How Suite it is?

Yesterday, I made a decision: A current writing gig is just not going to work out for me anymore. What prompted this decision? I only now received their contract (after months of writing for them) and it states that they are buying all rights to my articles.

Yep, you read that correctly: ALL RIGHTS. Which means they can reprint the articles anywhere else on the Web and I wouldn't see a dime in reprint sales. And forget about selling the articles as a reprint; I wouldn't have any more rights to them.

Selling all rights to your writing is something which some writers accept, in some cases. For example, if the pay sufficient, then they accept surrendering all rights. And, for some, they figure there is no chance they will reuse anything in that article, anyway, and they don't want to try to sell it as a reprint. So, they surrender all rights.

To read more about what it REALLY means to sell all rights to your writing, go here:
Selling All Rights: Right or Wrong?

In my case, I did not feel it was fair to surrender all rights to my articles, because they are only paying me $5 for each one. If the pay was a little higher, I would accept this. But at $5? That's highway robbery!

Or, should I say, superhighway robbery, since this is on the Internet.

I wrestled with this for a while. I tried to accept these terms, but it just REALLY seemed like a lousy deal. It just was not a fair sale. Every time I even tried to keep working for them, my instincts cried STOP! I just did not feel like I was respecting myself as a writer, and my work in general, if I continued to work under these terms.

I have pretty much accepted the fact that the articles I have sold to them so far are gone forever. I guess all this time, they were being bought under those terms outlined in the contract (which I actually have yet to sign). At the time I took this gig, these terms were not outlined on their site or in emails. I naively assumed they were buying nonexclusive rights, First Electronic Rights or exclusive rights that would expire after a period of time. But now I know that was never the case.

Now I have decided that I will no longer work for them under those terms.

So last night, I got on the 'Net to try and find a new writing gig. I visited a job site for writers and there were a couple of jobs with requirements I felt I could meet. I sent them emails asking for more info, ensuring that my resume is ready for their review, and hit another job site. After some clicking, I came across an ad saying that Suite101.com was looking for writers. I know of some writers who have written for Suite101.com, and I figured, if they are writing for this site, then it must be a legitimate writing gig worth their time. The ad said the pay was $39.50 per article.

Hey, that's better than $5, I thought.

So I went to their site, filled out the application and sent along with that two sample pieces of my writing that matched the topics I wanted to write for and met their word count limit.

This morning, I got an e-mail saying that my application was approved. Hooray! I was now a Suite101.com writer!

I went to the site to read the contract and noted it didn't say anything about the pay rate. I was satisfied with the rights they wanted for articles, but there was no figure concerning pay.

Uh-oh. Not a good sign.

So I hit Google and did some checking around. I noted on some blog posts about writing for Suite101.com that a lot of the complaints concerning pay were outdated. I looked for information that was current and found out that they pay their writers by ad revenue. Meaning that every reader who clicked on an ad that's on the same page as the article would help the writer earn some income. I was not happy to see that this payout was low (something like $1.50 for every ONE THOUSAND clicks -- ugh!!), and even more disheartened when one writer said she only earned 26 cents her first month as a Suite101.com writer.

Twenty-six cents?? Sheesh! I might as well go back to writing for $5 per sale! Good grief!

I also came across one writer saying she earned just $3.90 for every 1,000 page views of her article. Ugh!

I did some more checking around and my hopes started to rise. There ARE writers out there who have managed to earn a decent monthly income writing for Suite101.com. In fact, they even continue to earn income years after their articles are published and even after they stop writing for that site.

Phew! I was glad to hear that.

I later received a memo from the site's EIC stating they are actually upgrading their pay model for writers. Now writers will receive revenue based on page views, and not just clicks on ads. Yay! That was good news.

So I'll be going through their training soonish and hopefully this new writing gig will be something bigger and better for me. I would love to move past writing for the Internet and instead write for magazines, but until I can make that a reality, I will settle for writing for the Web. And a newspaper, as well; pretty soon I'll be receiving my next assignments for SIGNews and I'm excited to move forward with that, too.