Archive for the ‘Demand Studios’ Category
Nov 18, 2009 Demand Studios
Demand Studios has finally released details on their health insurance option for freelance writers. I received the official e-mail and read through Options for Health Insurance. By the way, the plan breakdowns and monthly cost are also included. See cost and coverage levels of the three available plans – this is a PDF file but you can print it out and then read through it.
My first thought is that this is excellent news. Demand Studios has stepped in to help its freelancers who have no coverage or are paying extreme amounts of money for poor insurance plans. Is it the best coverage money can buy? Absolutely not.
I used to carry a Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield private policy specifically meant for self-employed individuals. The plan cost me $300 a month and would increase by $50 each year. There was no co-pay or deductibles, and the coverage amounts were high. I switched to the same exact plan but through my husband’s employer. We are saving hundreds of dollars a month but now we have co-pay and deductibles.
Demand Studios Health Care Option for freelancers does not have co-pay, no deductible and individuals with pre-existing conditions will be accepted. Be warned though that the fine print says you will be accepted but your pre-existing condition may not be fully covered. My current plan does the same thing, while they accept me they will not pay for my pre-existing condition for a full year.
While you get some health care coverage, you will have limits on how many doctor’s visit are paid in a year. Read through each plan level and how many visits it will cover. Again, it is not the best health insurance you will find but it is affordable. The top plan costs around $150 a month and it even includes prescription coverage or discounts.
I could talk to you about our health care system and why I feel it requires a major change. At least someone is willing to step in and offer a way of acquiring a health insurance plan for those of us who have no employer to rely on. I’m sure some will be disappointed because they expected a lot more and better coverage. Still, no other publishing company is offering freelance writers assistance with their health care. Maybe we can at least appreciate the hard effort that went into making this happen.
I am thinking about signing up for health insurance offered through Demand Studios, but only to use it as supplemental insurance. I already have coverage, but this would allow me to save money on co-pays.
The actual eligibility e-mail has not been sent out yet. Freelancers who are eligible will have 90 days to sign-up or wait for the new enrollment dates. Every month individuals who meet requirements will be e-mailed for a chance to sign-up for this plan. Demand Studios will only offer it to individuals who have been there at least 3 months and produce an average of 30 articles a month.
Nov 12, 2009 Demand Studios, Freelance Advice, Web Content
Yesterday I posted a message on Twitter that I was all about new experiences. Contrary to popular belief, it was not anything dirty but was related to Demand Studios work. Demand Studios, the greatest freelance writing gig one could get accepted for, has several style guides and strict rules to follow. I have done How Does, About, Fact Sheet and Strategy styles for Demand Studios. The format I am most comfortable with is Strategy. Recently, most of my work has been Strategy articles. Yesterday I was brave enough to try something new; Quick Guide and List.
Demand Studios has over 100,000 titles to choose from in different style formats. Despite the variety, titles can get boring or all the good ones will be picked through. I decided to try something different both for experience but also for a chance to write about interesting subjects. It was scary but I tried my best…
Quick Guides are fairly new to Demand Studios. I attempted one months ago but their search function was broken. I searched for “water fountain” and got results that had nothing to do with water or fountains. Now that he issue is fixed, I can find relevant and interesting articles to include in my Quick Guide. I also found a picture that was both cute and relevant. The article was about non-profit organizations, so I picked a picture of a smiling kid. Then the search for articles began… so how do I choose what to include?
My non-profit organizations Quick Guide could have been done in a variety of ways, there was not anything specific the title asked for. So I figured that Overview, Abouts and How to information on non-profit would be helpful. I lined them up so that guide covered everything informative about non-profit organizations such as what they are or classifications of “not for profit”. I also included how to start a non-profit, about tax filings, exemptions and donations. Then I figured non-profit organizations always run fundraisers and accept donations, so I included information about that aspect as well. Overall, I found 15 relevant articles and wrote a quick overview. I like Quick Guide overviews because we have more freedom and flexibility. We can spice it up and make it sound really fun, while engaging the reader.
This morning my first Quick Guide was accepted and I received a very nice compliment. The editor found my article to be informative, helpful and even called it “excellent”. Trying and succeeding at something new felt inspiring.
My List article was a fun topic, but required research and more writing. List articles are different from Strategy, requiring little more in-depth and rigid information. I probably wrote more than what was required and explained in detail. The article was accepted however without a rewrite. I read it again this morning and it seems just fine. There was no “awesomness” or comments from my editor. I might try another List style today just to get familiar with that format.
Oct 23, 2009 Demand Studios, General
Kody and I have been sick for a week now, but we are slowly getting better. He has diarrhea issues now but less fever, most of the day he spent without a temperature which is good. He was fussy tonight and as usual nothing in the world made him happy. Sometimes I wonder if his whining is a secret plan to drive me insane.
This week has been so exhausting. I am starting to feel mentally drained despite feeling better physically. I couldn’t even tell you what’s wrong. I’m stressed out and just irritated. I wish I could put my husband in a helium balloon and make him go away for a few days. The bad part is that he hasn’t really done anything wrong. He’s been working a lot, 12 hour days, but I’m too annoyed with everything including the sound of his voice.
I have to get back to work because this week sidetracked me again. I am still far away from my goal of 40-70 articles a week for Demand Studios. This is one major reason why I have been so stressed out and frustrated. I just do not understand why this goal seems so impossible to achieve. Now I’m spending another Friday night working for Demand Studios, and I’ll spend another Saturday night as well trying to get as many articles in as possible.
Sep 24, 2009 Demand Studios
Demand Studios is an awesome place for freelance writers. I can honestly say that Demand Studios allows people an unlimited income, and even full-time earnings with on-time payments. I’ve never had issues with their weekly payments.
From now on, Demand Studios will pay twice a week; on Tuesdays and Fridays. Here is the official statement:
“We are happy to announce twice weekly payments. Work completed/approved by Sunday (11:59 PM Pacific) will be paid on Tuesday. The first new payday is Tuesday 9/29. Friday payments will continue as usual.”
So now you have the ability to write a lot and get paid for it TWICE a week! I can’t say how happy I am with this news. It’s great to see Demand Studios always implementing changes and improving their system. I’m excited to have the ability to get paid faster, and have money in my account for bills.
I have a feeling that this change came from editors waiting for the last day to approve work. I have heard complaints that writers were waiting for an entire week to get an approval or re-write notice, making it harder to get work approved by the Wednesday night cutoff time. So again, this change is for the better and it will allow faster approval and faster payments in everyone’s Paypal accounts!
Tags: Demand Studios, earnings, full-time, income, payments
Sep 3, 2009 Article Writing, Demand Studios
Demand Studios announced that their Quick Guide article styles will now be available to all writers. As you can imagine, the newly released titles were quickly snatched up. I ran across a couple of “Introduction to” article titles and accepted one assignment just to see what it looks like.
The first requirement for a Quick Guide is to find a picture. I prefer using third party sources, such as creativecommons.org that offers royalty-free images. You can use this website to find photographs for Demand Studios, but carefully read legal instructions under each photograph and credit correctly back to the image owner.
The second step is writing a short but engaging introduction, which should be 30-50 words. In some samples of Quick Guides that I ran across, the text is there to encourage people to click on article links below.
The worst part about Quick Guides is the third requirement – searching and selecting articles and videos that relate to the topic. Finding this information is not the problem, it’s the broken search function. I searched for “water fountains” and found a lot of garden topics but nothing that even mentioned the word “fountain”. Apparently, Demand Studios staff is aware that the search function is no working correctly and they are working on fixing it.
Quick Guide style pays $7.50, which would be really easy money to make if the search portion of it worked properly. I’ll wait until the issue is resolved and I’ll give one a try. They seem to be really good for search engine optimization and driving traffic to some of the already published work on Ehow.com that may not be getting as much notice anymore.
Tags: Demand Studios, example, quick guide, search, sheet, style
Aug 25, 2009 Article Writing, Demand Studios
I get this question a lot in e-mails and on Twitter. Demand Studios can be a great paying gig for freelance writers, and steady income. All you have to do is be willing to put in the hours and time to create content. Demand Studios allows you to earn as much money as you want, and yet it can be a full-time income working from home. I’ll do my best to give you an honest opinion of demandstudios.com and answer questions that so many of you frequently ask.
1. How much does Demand Studios pay?
That depends on what type of articles you are writing for them. Demand Studios has several article styles such as Fact Sheets, Strategy, How To, About and How Does. Fact Sheets are $5 and Strategy $15 a piece, with Fact Sheets being around 200 words and Strategy 400-500 words. Some How To styles pay as much as $20, although I have personally never written a Demand Studios How To article. I prefer Strategy and Fact Sheets.
2. Is it a flat payment or residual income?
Demand Studio pays per piece that is approved. If you write 10 Strategy style articles this week, you will be paid $150.
If you write 10 Fact Sheets, you will make $50. DS does have a revenue share system for certain articles, they are marked as revenue share but you will not get the flat fee after approval.
3. Can I write as many articles as I want?
Yes, you can write as many articles as you want for Demand Studios. Each article has to be checked by an editor and approved. You only get paid if an article is approved. You get one rewrite request and the article can be rejected if an editor’s rewrite request is not met. If your article is rejected, you will not get paid for it.
4. How can I make a full-time income writing for Demand Studios?
First, look over your family budget to see how much money you need to pay bills and what it is that your family considers a “full-time income”. For some people this is $2,000 a month, while for others it’s $5,000. Then do simple math, if you have to make $1,000 every week that would be 66 Strategy style articles at Demand Studios. That would be almost 5 articles written every day and approved by an editor before Wednesday night’s cut off. If you do not have articles approved by Wednesday night, they can roll over for next week and be paid out in the next week’s batch.
5. Who owns articles I’ve written for Demand Studios?
Demand Studio pays a flat-fee per articles, unless you are doing Revenue Shared work. Anything you submit and get approved by an editor is owned by Demand Studios. Ehow.com is where most of Demand Studios work is published at, so your writer byline will appear with each Ehow article. While you cannot resell the original article and its rights, you can use it as part of your published portfolio.
I will gladly answer your frequently asked questions about Demand Studios in the future. Remember, DS is what you make out of it and it can be a great paying gig if you apply yourself. The income amount is completely controlled by you. If you can turn in 100 articles a week, great for you! Although, your eyesight might end up being worse than mine!
Please be sure to read Demand Studios guidelines, available in the Resource Center. I don’t work for DS and I do not know how you can have every article accepted without a rewrite. Work well and play nice with the editors, and always follow the provided guidelines.
*This is not a sponsored post.
Aug 19, 2009 Demand Studios, Web Content
Demand Studios just announced new changes to their plagiarism appeal process for articles that would automatically be flagged by their plagiarism detection search. In the old system, the checker would flag your article and send an automatic e-mail. You then had to reply to that same e-mail with the title of your article and explain that the article was not plagiarized.
The new system now automatically puts flagged articles in the queue for the editorial staff to check. You do not have to e-mail the editors anymore, they will e-mail you. If an article passed editorial plagiarism check it will be released to a copy editor immediately. However, if your article was plagiarized, an editor will contact you directly.
The rewrite rule is the same as before, your article will again go through a plagiarism check and it will be sent to the flagged queue. Again, you will not have to e-mail the editors they will manually review all flagged articles and approve.
I knew their plagiarism checker was faulty because I had it happen on a handful occasions, and it was always on health related articles. There is only so many ways to explain a symptom of a medical condition, of course it will be the same word found on another website. My articles always passed after an e-mail to the editors was sent, but it was annoying. I’ve had editors e-mail me and apologize for the flag as it was obviously in error. I’m glad they made this change, yet another great move by Demand Studios!
Aug 17, 2009 Demand Studios
I woke up early this morning, 5:30AM and started writing for Demand Studios. While on their website, I noticed database problems and connection issues. Then around noon the entire dashboard was unreachable. The forums indicated that everyone else was having the same issues, but that whatever was wrong was being worked on. Hopefully the website will be fully functional later today, I’d like to get more work turned in for this week.
Here are some links that do work, and old ways of accessing Demand Studios dashboard. You can also click on articles and write them, although I’d strongly suggest saving all work in a word program in case database problems persist.
Profile Overview – Use this website to click on claimed assignments and write them. But again, save all work in case database problems try to eat your article!
Find Assignments – The same old-style url where you can claim assignments.
Demand Studios Forum – Several threads are active about the website glitches, so keep an eye on the announcements from moderators and DS staff.
Aug 12, 2009 Article Writing, Demand Studios
We all need a little encouragement, it helps knowing that you are on the right track. Or that you don’t suck, as I like to say. “You’ve done a good job with this article.” – a sentence like that is enough to brighten up my day, and get me motivated to put some more work in.
I’m thinking of hiring someone just to tell me “You’re effin awesome!” every hour or so. My productivity level would be skyrocketing.
Tags: Demand Studios, freelance, income, makin money, payment, review, writing
Jul 3, 2009 Associated Content, Demand Studios, General
I have been busy, which is always a good thing. Demand Studios has been taking up most of my time this week, especially with their queue changes. I really cannot express how great the change at Demand Studios is. I plan to cover this and more Demand Studios tips in the future.
As for Associated Content, I was told yesterday that I won Best of AC Awards in Web Technology! June ‘09 Best of AC Winners also included James Hamel for Automotive category, and Rick Blaine for Summer Travel Guides. I had so many AC writers congratulate me on my Source page, and on Twitter. Thank you everyone and of course big thanks to AC, I am so grateful.
I am about to finish up more Demand Studios articles today, and enjoy this holiday weekend. My husband has several days off and we plan to enjoy ourselves. Kody and I woke up early this morning, so I’ll share with you this snapshot. Happy 4th of July!
