So here’s the scoop on Demand Studios in a nutshell. (I don’t have a full website post about it yet)
They do NOT allow you to keep any rights to your work. At all. When you write the article, and submit it to them, it is theirs. You need to know that upfront.
Having said that – Demand Studios can be a really good way to make a set amount of immediate money. When our renters flaked out on us and we NEEDED to make X amount of money to cover the mortgage (granted – it was our fault for relying on that rent money and we’ve definitely learned our lesson) Demand Studios saved us.
Here’s How Demand Studios Pays
If you take one of the articles they have listed you will get paid $15. Search for titles you can do quickly and easily. Some of them are totally off the wall – like “How to Build a Solar Powered Robot Dog” or some crazy weird thing like that. The best way I’ve found it so find a cluster of article titles around a similar theme. “How Dolphins Use Echolocation”, “About Dolphins” “Why are Dolphins Mammals” “How do Dolphins Behave” – I can use one bundle of research to crank out five or six articles on a similar topic and get them written rather quickly.
If you SUGGEST a title you will only get paid $5. I do not recommend doing it often. $5 is hardly worth the trouble – better to search for a topic title you think you can do relatively easy. Especially when you consider that last year on Suite101 I averaged $15-$16 per article for the entire year. And I’m still getting paid for those articles this year as well.
They apparently have added some kind of revenue share program but my understanding is that it is rather a small amount of payment per 1000 pv’s. Anything under $2/1000 page views is rather too low in my opinion. I average about $3 per 1000 page views at Suite101 and prefer to write any “extra” articles there.
But, like I said. When I HAD TO HAVE $300 that month to make up the difference it was very easy to say “$300 divided by $15 = 20 articles”.
Demand Studios pays once a week directly into your Paypal account. You will recieve a W2 at the end of the year for payments. My profile with a list of articles I’ve written there – http://www.ehow.com/members/ds_angela10540.html
This is an honest and realistic look at writing for Demand Studios. You make good points in favor and against and freelancers should take all of these things into consideration before deciding whether or not to write for Demand Studios. It’s great for many and less than great of others. I say the best thing to do is try it out for yourself and see what you think. If you don’t like it you can always just stop writing for them.