Five Reasons Why Writing for HubPages is Better Than Writing for Demand Media Studio.
My first experience with freelance internet writing was with Demand Media Studio or DMS in 2010. As an avid internet junkie, I found the EHow.com community cozy and eclectic. Always planning to write, but too busy - I one day read that EHow was going through a major overhaul. Demand Media Studio, as the new manager of EHow required writers to submit a resume and sample article. Around this same time my hours at my day job were drastically cut. I suddenly found myself with less money and more time.
With grand ideas of an internet income, I submitted my resume with my sample article to DMS and I was accepted. I wrote about a dozen articles that are featured on Livestrong.com and Ehow.com. Here are five reasons I will never write for them again.
1. Copyright
When you write for Demand Studio your article becomes theirs. Other sites such as Suite101, will post your article, then give you copyright after a one year period. Hubpages gives you your copyright right away. Several of my DMS articles were pirated and DMS did not seem to care. If your hub is stolen from HubPages, there are steps you can take since you own the copyright.
2. Idiotic Editors/Respect and Common Courtesy
I had some awesome editors on DMS and they taught me much, but the few control freaks who disrespected me were way out of line on a professional level. DMS editors have complete control over whether your article is published and they are a discordant bunch. It's a rolI of the dice which editor you get for every article. In the hierarchy at DMS, the writer is at the bottom. The site moderators are at the top and the editors are second only to them. This creates a lot of bad feeling between the different castes. At HubPages I feel I am on equal terms with all Hubbers and while the site moderators obviously have more power, there is none of the nose in the air nastiness you see on DMS forums.
3. Author Bios
Read a few of the writer bios for Livestrong and Ehow articles and you will notice a bland uniformity. There is an exact formula DMS uses and DMS editors scrutinize each and every bio. Ehow.com is no longer a fun place to surf. What was once an awesome creative community has become just another information site. Some EHow articles don't even have author info, but say "by an EHow contributor."
The creative freedom HubPages gives its writers freaked me out at first. I still find myself breaking self inflicted DMS molds. How refreshing to write whatever you want about yourself.
4. Requirements and Restrictions
Not only does DMS require new writers to submit a resume and sample article, but writers can write only in their area of expertise. I, as a yoga instructor for example would not be able to submit an article on travel or cooking. HubPages will accept any writer - resume or not. While this causes some hubs to have poor grammar, it also allows incredible creative energy and worldwide knowledge to flow through the site. I believe the foreign voices are worth the sacrifice of English grammar.
5. Dropped Like a Hot Potato
The main reason I will never write for DMS is because they kicked me off their site. I had previously been writing DMS flat rate articles. DMS posts titles, which you find through their search engine. Articles pay between $5.00 and $15.00. The titles became fewer and less interesting over time. Frustrated, I explored the create your own title section of the site, which works very similar to HubPages with both SEO and Google Adsense.
These writer created titles are posted only to EHow. About 4 months and 5 articles later I received an Email from DMS stating there was suspicious "click" activity regarding my account. The same Email stated that if the activity did not cease my DMS account would be delactivated. It is true that I sometimes visit my articles - what writer doesn't? I immediately ceased reading my articles or even checking what page they were on in search engines. Two months later I received another DMS email terminating me.
My heart was broken. I loved writing and was cut off from the only online publisher I knew. Then my cousin Gloria in Australia Emailed me her short story, which was a link to HubPages. Here I am still, happily typing away. Once again life slams one door shut only to open a bigger, better door.
What online publisher do you prefer?
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