Monday, June 30, 2008

How Much Can You Make With Suite101?

First of all, I can’t tell you. The site doesn’t allow anyone who writes for them to divulge how much they make from the site. However, people come here every day by searching Google for the answer to this very question. You won’t find the answer anywhere online, and if you do, it will probably be a very old number that was posted before they changed the payment structure.

So, the question is not really how much can be made on Suite101 but rather, is the money you make worth the effort that you put into the site. The answer to that is a profound yes and no.

There are two types of Suite101 writers- contributing writers and feature writers. As a contributor writer, your work gets little promotion and often little attention. The pay is fairly small, though there is a slight raise after you have 50 articles written for them. As a contributing writer, I did not feel that the income was remotely worth the effort. Maybe that’s because I don’t write about iPods and American Idol, or maybe it’s fairly standard. That I can’t say.

After I was made a feature writer, however, that all changed. There is a nice raise involved, but I think that the income shot up because you get better exposure. You write your category’s landing page and your latest creations are featured there. You also get a blog there that you’re required to post to every week. That also brings readers to your work.

After spending some time as a feature writer, I do think that the pay is well worth the amount of time I spend there. However, that isn’t generally my criteria for something with my name on it. About 98 percent of my work is never credited. It’s ghostwritten or simply work that the client doesn’t put a name on.

To have something online with my name on it, I require a good deal of creative control. In that respect, Suite101 does come through. I have to write weekly for my category, but the specific topics I choose are entirely up to me. I can also write additional articles for other categories if I so choose. If you want creative control- go for it. They don’t require that much of your time and they have pretty good page rank.

5 comments:

Sara said...

I had a very disappointing experience with Suite 101. Love your blog though!

L. Shepherd said...

I know people who hated it and people who love it. It seems to depend a lot on what categories you write for- that makes a lot of income difference. There are a lot of people are making heck of a lot more than me because they write for topics that are a lot more popular.

There are some good articles there about climatology, but I wonder how much traffic they could possibly get? More people are going to read about iPods and rims or whatever.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, I was wondering why their site doesn't post the PPV amount. It's like a big secret :)

Veggie Gardener said...

How DO you become a feature writer? I have an old link that showed all of the categories and open FW categories, but that link doesn't work anymore. Do you have a link to available FW positions at Suite?

Thanks in advance.

L. Shepherd said...

I don't think they are hiring feature writers right now. They have been planning some type of change in writers positions, hopefully not one that eliminates FW completely.