Is Constant Content Worth Your Time?
After a few weeks on Associated Content, Constant Content, Demand Studios, and Suite101, I would like to share my initial experience of these sites with you. This is the second article in a series of four articles that closely examines each of these sites. This article takes a look at Constant Content.
As the first article in this series described, I’m taking a little toe dabble into some other freelance sites to see what potential they have. This series of articles explores my initial impression of each of the sites.
Constant Content
Constant Content stockpiles articles from freelance writers and offers them to potential clients for purchase. Constant Content is appealing because you set the price you want to sell your articles for. Also, you can specify a different price for each of the rights (usage, unique, or full rights) you are willing to sell. Constant Content takes a cut of 35% of each sale.
I submitted my article Salt Lake City, Utah: A Tourist’s Delight to Constant Content several months ago. After about a month and a half, a client purchased it. This gave me a boost, and I decided to submit more content to Constant Content.
I’ve had a rough go with the other three articles I submitted, however.
One article was rejected because I forgot to change the font to Times New Roman. When articles are rejected, they are purged from the Constant Content system. This is a pain because work goes into submitting the articles in the format that Constant Content requires. To have this particular article reconsidered, I’d need to again go through the 15-minute-or-so submission process.
The next article was rejected due to spelling errors. There were no spelling errors. I ran spell check again. I’m thinking the Constant Content automated editor rejected the article because it thought the proper nouns in the article were spelling errors. Argh!
The third article I submitted has yet to be reviewed, though it has been nearly a week and a half since I submitted it.
There’s another aspect of Constant Content that I’m not crazy about: “public requests” from clients. Clients can put out requests to the writers at Constant Content to write articles on whatever topics they need. The clients specify what rights they need and how much they are willing to pay for each article. If you write one of these articles, however, the client is not obligated to buy it. If you are up for this game, I think the key is to write on one of the topics that is general enough that you could post your article on another site if the client does not purchase it.
Summing Up
I’m not very impressed with Constant Content so far. Much of the system seems to be automated. Articles that are not in strict accordance with the Constant Content rules are purged from the system. The article review process can also take quite a long time. Finally, writing an article for a public request is a gamble because the client can choose to accept or not accept this article that was tailored to their needs and written specifically for them.
What has your experience with Constant Content been like?
You might also like the other articles in this series:
Is Associated Content Worth Your Time?
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11 Responses to “Is Constant Content Worth Your Time?”
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October 21st, 2009 at 8:06 am
I’m a member of Constant Content, but I just haven’t had the energy to submit any writing to them, because the whole thing is a gamble. There are people who write for Constant Content who seem to sell a majority of the things they write. No matter what you post there should be something for someone, right?
I also think it’s important for a freelance writing site to make sure that the articles its writers are submitting are above par.
Thanks for the insight!
October 21st, 2009 at 9:35 am
The more I read from you, the more I just want to hang around Triond and take my chances here for the few dollars a month I earn.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:27 am
Freelancing has been something I have been considering for a while. Thanks for making us aware of the problems you are facing.
October 21st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I can tell you that Constant-Content is indeed worth it. The CC editor is real, and he’s tough. Spell checkers and grammar checkers aren’t good enough to rely on. If he says there was a spelling error, you can bet there was. Submitting one or two articles isn’t really a fair test of the site’s potential.
October 21st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I don’t think I’ll bother with this site then!!
October 21st, 2009 at 8:07 pm
The more I hear about other writing sites the more I’m convinced that I’ve made the right choice to put all my effort into Triond. A good article on Triond will earn for as long as Triond is on the Internet. Just think of the earning potential of 500 articles. The numbers don’t lie. I have 330 articles to go. One more year should do the trick.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:57 am
I haven’t actually tried constant content yet but I’ve been signed up. I think the trick with them is to write about popular or “hot” subjects. I save the “I wanna” writes for my blog. Unfortunately, that’s the industry.
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Just a point of clarification on Constant Content – the editor is an actual human being – there is no automation involved. Also I find it difficult to believe that the submission process took 15 minutes. I just uploaded three articles to CC in less than 10 minutes. I would suggest saving your articles as Word documents – that would make it easy to change formats/fonts, etc.
I have been a member of Constant Content for more than four years, and I can definitely say it is worth the effort. There have been months my CC earning far exceeded those of my \”real\” job.
Bonnie
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Just a note in response to Celeste and Bonnie. If the editor is indeed “real,” I would appreciate his putting a little effort into explaining why articles are rejected. Right now, a form email with a one line reason is sent out.
Update: My third article was rejected because the content was not original enough. No clue what that means.
I’m giving up on Constant Content. It’s not worth my effort.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
The editor is real alright. If you really want the inside scoop, you need to explore the CC community. Ed often elaborates when asked about rejections and the community is extremely helpful. If the Bonnie in this thread is the Bonnie I think she is, she’s a top seller there. Constant-Content is not for everyone by any stretch, but for some of us, it’s an amazing and financially rewarding site.
And yeah, it takes me all of about half a minute to upload a document, not fifteen minutes. Even for newbies, it’s not that difficult to fill out a few fields and click Submit. Granted, a first timer might want to take her time and read all the fine print, but once you know what you’re doing, it’s no more difficult than posting a comment right here.
November 6th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
I recently joined CC, and so far it’s been a good experience. With my first submission, I proofread it several times for grammatical errors, typos, etc., but still I let a factual error through. The editor spotted the mistake immediately and my article was rejected. I then fixed that error and triple checked for any others before submitting again. This second time it was approved and sold immediately.
I’m sure the CC editor receives dozens or article each day, and I don’t blame him for not devoting valuable editing time to pointing out each mistake in an article. Once he spots a mistake, I’m sure he stops reading and sends a rejection based strictly on that error. CC makes it very clear that authors are expected to thoroughly proofread and research their articles before submitting.
Personally, I’m glad to find a writing site that truly emphasizes the quality of the content.