Juniper Ink.

When I was researching Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writing, I wrote a sample article to try out some of the concepts. I could have just posted the article here, on this blog, but instead I decided to try out another area of online writing that I was curious about. So I posted the article on an online content site. There are many of these sites live now, some of the more common ones being About, Examiner, Demand Studios, Helium, and eHow. These are all sites where individuals post content and earn some kind of revenue from the content. The sites all have different rules, different payment models, and different levels of quality standards.

The site I chose was Bukisa.com. I had never heard of it until I looked around for somewhere to post my article. I chose Bukisa mainly because they pay Canadian writers (many sites pay for work from US residents only) and because I didn’t know much about it (I’ve heard lots about most of the others).

Bukisa pays per views of the articles (whereas some other sites pay per ad clicks on your article pages). This seems like a better way to go, to me. Every time someone views the article, it counts, not just if they happen to click on one of the adds. Bukisa does not review the content at all–I uploaded it myself and was off to the races. Some sites do monitor for quality.

Bukisa is also a bit different from other sites in that you can set up networks and earn revenue off the articles of others in your network. They suggest you send out a mass email to your contacts to get others to sign up as part of your network. As with all of these sites, the key is to promote the articles to have people view them.

My findings

I posted my somewhat crummy test article on Bukisa.com. That’s all I did. I did not (and will not) send out an email to everyone I know asking them to join my network, and I won’t be promoting the article because the effort likely won’t pay off to any great extent and because it’s not really a great article, so why do I want people reading it? But, posting the article did enable me to see some of the SEO techniques I had learned in action.

Without any promotion (I haven’t even told one person), my article has had 36 views to date, and I have $.08 build up in my account. So, years from now, maybe I’ll make $10 off the article.

I know people who provide a lot of content for these types of sites. Some make money on it. It doesn’t seem to me, in most cases, that they make enough money for the effort required to write and promote the articles. Some just crank out article after article to improve their revenue. Many of these people are not writers, but have found an easy way to make money (albeit, at a low rate) by writing. As a result, these sites are overloaded with not-so-quality writing by writers and non-writers alike. And it’s often these not-so-quality articles that come up first in Internet search results.

Suffice it to say, I’m not a big fan. I think these sites are over saturating the Web with poorly written, and often unresearched or unverified content. It enables everyone to be “a writer” but it doesn’t do much for the quality of the writing out there. Of course, this is a generalization. There are some good articles out there, written by writers. But I think, as a rule, the more reputable, well-researched, and quality articles would be found on established news sites, established niche sites, on the writers’ own sites, and in print.

For interest’s sake, to see what I’ve been talking about, you can check out my quickly-churned-out article about Taylor Creek Park in Toronto.