Thursday, April 15, 2010

Attribution becoming a real pain at Demand Studios

Attribution has become quite the buzzword at Demand Studios these days. Seems the people behind the company have forgotten that they're paying writers $15 for most stories. If they want heavily sourced stories with proper attribution, they should be increasing their paltry rates.

Does anyone think that will happen? Nope, Demand Studios will continue asking writers to source stories as if we were writing for the New York Times. Hate to break it to you, but the Times pays a lot more than $15 a story.

Demand Studios has benefited from the crummy economy and the woes of newspapers and magazine publishers. Writers who never would have considered writing $15 stories are flocking to the site because they are running out of other options. Simply put, too many magazines and newspapers have shut down or closed off their freelance budgets. Demand Studios is there, eager to take in desperate writers.

Personally, rewrite requests at Demand are driving me crazy. Where are the copy editors who realize that we're all getting paid horrible rates? Why do I keep getting those who think we're writing for some higher good? We're churning out garbage stories for eHow, a site that serves as a depository for some of the most poorly written junk on the Internet. Increasing the quality of the writing on the site is a noble goal. But paying writers $15 a story to do this smacks of a company taking advantage of people desperate to pay their bills.

4 comments:

  1. if you don't know how to quickly research reliable sources and properly assign attribution, maybe you're not qualified to earn $15.

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  2. Hi, RSM:

    I do know how to quickly research sources. But I don't want to do this for only $15. I need to turn in at least three of these stories in every hour -- preferably four -- to make writing for Demand Studios worth my while. I'd be happy to provide attribution. I'd be happy to interview sources, which is what I do when I'm writing real journalism, but not for $15. That's simply not enough money.

    Dan

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  3. Hi Dan: I've been thinking more about your post and it has me thinking, are your articles based on what you've read? What you think? In other words, if you aren't researching your articles, i'm assuming you're trying to sell your opinion. I also write for DS. Fortunately I'm now getting paid $25 for my articles. But like you, i need to write at about 7 to 10 articles a day for it to be worth it. And it's actually much easier for me to write article with attribution. It adds to word count as well. "According to the Mayo Clinic" + quote = about 20 words. It really isn't difficult to do and doesn't take that much time if you know where to look.

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  4. Hi, Riki:

    Thanks for your comment. I try to only write articles at Demand Studios that I can write off the top of my head. That said, I do take on mortgage and real estate stories when I find easy ones because I've covered real estate for newspapers and trade magazines for more than 10 years. I do use sources for these stories, and I do pepper my stories with the appropriate "according to"s and whatnot. The problem comes when copy editors request me to attribute facts that are common knowledge. For instance, one copy editor wanted me to attribute the fact that mortgage lenders rely largely on credit scores when determining to whom to loan money. I consider that a fact that doesn't need attribution to back it up.

    Dan

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