, travel etc) which involves filling out an application form with questions like "How do you stay current in this field? What blogs, websites, periodicals, etc. do you re...

Two new revenue sharing sites, Factoidz and Infobarrel added to the list under "sites which let you earn passive income". Thanks to AnneM for telling me about Infobarrel.

Some time back, I wrote an article exposing Academia-reseach as a scam. Recently, it came to my attention that someone has written an article claiming that it's not a scam. *Sighes* I don't know whether to laugh or cry after looking at what he wrote. It amazes me that there are people who can be so deluded. And frankly, I think his article builds a case against Academia-research. Imagine an article, written in barely passable English , claiming that a certain writing site is not a scam, that he has worked there for 4 years and they do not just take on anybody, but first assess whether the applicant is a good writer . For those of you who are interested, you can do a search for "Academia research scam" and read the one with a title claiming that it's not a scam.

Just realised that I missed Absolute Write back when I split the "Forums and Blogs" from the rest of the "Sites Where Publishers Will Post Job Requests" section (which was months ago). Have shifted it to the "Forums and Blogs" section.

I forgot to add this in with the rest of my updates, so I'm going to mention this in a seperate post. AOL should be a name that most of us have heard of. They recently set up Seed , which to quote from their About Us page "assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL's properties: more than 80 of the Web's most highly trafficked and respected websites, including the world's leading sites for music, style, TV, tech and more." Most of the article requests from Seed are paying around 30 USD for a word range of 400-500 words, although I have seen some that are paying a few hundred USD. That certainly looks attractive. Two points to take note of though. 1.Quite a number of the members on the writers' forums I visit have raised concerns about Seed. OF course, it may turn out that there's nothing to be worried about, and so far, Seed has not done anything to worry me, but it's still something to keep in mind. 2. Seed only pays US residents. Which unf...

A belated happy new year to my readers (I hope I still have readers :P, since it been more than a month since my last post) Looks like it's been more than a month since my last post. Anyway, here's some updates. Did some spring cleaning on my list and cleaned up a few dead links. It appears some of the sites are no longer in business. In my last update, I mentioned that I was taking Review Stream off the list. Have been doing some digging around to see what I could find out about then since then and what I have found out appears to support my decision. For those of you interested in just what it was that I found out, here's the link to the article below. http://writinghood.com/writing/review-stream-opportunity-or-scam/