Seekyt is being sold

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   tedmundsposted 9 years ago

   I logged in to my Seekyt account and was surprised to see an announcement that the site is being sold. I used to write quite a lot there and feel sad seeing the uncertainty round the corner. The new owner may turn it into something else or it may become like Triond which feels like a ghost site now. I do hope things work out for the owner though since he needs the money for his parents who are unwell.

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      Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I hope HubPages didn't buy it!

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         tedmundsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         The auction process is on now at Flippa with 6 days to go.

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            Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for that.  I found it here:
            https://flippa.com/3857736-pr-4-revenue … g-1-200-mo
            
            Since they claim to only make $1,154 a month, it's hardly a successful website. "Seekyt.com is more popular and lucrative for me than it has ever been."  That's a headturner.  It pretty much dispels the claims of Internet marketers who claimed to make fantastic earnings from that site and who were really just trying to generate income by posting their referral links to get others to sign up for the site.

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               NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

               +1

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                  NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  I did the +1 thing mainly for the comment about Internet marketers using the site for the referral links. The site itself I liked and I also liked admin. I was unable to use the site very much due to my own computer problems, but admin was very attentive in that regard. Also, sounds like in the end the owner has been able to make some money; more power to him.

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               tedmundsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               It may not be a very successful website but it is a good source of passive income for a person who I guess must be in his early or mid-20s(he states on Seekyt that his parents are in their early 50s). All he has had to do all these years is log in to his site for a few minutes every day (or every other day) and approve a few articles - and maybe also post a comment or two in the forum and that's about it. Compare that to writers who toil for several hours for many years and publish a few hundred articles only to get paid a fraction of that amount.

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                  Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  I think it just sold for $15,000: https://flippa.com/auctions/3857736/bids

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                     TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     Shoot...we should have all pitched and bought it, used HP's formatting and would then have an writer owned site!  Dagnabbit!

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                        Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                        There are plenty of writer-owned sites around, actually, if that's what you want.  Wizzley is probably the oldest one, but several more have been started up by Squidoo refugees more recently.  They may be nice places to write but it doesn't mean they are any better at earning money!
                        
                        This is an interesting little forum I just stumbled across for people who write on rev-sharing sites - you'll find a few new ideas on there:
                        http://squidu.yuku.com/directory#.VdrJ9flVikq

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                  Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  I think WF was referring to the MEMBERS of that site.   If the owner is making only $1,000 a month then clearly, then how much was each of the members earning?   
                  
                  We've had a few Seekyt members posting here and elsewhere saying what a great site it was and how well they earned - clearly, as WF says, it wasn't true, otherwise the site owner would be declaring much higher earnings.

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                     calculus-geometryposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     I think the site took a 30% cut, so if the guy was making $1,154 a month then the members were splitting about $2,693 a month.  Divide that by the number of articles on the site and you can estimate how much each article was making per month.
                     
                     I don't recall many Seekyt cheerleaders raving about their earnings, but I do recall lots of people boosting Wizzles, or whatever it's called.

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                        Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        There are about 157,000 webpages on Seekyt.

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                           calculus-geometryposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                           yikes.

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                              Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                              (About 43% of the number of Hubs featured on HubPages.)

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                        Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        I haven't seen anyone on HP talk about Wizzley.com recently.

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                     ologsinquitoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Marisa, Seekyt is a pleasant site to work for, and it's attractive. The question now is the earning potential.
                     
                     At one time, before traffic was diverted away from Squidoo and Seekyt, there was a woman named Claire who reported a nice income stream from Seekyt, with product reviews. Of course, now, it would take massive article promotion to achieve anything close.

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                        Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        That person has an account on HP, too.  According to her blog, she made thousands of dollars from Seekyt and Amazon sales each month!  Since the owner who posted Seekyt for sale says that he makes $1,154 a month and that  "Seekyt.com is more popular and lucrative for me than it has ever been," I can only conclude that the person's account of her income there was grossly exaggerated.

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                           ologsinquitoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                           I don't know. She broke it down pretty well when she posted, and she seemed like a very sincere person.

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      Thelma Albertsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      LOL! I was about  to join. I´m glad I check HP forum first.

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   Paul Maplesdenposted 9 years ago

   I used to write on Seekyt a fair bit (I wrote all the FAQ articles for them) but I was never able to get close to the passive income that I made on HP. It's a shame that he's having to sell as he seemed very invested in the site. Interesting too to see the (comparatively) low level of passive income being made by the owner.

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      Seekytposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Deleted
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         Paul Maplesdenposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Indeed, I'm planning to submit some articles there (I like the new compensation system that awards top contributors) to see how it works out.

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            paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Let's say there are 50,000 contributors/participants. Am I reading their compensation system explanation  right; only the top 10 of those 50,000 contributors/participants get any money? That can't be right, but it sure looks like that's what Seekyt seems to be saying.

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               Seekytposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               Deleted
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                  paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  I sincerely wish you luck. The internet is one tough town. As you already well know, you can expect to continue to expend a tremendous amount of resources just fighting off the spammers and article thieves. And then of course, there is always the necessary and never-ending placating of the well-known, 800-pound gorilla. And all of that is only for starters. Take care. Tread carefully.

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            RonElFranposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Paul, I'd be very interested to hear how you make out. Please keep us posted.
            
            paradigm search, I read it to say that only those in the group that produces 80% of total views would get paid.

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               paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               I don't understand. I read it as top 10 on leaderboard get paid and no one else. One could throw 40-hours-a-week work for a solid month at that site and still not get anywhere near the top 10. Let's hope I am indeed misunderstanding something, otherwise...

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                  calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  You're correct PS, the page being spammed by the "new seekyt" says they determine who the top 10 point earners are, and then in the next sentence they say they'll determine which users create 80% of the points.  That may or may not be the same as the top 10 so I think they need to revise their wording, but in any case it doesn't look good. 
                  
                  Points are awarded for idiotic things like logging in and commenting.  Oddly, getting outsiders to view your content doesn't pay very much point-wise, but you'd think that's the whole point of an article site, no?
                  
                  It's essentially combining the worst elements of Squidoo and Bubblews!

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   Writer Foxposted 9 years ago

   Here's the guy who started the site:
   http://howtoguru.hubpages.com/

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   RonElFranposted 9 years ago

   Now Elite Visitors seems to be finished. If you go to elitevisitors dot com, you will be redirected to bestwriters dot net. They say they've moved the entire site there, because someone named Ryan has absconded with the money designated to pay users. Plus various posts on the web are saying CGP Gallery has failed to pay its writers. HP looks better all the time.

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      NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I don't trust other sites much at this point; particularly the smaller, newer pay per view sites. I've tried two recently that pretty much turned out to be a bust. And that CGP one looked shady to me, glad I didn't try it.

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   Suzanne Dayposted 9 years ago

   These site closures are all the more reason why HP should be stringent about their standards, anticipate what Google is doing in the future and plan accordingly.
   
   If HP becomes the ONLY writing site around, I can only imagine the hordes of people wanting to join! There will be less competition for us as a writing site and more scope for a bigger community.
   
   HP need to go further with automation wherever possible and grow this ship! (Just not a Titanic - let's make it the Black Pearl that sails us to big buckets of gold or something).
   
   I hope our founders can find it in their hearts to realise their dreams x10, without selling HP. We do bash them a bit, but they've pandered to a LOT of our needs.

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   tedmundsposted 9 years ago

   It's the glass-half-full-or-half-empty effect and may not necessarily be the Seekyt author boasting about unproven earnings. I have seen on some of these forums, remarks like "this month I earned $30 from my articles and I'm very happy!". For some $30 could be a princely sum depending upon which part of the world the person is located AND what his expectations are. If he did not expect anything out of writing articles that took him half an hour each to write, and then sees $30 in his account, I am sure that is enough cause for joy!
   
   Whether it is Seekyt, Hubpages or any other content revenue sharing website I don't see anyone earning thousands of dollars per month and anyone who seems to portray living a good lifestyle exclusively from rev-share income is donning a false facade. Not being negative, just saying the truth. Most writers here and other similar websites have their own clients too and write for sites like Textbroker and Demand Studios - it all adds up to a sum of money that can pay a few bills.
   
   If you type in "site:Seekyt.com" it brings up 68 pages of results. If you leave out 10 pages of results for miscellaneous pages you can assume that there are about 600 articles(58 x 10, and then rounded off to the nearest 100) on Seekyt. It works out to $5 per article. My guess is that the highest earner on Seekyt may be earning between $100- $200 per month while quite a few may not be earning anything at all. 
   
   Sites are closing down/ being sold perhaps because of fewer articles being published? It makes sense to have a blog up and running where one can move articles to in the event of any eventuality. Besides moving them to HP of course ;-).

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      Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If you type it in the correct way, using the full URL, you get 157,000 results: http://goo.gl/FzGuqj

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         tedmundsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Doesn't seem likely that Seekyt has 150,000 articles! Well, I may be wrong, who knows!

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            Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Google knows all!

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            Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Seekyt has actually been around for quite some time and 150,000 pages isn't that many.  That's the result I come up with too.  When you then look at the declared earnings, the members aren't earning much per article.

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               tedmundsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               I just read the auction sales page and it says that Seekyt has "over 15,000 original articles and reviews". Adsense revenue - $1127 and net profit - $1154. Not a very profitable site at all, but has a lot of potential to the right owner!

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                  Suzanne Dayposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Methinks the potential is overrated. If they didn't earn much adsense on their 150,000 articles, I don't think their system is set up to make it earn more...sounds like many changes would be needed to make this workable!

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                     tedmundsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Boils down to traffic. Until now the writers were expected to promote their articles with little or no help from the erstwhile admin/ owner. If the new owner wants to increase profits he has to get down to promoting the site extensively. The content is already there, the new owner only has to promote it(more content will further increase profits with the right promotion).
                     
                     For example, Seekyt's Twitter account has only 1723 followers and its Facebook page has a mere 2213 likes. That is abysmally low for a content site that has been around for at least 4 years and is supposed to get its revenue mainly from content promotion(for people to click on the ads). Goes to show how little the admin had promoted the site!

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                        Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        People follow a Twitter account or a Facebook page because the subject interests them.   No one is going to sign up for Seekyt's Twitter or Facebook because all they'll get is a random mixture of subjects by a random mixture of authors -- there will just be too many articles that don't interest them.   When you see generalist sites with a big following, you can pretty much guarantee those followers are fake, or they're the authors themselves.
                        
                        That's why specialising has become so important online - you can't build a following if you can't present yourself as an expert on something.  Either that, or you must be an outstanding writer so people follow you for the consistent high quality of your content - again, something a multi-author site can't do.

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                  Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  No it doesn't.    Google hates generalist content farms -- that's why Squidoo, Yahoo! Voices, Helium, etc etc all closed down, and others (like Triond and Suite101) are limping along in spite of major overhauls.  It's also why we're all slightly surprised that HubPages is surviving.     I certainly wouldn't be investing in one.

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   ologsinquitoposted 9 years ago

   I went and read her blog. I'm going to add that I think she is honest, and there must be a logical explanation for the discrepancy.

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      Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Since she has an account on HP, you could send her an email and ask her.

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         ologsinquitoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I'm not that interested. I'm going to take her at her word.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      It's always possible that she was doing spectacularly well.   If we look at the pre-Panda era here, several people were earning thousands of dollars a month but the average person, according to Relache's poll, was still earning a tiny fraction of that.  So it's quite possible that a small handful of writers was earning the majority of the income.

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         Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         It was definitely after Panda: 2012 and 2013.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Sorry, I expressed that badly.  What I meant was that it's possible (and even likely) that on any site, most writers are earning a more modest amount and it's just a handful of writers who are doing well:  that 80/20 rule again.
            
            I was giving Nelle as an example of that, which happens to be pre-Panda.

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   psycheskinnerposted 9 years ago

   "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made." -- Jean Giraudoux (1882 - 1944)

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      Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      

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   ologsinquitoposted 9 years ago

   That makes sense.

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    tedmundsposted 8 years ago

    Seekyt sold again!! I received an email announcing the new ownership. It has been acquired by(in their own words) " a company that acquires and manages blogs and other writing websites."
    
    Here is the only interesting part of the email- "...we are currently developing a new revenue sharing model which will enable eligible users the opportunity to participate in 100% of the sharable advertising impressions on their articles. This is a substantial increase in advertising share from the "old seekyt" and we look forward to helping to create a new and thriving writer community." (note the poor editing - wrong spelling of shareable and the lack of caps in the name Seekyt).
    
    Oh, and they already been featured on Ripoff Report:
    
    "Suddenly, and without warning, thousands of writers woke up to find that Seekyt.com had been sold to a new owner. Melipet, LLC had disabled the ability for writers to delete their copyrighted works. In order to sign back in as a Seekyt contributor, account holders now have to agree to its new terms: any content you write remains on Seekyt, even if you request your account closed.
    
    Melipet, LLC created a stealthy trap to steal thousands of copyrighted articles to generate income from advertising. Contributors were not given any notice of a change of Terms and Conditions or that Seekyt had been sold.
    
    Melipet, LLC disabled the author forum and the email messaging system between members. This company believes they are free and clear legally. What they are is a fraud and a stealthy content thief affecting thousands of freelance writers.
    
    Members were not notified in advance, nor were they given an opportunity to agree to any changes of Terms and Conditions that would affect their copyrighted materials."
    (Quoted from the website Ripoff Report)

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    calculus-geometryposted 8 years ago

    New owner of Seekyt,
    
    You can dress up your point system anyway you want, but if you are awarding points for anything other than article views then you are only going to attract people skilled in gaming the system, not in writing content that will make your site worth visiting.  There is no incentive for even the most amateur of writers to submit content to your site if they can be beat out of the payment bracket by people who just engage in view/comment trading schemes and submit junk under your radar.
    
    But perhaps your business model is serving ads to registered users and getting them to hop around from page to page with this points scheme as an incentive.

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    makingamarkposted 8 years ago

    I wonder when HubPages is going to stop Seekyt from spamming this forum?

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