First of all, there is an optimal amount of advertising. You left that in the dust long ago. My readers have been complaining for months about Examiner having so many ads that they have trouble getting to read the content. This drives away readers. But, now your ads are even making it hard for me to post columns. It's one thing to clog the site with ads, but it's insanity to clog the publishing tool with so many ads and pop-ups that writers can't post easily. Why have ads on the publishing tool at all?
I have tried to post a column twice today, only to have the site freeze up due to the flood of ads. Added to the fact that you got rid of the "auto-save" feature, this means I have to go back and re-write the whole thing (fortunately I have a saved copy), and add all the links back in again. This is extremely frustrating.
Why did you get rid of useful features while clogging the site with garbage? You got rid of the auto-save, as I mentioned before, and you got rid of the spell check. My keyboard tends to skip "h" a lot. This means I have to copy and paste my article somewhere else to try to catch the skipped letters. PUT THE SPELL CHECK BACK!
Then there is the money. You keep cutting back on the pay per page view. Yes, you added a dollar per published column "up to 5 per week" (as long as I include the word "Albuquerque" in the column somewhere), but the per view pay keeps dwindling. It evaporates. It makes it pointless to strive for good content rather than to just post some "Blah blah Albuquerque blah" to get the dollar. Yet, for my own self-respect I refuse to do that. I'd rather just walk away from your sandbox and let you use it as your personal kitty box if that's what you want.
It is really getting to the point that the problems are not worth the pittance you pay. I also feel that the pay situation on your part is dishonest. Sure you hedge your bets by saying:
...your pay is based on a rating that considers a number of factors, including advertising revenue and the quality of your audience. This includes things like frequency of publishing, subscriptions, page view traffic and session length. Pay may fluctuate depending on any of these and other factors. Examiner.com makes no guarantees as to minimum payment.Weasel words? Affirmative!
I am tired of the nonsense.
I still haven't figured out why you didn't dump Examiner a long time ago. I stopped posting there a long time ago. I am still listed as the "Cheyenne Green Living Examiner," though I haven't written anything for them in months. I think my top payout (which I haven't been paid) was $120 after a YEAR of writing.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of other venues. Screw Examiner.
Try AOL or Yahoo to start. Or just do as I've said to you several times now: start your own damn website/domain, write a few articles on Examiner linking to your new site several times, and then dump Examiner altogether.
I make a decent amount from my sites through just Google AdSense, which nobody complains about and which doesn't do popups, automatic-play video/sound, etc.
I started to do the AdSense thing, but when I heard how little money would result from that I scrapped it.
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, I don't feel like paying for another domain name on top of those I already have. It would need to bring in a lot of money to make it worthwhile. Plus, I tried to figure out how to write a blog-type thing on my one website a long time ago and gave up on that, too. I'm not a techie, and don't have the inclination to get in too deep.
If the Examiner gig comes to an end I will probably just start writing here again. Plus my newspaper deals. That's about all I can handle, and probably why Examiner is frustrating me so much today anyway. I'm stretched too thin.