Earnings Percentage Change at This is Freelance?
Time is money
Here at This is Freelance I am constantly trying to improve this site for the writers who make use of this high quality article directory. As the owner of This is Freelance it is often my responsibility to figure out how to keep people interested, engaged, and profitable with this article directory.
To do this I have been constantly trying to improve the user experience at This is Freelance, working hard to incorporate fresh advertising options, provide a community environment, and make it easier for you to create high value SEO friendly articles.
While this has all improved the overall experience of the website, it has also unfortunately not had much of an effect at keeping writers coming back to post more articles.
This is not in itself an unusual problem in startup article directories, with generally 1 in 180 writers (A person who writes more than one article) actually participating long term. However with my more stringent acceptance guidelines I sincerely hope I can lower this ratio.
But I am still faced with this exact problem, and like all situations I think a lot of it boils down to the following phrase, an iconic hollywood boast,
Show Me The Money!
Currently I have ad impressions set to 60% in the authors favor, this is an industry standard used in other high end article directories such as Hubpages. The downside is of course that This is Freelance is nowhere as near as big.
This leaves me with a small conundrum, once ad impressions are raised it is hard to lower them, say if the site took off, without causing Author dissent, but likewise, when the site grows in size I will need to get a private server, and I would like some share of the earnings for the hundreds of hours I invest to make this site successful.
Here are several options I am considering, each one has benefits which will hopefully draw more writers on to This is Freelance, and keep them here!
- Promotional Earnings Boost – Ad impressions increased to 80% during 2011
- Permanent Boost – Ad impressions increased to 70% to 75% permanently
- Seperate Advertising Areas (I hate the idea of this personally) where the user gets ’100%’ of one ad block.
- Permanent boost (80%) mixed with in text advertising such as Kontera giving 100% revenue to site. (I am also not a huge fan of in text advertising on this site, it gives a nice little monetary bonus, but many authors simply do not like it!)
Currently my favorite option of them all would be a promotional bonus for 2011, probably starting in March a ‘March Madness’ promotion. This has the added benefit of giving the most reward to those Authors who invested the most from the beginning. However I would love to hear more from you guys, so please comment with your preferences, and any other ideas you might have!
Popularity: 2%
Option 1 or 2! I should be cranking out some more content soon. Haven’t had much time lately.
I am leaning more towards option one, I am looking at getting some graphics together over the next couple of weeks and will hopefully manage to get the promotion launched in March!
Probably I haven’t understood enough of this website but if you give the same adsense share of big players like hubpages why should I write for you and not for them?
It is actually a very good question, if you are looking for instantaneous short term benefit then Hubpages probably would be a better bet. Writing on This is Freelance right now is definitely an investment, but one that I hope will pay off for all my writers.
The first thing I want to mention is that this is not a choice you have to make. Most of the writers here are prolific hubbers, and use This is Freelance to promote their hubs. This is Freelance and other sites are not mutually exclusive, I actually suggest you use other sites as well as This is Freelance and inter-link them liberally to make the very most of your online writing.
However there are two main reasons that writing for This is Freelance is a good idea now.
1) You are in right from the start, and this means that you can get some fantastic keyword rich domain paths, which you simply cannot find anymore on popular sites such as Hubpages or Squidoo.
2) The site has a stricter entrance policy than Hubpages or Squidoo. If you have ever been hub hopping on Hubpages you can soon see that even this site suffers from a rather large contingent of writers who post duplicate content, retranslated content and poor quality content. While Hubpages does try to do this through moderation, it is impossible for them to moderate every Hub. My goal is to cut poor quality off at the source, and aim to capture writers who have an interest in writing quality content. This gives an across the board higher site quality.
There is absolutely no problem in wanting to get the very most out of your work, and these two points may not be enough to convince you to try This is Freelance just yet. But you can always come back later when the site is a little more active if you want to hold off until then.
Well, I do have to say that I’m getting tired of the junk at HubPages. I’m not ready to give them up quite yet, but I am less than satisfied. I really don’t like being associated with some of the very poor hubs there.
They need to be more discerning about authors, frankly.
I’m willing to give ThisIsFreelance a fair shot.
Kontera: if Kontera is put on my posts, I’ll withdraw every one of them immediately. I detest that kind of confusing advertising
You have my mail address… read some of my work at HP and let me know what quality you consider my work to be and why I should or shouldn’t support a Texas website, if they don’t realize and appreciate how far I would have to walk to get to the office Christmas Party on time! Perhaps I am too much of a Straight Shooter for you Long-Horns to endure? :)
This is a very nice website. I am sure you are going to move up.
Do you have a referral program in place? That’s one way to get more writers.
I considered it but kind of decided against it because it would be technically complicated and I am worried it would bring in writers who try to circumnavigate the rules.