How to Be POD People
Hey kids,
Well, someone didn’t like our Tyra inside info enough to give us some really juicy tidbits. This one comes with footnotes and everything.
Enjoy!
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If you’ve been writing for DM Studios for over a year and a half, and especially if you write home & garden or tech titles, chances are you have some old articles for the publisher “COD” listed. They were very simple and were approved quickly.
That project was for Pluck on Demand (“C”OD may or may not have been a data entry typo for “P”OD). The articles, and videos, were held in a “library” where web designers with a POD membership could tap the content for use on their own sites.
Demand Media bought Pluck on Demand in early 2008 for $75Million. There was a soft launch in November 2008. POD maintained a very limited scale web presence for nearly a year until September 2009, when it quietly faded into cyber background. DS forum Community Moderator, Josh, at one time noted he used Pluck on Demand on some of his own websites. Little else was mentioned about it within earshot of Demand Media’s writing, editing and filmmaking contractors, although those articles did show up briefly on various cookie-cutter style websites off and on for about 6-8 months.
Is it possible the MogulTown.com site a number of DSSers saw recently was a trial run for the resurrection, or grand launch, of Demand’s newest product, the full scale version of Pluck on Demand? POD combines blogging, social media and an ephemeral revenue-generating scheme into one simple package. Non-writers and those lacking the wherewithal to put a video on their own blog will now be able to become full-fledged webmasters overnight. Clean content, direct from Demand Media’s stable of freelancers, will be accessible to POD/MogulTown members, as well as built-in social media connectivity.
The segmentation model of the studio now begins to fall in place. In the near future a writer in the travel channel may, for example, in any given day produce articles that appear on a.) DMD’s own properties such as eHowTravel and GolfLink, b.) articles that go into the Pluck on Demand database for use by POD/MogulTown members, c.) articles that appear on the sites of DMD’s Content Channel Partners such as USA Today Travel and Hotels.com, as well as d.) packages of travel articles available for outright purchase by DMD corporate customers. In another version, the “leftovers” (non-segmented writers) would be left to produce only content for the POD library with payment being solely in the form of shared revenue split between DMD/POD-subscribed webmaster/writer.
Advice for DMS freelancers: Keep your eyes open for every opportunity to diversify within the studio, and of course, outside the studio. Demand Media is re-defining itself as a “content and social media company” with an increased emphasis on the social media aspect. If you don’t blog yet, practice with a free Blogger or WordPress account. Set up Facebook and Twitter accounts under a pseudonym to learn how they all work.
Advice for Demand Media Corporate: Tell the children that work for you to keep their chatter behind privacy walls. Showing off is adorable, of course, but leaky, leaky, leaky.
Links of Interest:
2008 Demand Media Buys Pluck for $75 Million http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/04/demand … 0-million/
November 2008 video: Eric Newman, then SVP of Pluck. explains the vision for the Demand Media/Pluck relationship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKUEZwdKcUo
The commercial version of Pluck (Social Media Platform) http://www.demandmedia.com/solutions/pluck/
The retail version of Pluck (on Demand) http://ondemand.pluck.com/
Look closely at the FAQ page, especially How will I earn money using Pluck on Demand.
Jan. 27 2011 Lance Armstrong Foundation, Pluck Employees Benefit From Demand Media’s IPO
http://www.texastechpulse.com/lance_arm … 33551.html
Jan. 25 2011 Demand Media Launches Enhanced Version of Pluck Review
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stoc … 42537.html
Thinking about it more, the whole thing is kind of ludicrous. Assuming that DM did plan to use the general ehow writers to produce pieces that could be “plucked” and posted on a blog, who on Earth would want any of the articles? How to Make a Robotic Cheese Grater Out of Kraft Singles? Unless the plan is to create better titles too.
And if it was going to be revshare, the ONLY place worth posting them would be eHow.com, not some random weirdo’s POD blog. eHow has the only worthwhile revshare plan, anything else is just pennies.
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Nope. COD wasn’t a typo. COD and POD were separate projects. Nice bit of FUD, though.
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What a drag. And then all the money Pat’s making off of advertising/adsense!
Guess we could say….
…Demand Studios Sucks sucks.
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Oh noes!!!!!!!!!!!!! The zombie horde is invading the comments!
Do you work for Demand or just suck their dicks for a living?
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Here’s an easy way to make a quick content writing buck and screw DM, just find some people who have mogul town sites.
“Hey, I see you’re running some Demand media generated content, how much you pay for that?”
“My first born and a bag of cheetos.”
“Well, you know, the writer who wrote that only got paid a bag of cheetos. What’s say we cut out the middle man?”
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Am I the only one who thinks this is a non story? I don’t see how this affects anything at all. What am I missing?
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