What's Up With Demand Studios?

Many freelance writers work or have worked for Demand Media/Demand Studios. It was a fairly decent site for writers to get published in online websites such as e-How, Livestrong and Answerbag and receive payment once a week. Payment is not bad and on the par with other writing sites of generally $15 per 400-500 word article. That is....until they went public.

With DS, writers pick specific titles to write articles. Titles are chosen through a proprietary  algorithm that basically collects the most searches Internet users look for in Google and then studies it and tweaks it to make it palpable. I'm not sure if this is actually true as writers tend to spend a lot of time searching for article titles they can write.

For example, take a look at some of the titles listed on the Demand Studio Site as of May 14.

Assertiveness Skills & Christmas Bulletin Board Ideas

How to Be Contented When Convicted to Have More Kids

 When searching for the last, I found no searches that relate to whatever the last title means and not much on the first title as well.

Based on stock market blogs and forums, DS did well for the first month or two. When Google changed to the new Panda system, which depends more on readers feedback rather than SEO,  DS e-How lost viewers. This evidently caused a bit of a panic, although DS still made billions (while paying writers a basic rate of $15), their stock seems to be doing well again.

  DS then instituted  a "Writers Development Program", which is a way of basically weeding out writers who are not writing much compared to those writers that write for DS full-time. 

The writers program stated in DS posts to writers, stated the writers were limited to the titles they could choose, and future articles written would go through 'senior editors' who will provide feedback, both positive and negative to help writers.


However, this didn't happen to everyone. Many writers found themselves loosing their writing privileges----without having a chance to enter the writers development program.
Writers who posted criticisms often found their posts deleted or on the outs and forums are now closed to those former writers, which is a recent change as I have seen former writers post in the past.


DS has teamed with Rachel Ray, Tyra Banks and more recently L'Oreal USA to offer beauty content to increase their viewership, to increase profits and still pay writers $15 per 400-500 word articles. 


I realize that everyone is in it for the money, but shouldn't there be some sort of ethics involved concerning those that provide content to these content farms?