Pricing and Categorizing on C.C.

[D.H.]

I've been cranking out a lot of related content for Demand recently, and I'll probably continue to do so until the easy titles dry up. Think of it as dry, topical writing for this time of year ... up until April 15 (hint hint).

I want to take the Demand work and repurpose it, since I think it has more life in it and more $$$ that can line my pockets. Patrick recommended Constant Content. I have an account that I created there but never used, so I was just looking through the threads here and on their site.

- What kind of pricing strategies seem to work on Constant Content?

Looking at , it appears that the range is about $10 to $65 per article, although the top end only seems to apply to full rights sales. I may have to play around with pricing once I get my content re-spun. Just wondering what others have found seems to work best.

If I sell full rights, does that mean it's off the shelf completely? It's not clear to me what that really means.

- How much of a difference does it make which category I use for the material?

Are people even drilling down into categories to find articles, or are they just doing keyword searches?

[CE_ClueBat]

CC released a report about a year and a half ago that said the best sellers priced at $.05-$.08 a word. I usually sell between $.07-$.10 a word.

Make sure you proofread well. The editors are really sticklers for grammar/spelling. CC is the one place where I do what you're supposed to do and I turn off noise and read the article aloud to check it for any errors.

Full rights means it's off the shelf. So does unique. Unique is worthless in my opinion. All that is required is that the buyer must use your byline, but only if you include one in the article. Usage means you can sell it a ton of times. Usage sometimes works out better, but more and more people know that duplicate content isn't optimal, so they want full rights.

The search phrases you enter are what's important. Buyers sometimes look at the latest in the category, but they have the option to search. The trick is to put all possible variances of what you think a user will use to search for the title. CC's search function is exact. So, let's say you have "website content" and the customer searches for "website contents." Yours won't show, so make sure you put "website content, website contents" in the search phrases. Load that sucker up.

You'll probably get your first one or two rejected. Most people do.

Make sure you have arial 12pt in the doc. That's in the basic guidelines. Make sure you read them, because there are a couple quirks for submission that most people miss and it's a bitch to get rejected for something dumb like font.

[Natch]

I've submitted mine in Times New Roman and had no problem. Have had a couple rejected for minor typos, though.

I'd definitely price at $0.07pw upwards.

I've had mixed results from CC. Started there at the beginning of this month. First couple articles sold within minutes. Most recent two have been sitting around for a week.

[CE_ClueBat]

I started about a year and a half ago. I have a little over a 100 up and 50-60 sold (different licenses). It was definitely a lot better last January. Last January I sold everything I threw up within days.

The site is getting less traffic, and I can only guess that they aren't marketing as much. I don't know. I took about a 6 month break and came back.

[D.H.]

Thanks for the helpful feedback.

What can I conclude from the limited information I have about similar titles in the content pool?

When I keyword search, there are 3 of them that appear to overlap the content I'd put up. They all offer usage rights, and show 0 downloads. Can I conclude there's no interest in these types of titles? Or that the ones there have been poorly written? Or that they didn't keyword them enough? Or that they're priced too high? Or that nobody is interested in usage rights?

[CE_ClueBat]

Usage means it is probably posted somewhere else, like on the writer's blog or some other content site. Unless the buyer is a cheap shit, MOST people want exclusive rights (full rights) when they buy, so that's probably why the articles haven't sold.

I usually price my articles at the same price as usage or close. So, let's say I have a 550 word article. I'll probably price it at $50. I might price it at $40 for usage. That kind of price range difference discourages usage, because for 10 bucks more, he can get the full rights license and doesn't need to worry about me selling it to someone else.

I wouldn't worry about overlapping someone else's content. I've sold a bunch of really generic tech stuff there that is just stuff I know off the top of my head and is found anywhere.

Some people buy and put it in print like newsletters or email updates. Stuff like that.

[filly sucker]

I price at around 0.6 to 0.9 per word, the final price depends on how much "new" info I think it provides. Some of the articles I have put on have involved research in an attempt to produce something that isn't repeated all over the place.

I don't think the usage thing goes very well either, mine have all been purchased for full rights, and I don't bother with unique because you as the writer don't gain a thing.

Although I like CC when something sells, and get motivated to submit some more, at other times I think it sucks. They take forever to review something, then send it back for a missing comma or two. I have one still sitting there waiting to be re-reviewed - I originally submitted it well over a week ago. So between writing it, getting it up there and waiting for someone with deepish pockets to come along, it is not unrealistic to think more than a month might pass. So if you are lucky (and someone buys your piece) between writing and getting paid, you are looking at anything from 2 weeks to 2 months on average, due to my own experiences.

Once again DS appears more appealing thanks to the twice a week on-time payments.

[CE_ClueBat]

I use CC as a great cushion to give myself a break for a day from DS. For instance, I sold an article and banked $25, so I didn't do 2 DS articles that day.

The thing is that an article might sit for months or even more. It's great money when you do sell something, but it's only ever going to be a cushion for most people. The veterans tell you that you can make a living at CC, but realistically, the average person cannot. The veterans have been there for years, have thousands of articles up and have many private requests from building a rep. Obviously, this isn't realistic for most people, since even if you write 5 a day for CC and build up 150 in a month, you still can't expect any more than half of those that MIGHT sell within the month. I think half within a month is on the really optimistic side too.

CC is great money, but just be happy when you sell and upload a few a week if you can. I've upload 20 or so in the last 2 months and I've sold 2.

[ImaWriter]

I know someone who has been there about a year. She writes 10 articles a day, doesn't take private work, and makes a good $2,000 a month, but she's a nurse and writes only medical articles.

I used to write for them, but stopped. I really need to get back over there. Every $15 I make elsewhere is one less I have to write for DS.

[Tink]

Would you do better in the long run if you put the articles up on Suite instead selling them on CC? I keep thinking about the articles that sit and don't sell. They could be making money on Suite.