Suite101.com Review
78Hub Pages a better source of income
Suite101.com is another revenue sharing, paid-to-write site (PTW), similar to Gather and Helium. However, the terms of agreement at Suite101 so favor the company and deprive writers of revenue, I’m giving it a big thumbs down.
These PTW sites work by placing ads on the pages and sharing whatever revenue is generated with the authors. The exact percentage is often hard to determine, but it definitely favors the website owners. The real advantage to a blogger is that by posting material on multiple sites you can drive traffic to your own site.
And that is where the fault in Suite101 lies. Other sites allow duplicate posting. You can post a article about Tom Cruise’s latest movie on your website, Gather, Helium, Xomba, Hub Pages and Thisisby. Suite101 demands exclusive writes to all your content and does not except previously published material.
For exclusive rights to original material, they pay $1.50 per thousand page views. One writer posting on the sites forum said he had 100 articles that received 34,000 page views in a month. Fifty-dollars a month for all that work. Ridiculous! Had he sold those articles to Associated Content, he would have received anywhere from $4 to $50 a piece. AC also pays a performance bonus of $1.50 per thousand page views in addition to the upfront pay.
I recommended selling non-exclusive rights to AC, then posting the same article to to Hub Pages and Xomba. Both those sites alternate showing Google Adsense ads with their account code and yours. The fairest revenue sharing model for making money writing online. I wrote this article on Associated Content for Hub Pages. It has received 193 page views with my Adsense account code, making $2.50. That's about $10 a thousand views for comparison.
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I'm guessing you don't actually write for Suite101. They don't pay any set amount per 1000 page views, and certainly not $1.50. You earn a portion of ad revenue, which can work out to be quite a bit more per 1000. I understand your points about exclusivity and other networks, but your facts are not accurate.
If anyone is getting more than $1.50/1000 views I'd love to see a screenshot of their payout. I asked other writers on the 101 forum page what they were making.
After of the comments I received talked about the "good ol' days" when the pay was $2.50/1000. Any website that wants to legitimately share ad revenue will do like Hub Pages and make it a rotating ad swap or like Associated Content and pay a decent upfront payment and then on going pay per view.
Read Suite101's terms of agreement. Nowhere will you find what percentage of ad revenue they share. If they were legitimate, they’d say, “We pay writers X-percent of revenue.”
I realize Gather, Thisisby and a few other sites do the same thing, but they don’t demand exclusivity and allow links to the author’s other work or websites.
If you Google Suite101, you'll have a hard time finding anything complimentary about the site. Started in 2000, at one point it quit paying authors altogether.
I'm not about to provide you with a screenshot of my personal stats, but both myself and my mom both write for suite and we are both earning well over $1.50 per 1000 pvs. I get around $2.50 and my mom who writes about genealogy gets around $4.
You shouldn't post "facts" about a site you don't have personal experience with. You can't back them up, and shouldn't expect other people to provide proof for you.
Suite101 makes its money off of Goggle Adsense. Looking at articles I have written and receive Adsense payments on, I see the lowest performing one makes about $7.31 per 1000 page views.My highest has been $31 per 1000.
I guess writing for Suite101 is a personal decision. If you want to give up reprint rights for a year to a company that doesn't disclose what percentage of ad revenue they will share, and has, according to their terms of agreement, the right to use your material indefinetly anyway they want, good luck.
Personally I don't see the point of giving Suite101 exclusive rights to a piece of work that could easily earn you double on Hub Pages alone.
Suite101 makes its money off of Goggle Adsense. Looking at articles I have written and receive Adsense payments on, I see the lowest performing one makes about $7.31 per 1000 page views.My highest has been $31 per 1000.
I guess writing for Suite101 is a personal decision. If you want to give up reprint rights for a year to a company that doesn't disclose what percentage of ad revenue they will share, and has, according to their terms of agreement, the right to use your material indefinetly anyway they want, good luck.
Personally I don't see the point of giving Suite101 exclusive rights to a piece of work that could easily earn you double on Hub Pages alone.
I just quit after having articles flagged each and every time I wrote one. I work blogging professionally for a very large firm online and make a great deal more money without being flagged at all.
Suite101 is not for serious writers. I received emails from the editorial staff with misspellings and bad grammar. I should have known then that it was "off".
The flags I got were all about SEO and nothing else. I could write a page with nothing but "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" all across it and get away with it if the keywords were right. Very sad.
Interesting discussion. I've thought about Suite101 after seeing other positive comments.
I have reservations about Helium because although they don't demand
exclusive rights, they also don't let you delete your articles. Ever.
And the pay is around 10c per article per month.
Suite definitely isn't for everyone. I think their commitment to SEO is a fantastic way to learn about writing for the web. My $/1000 is currently around $5 and I have 22 articles up. I like that Suite has such a high commitment to quality articles.
I don't enjoy seeing my work at Helium alongside garbage articles that are poorly written and not referenced. Suite has a goal that facts are attributed to sources, and yes, the editors are quite strict. It's a good thin, I like the discipline and I like the education.
If you jsut want to write and get paid and don't care about the quality of the work you produce, or whether or not the site will allow "just anyone" to publish then by all means, write somewhere else.
I do value Helium and other sites for allowing me to publish lesser quality articles in order to drive people to my other site.
I haven't delved into AC or Hubpages much, there are just so many options. I guess there's a time and place for everything.
I have heard mainly positive things about suite101 and your review is a bit surprising for me but maybe you have a point. CPM varies widely depending on the methodology to calculate it and if they count only traffic from US/Canada, then it is clear why the low rate. But as the other people say, Suite uses Adsense, which is not CPM based.
$50 for an AC article? Hilarious! .001% of people have made that much... The average AC article pays $5.00 - that's upfront and PPC! Just save yourself the trouble and write for someone who actually pays you for your work - at a rate higher than $1 per hour.
Associated Content started out paying decent, but its gotten pretty cheap over the last year. I wouldn't waste my time now writing for AC or Suite 101. The only upside to those type of sites is people who can not get published anywhere else can post something and then refer to themselves as a "professional freelance writer."
As someone who actually writes for S101 - I can tell you that the projections of 1.50/1000 are laughable. I range from 2.22 at the very worst to $4-5.
Further, your $ per 1000 clicks isn't where you make your money - you make it via adclicks primarily. I have 100 articles and have made $100/mth consistently. Suite101 pays residual income - your articles earn substantially more money over time, AC does not.
Also, exclusivity only applies to the first year of your contract. Further, posting duplicate articles defeats the pagerank of your article in the first place. You should learn more about SEO before posting inaccurate information such as this.
I recommend Suite101 to any freelance writer. My articles are EACH making me, on average, $18 per annum! Multiply that by 100, 200 or 500 articles and I'm sure that you can all see the potential. I think that is pretty good, especially considering that this income keeps on coming in. It is all about putting in the time and producing quality, well SEO-keyworded articles.
Editors are very strict on grammar and spelling, not just SEO. The quality of writers on S101 is vastly higher than the majority of comparable sites.
I wish I had found S101 months ago and would strongly advise any freelancer to apply. Good luck.
Isn't it better to submit the same article with some changes? I've heard that having the same material in numerous places can actually tick off Google and lower search engine rankings for those pages.
ibrutus, my dear, your posts all have such appalling grammatical, syntactical, and spelling mistakes ("does not EXCEPT previously published materials) that I very much doubt anyone is paying you very much to publish anywhere. Before people start spouting off about the professionalism of writers for sites such as Suite101, they should at least make sure their posts are clean....The fact that most of your assertions (one really can't call them facts) are wrong doesn't help, either.
The reason why these websites can get away with paying writers so little money is because so many people are willing to work for so little money. Sorry, I'm not writing a 500 word story for $5. I've been doing this for a long time and I'm a professional. People who take this little money are ruining the freelance writing market for the real professionals who work hard and take their craft seriously. All you people are doing who write for Suite101 and places like that where you get pennies on the dollar is making that website money, not yourself. You'd all be better off to make a blog, accept affiliate links and earn the money for yourselves. Sites like Suite101, Helium and the like are just there to make slaves out of writers. It's disgusting.
Someone earlier posted that "Suite101 is not for serious writers." Certainly it's a good place for the novice writer, but I've been continuously impressed with the talent and background of many writers there.
I myself have been writing part-time for thirty hears and have over 200 items in print (and I am not counting my 100+ online articles in that total). I do consider myself a "serious" and professional writer.
That said, I've been writing on suite101 mostly for fun. Writing tight 500 word articles is kind of like eating peanuts. It's hard to stop with just a handful...
And after six months of effort to hit 100 articles, the thing started to pay rather well. I've reduced my effort and the money keeps coming in. Not bad for something I did mostly for fun.
The pay rate per 1000 was NEVER $2.50. It was $2.00. Then, Suite shifted to a income share model. So, various writers make various amounts depending on content and ad clicks.
Exclusive is for one year only. And, it only applies to online pub. Writers can market to print etc.
It's great that your blog pulls in big bucks, but most blogs/personal sites do not. Many writers pull in more income going with an established site with Google juice and with regular visitors.
No. Suite is not for everyone. But, you clearly do not know much about the site and how it works. You do a disservice in posting about things where you clearly have no knowledge.
There are a lot of writing websites that work on revenue-sharing models. eHow pays nothing upfront, and compensates on the backend. Associated Content pays between $1 and $4 upfront, with $1.50 payouts per 1,000 views.
Mahalo.com offers page building for upfront payments (between $4 and $10 in "Mahalo dollars"), and continuous 50-50 adsense revenue sharing. Some pages get hundreds of dollars a month: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-get-pregnant
All these revenue sharing model writing sites claim that you can make unlimited amounts of money. While this is true in theory, it is definitely not a case of: write the article, get it published, then move on... You have to actively DRIVE traffic to your articles, in order to get a payout. This is definitely a philosophical shift from the old school freelance writing model of writing something, getting it published, then moving onto the next thing. You have to be an active promoter of your writing.
Anyway, check Mahalo out! They seem to have a bit of a higher revenue sharing model, AND upfront payment model. (http://www.mahalo.com/tasks)
Good articles, the only snag about Associated Content is that revenue is not that good if you are not a US resident. So if you live, say in the UK, you get much less.
Good article, the only snag about Associated Content is that revenue is not that good if you are not a US resident. So if you live, say in the UK, you get much less.
I'm sorry I have to agree, Suite101 is clearly exploiting writers to the Nth degree. The professional writer would never give complete exclusive rights for any amount of time on the promise of future residuals. It's shear, utter nonsense.
With all the work (SEO Keywording and such)their articles require, they should be paying upfront IN ADDITION TO residuals.
I write for Suite 101 and think it is the most professional site by far. They DO ask for spelling and grammar changes to be made as needed, which no one else does from my experience. I'm very new but have a very good payout so far with S101. Get your facts straight please, and use a spell and grammar check or a proofreader or consider not "writing" online.
I must congratulate my fellow suite writer above for noticing the terrible grammar and spelling from ibrutus... Frankly I'm surprised anybody else decided to take his incorrect assertions seriously...
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Lissie says:
2 years ago
Thanks for the insight - regardless of the rights I thought posting duplicate articles was a no no because of google flagging duplicate content and downgrading your page rank because of it