Should You Write for Shvoong?

I discovered the website Shvoong about two years ago. The web site offers writers the opportunity to write reviews of books, websites, newspapers, academic texts and so on, and offers to pay the writer. But the question most of us will have is the pay worth the work?

My first year I had 6 articles, which in that year generated about 60 cents in earnings. The minimum pay-out is $10.00, so I had a long way to go. I wrote a few more articles at the one year point, bringing my total up to 25. The payment in the next year for all of my articles came to about $3.29. So I still didn’t meet the $10.00 threshold.

Contrast this to Helium, the other writing site I have been working at for a similar amount of time. My earnings at the two year point for over 100 articles were $69.00. And some of my Helium articles are heavy earners, bringing in a few cents every month.

It may seem like Shvoong is a raw deal for the writer. But it does have its advantages. First of all, it is a multilingual site. So if your native language is not English, you can possibly write articles in your native language.

In addition, you may also be paid for doing translations. You might even translate your own reviews into another language. These possibilities will add to the chance of your earning more if you have the right skill set.

Linking to your Shvoong review may be a way to increase the page views and thus the revenue. If you were planning to review a book on your blog, you might decide instead to review it on Shvoong, and then put up a blog entry with the title of the review and perhaps the first sentence or so, and include a link to your Shvoong article to invite the reader to read the whole thing.

Still, the pay rate at Shvoong is small and the writer will have to consider whether it is worth the effort. In many cases, writing a similar article for Helium, Triond or some other website will prove to be a more profitable use of your time.