MintArticles: A New Paid to Write Site
MintArticles is a new content site that came out just this year. Is it worth it to write for them? Let’s take a look.
MintArticles is a new content site that came out just this year. As I do maintain a list of paid to write sites, I’m always interested when one pops up that I have yet to heard of.
First a look at the front page. Looks nice, nothing there that really turns me off. Except for the language, which appears to be… let’s just say that it was not the standard that I expected to see from a site involved in the business of publishing online content. A couple of examples:
“The more popularity your articles recieve the more people will search for your services.”
“And all this free, we ask you just to take part in our community”
And these appearing right at the top of the front page itself.
Never mind, it’s a new site. I’l just write that off to them hiring the cheapest writer that they could find to cut costs. I’ll just check the ToS to see the fine print… I laughed after reading the ToS. Mainly due to point 9.
“Because we really mind of our authors, you agree to take a 5 minute pause after each half and hour when using our website continuously.”
Point 4 was no laughing matter though.
“You will also give us unconditional permission to let other publishers republish your articles. Publishers are asked to follow our TOS for Publishers, but we cannot guarantee you that they will respect it. If someone violates your copyright, it is your personal responsibility to enforce your rights. If you do not agree with our terms, do not submit your articles.”
They’re imposing a ToS for publishers who want to buy the rights to a MintArticles article, but the job of ensuring that publishers do so falls on the writer of said article? Wonderful site.
Payment wise, they allow you to display and earn via Google Adsense on your articles there. I find no mention of them taking a cut of your Adsense earnings, so I presume that they let you keep 100% of the earnings. They do mention in point 7 that they’ll display their own ads besides your articles. But the ToS doesn’t specifically say so, so I have no idea if this is the case.
Never mind, I’ll check out the signing on part.
It appears that the drop down list for countries overlaps onto the Google Ads that they are displaying. I would just chalk it up as a minor annoyance, but…
There is nothing wrong with their website. They said so. I’m certain that there is nothing wrong with my browser/computer as well. Which pretty much leaves only one possibility left. They’re doing it on purpose. Great, they’re commiting click fraud.
I’m no longer interested in the site at this point. I would have looked into the possibilty of using it to build backlinks, but there’s really no point in building backlinks on a site that’s likely to get blacklisted by Google.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Hmm, the screenshots are a tad too large *goes to submit a fix*
March 14th, 2009 at 1:08 am
hope this site can help writers to earn.
good thing you’ve found it iakul.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:09 am
I think you’re too meticulous. I checked that website and didn’t find the errors you were talking about. Anyway, thanks for the review. It helped me find another good article directory
March 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I guess I should be flattered that they somehow managed to fix all the errors that my article pointed out were errors, yet still manage to miss out the stagegering number of grammar mistakes that I did not mention
Which incidentally also includes the parts which I did quote but did not point out were grammatically incorrect *cough* point 9 of ToS *cough*
August 28th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Thanks for this article, good to hear new alternative sites.