You recently submitted an application/copy editing tests to become a copy editor (CE) with Demand Media Studios. I’m pleased to report that our records show that you have passed our tests and are ready to be approved as a CE. Congratulations!

There is, however, going to be a slight delay in getting you approved in the system and getting your CE account activated. For this, we apologize. And, unfortunately, I can’t tell you when exactly your account will be activated. It may be a few days from now or it may take a month or more. It will all depend on our production needs. However, you will receive an email from us as soon as we have an open spot for you. In the meantime, we’d like to thank you in advance for your patience.

I’d like to be able to make at least a couple hundred bucks a week to help close the pay gap between my current jobs and my previous job–I was laid off as a newspaper copy editor in April and since then have been working 60+ hours a week between a full-time job and two part-time jobs. I’d appreciate any advice you guys can offer to a new DS copy editor.

It’s true that DS is a content mill and a lot of the titles available are flat-out ridiculous (“How to build Jack Sparrow’s Magic Compass”, for instance), but you can find some real money there.

I remember especially well a time when, for no apparent reason, dozens Fact Sheets normally paying 7.50 suddenly showed up under a 15.00 payout. I was lucky enough to catch it quickly and took an entire day to write roughly 25 of them, pushing out 3 per hour during a good stretch.

Unfortunately, I found that it’s tough to do this long-term, because you start to run out of options, but that doesn’t matter now since I have a normal job again and don’t have to live off article writing.

Hope that helps!

It has been helpful to read everyone’s comments in considering whether or not to work for DS. Having read them, I wanted to write here a few things about being a copy editor. (Being a copy editor in general. Not about being one for DS.)

I’m a seasoned and professionally trained copy editor. I consider myself an expert. But, please know this: I am also a writer in the same capacity. With lots of experience. So, just know that before I go on this rant. (And please also know before the rant that even copy editors aren’t going to write flawless comments on blog posts. We all need editors.)

I have no idea what the copy editors at DS are like, apart from the horrendous things I’ve read here. But here are some good things to know about copyediting:

-Copyediting serves to help the piece. Most copy editors, unless they have little to no experience, DO not and SHOULD not edit heavily unless they have very good reasons to (and trust me, if you have to, it’s such a pain in the ass. I don’t understand how any copy editor would purposely over edit just to bother someone or to get that person’s article rejected).

-When I read really poorly written articles and can’t send them back to the author for rewrites, I edit the hell out of them. But if they’re good, I know it right away–and I think a lot about the changes I might make to the piece because I never want to damage the style or intent of an excellent piece of writing.

-Copy editors WANT your work to be great before they get their hands on it! That way, copyediting can make it even smoother, and can make your writing shine.

-DS has raised standards for their copyeditors, as I noticed today in applying for both writing and copyediting “positions.” They say you must have at least two years and certain rankings in editorial. If they actually follow this and hire based on experience, that’s great! If they don’t, it’s such a shame and I’m sorry for the writers who suffer through it. (If the writers that say here they do good work and are experienced AND work for DS, then shouldn’t we assume they survey copy editors the same way?)

-Someone commented above that they must be hiring copy editors with little to no experience who can’t get writing jobs at DS because they need more practice or need to “get their feet wet” in regard to writing. Regardless of how DS does hire copy editors (again, I have no clue), I will say this: You really cannot be a great copy editor if you’re not first a great writer. So if this is true of DS, then I am appalled. I’ve never known any company to hire someone as a copy editor just to “teach them about the craft” or “teach them about writing.” That is absolutely backwards. No publishing company would ever hire someone as a copy editor if they knew the person had never seen proofreader’s and copy editor’s marks. It is a skilled position. It is not a position for scholars or students or idiots who think they know a thing or two about grammar (or at least, it shouldn’t be, and we shouldn’t let it be.)

-Please know that copy editors may make you mad and you may hate their changes, but all writers need editors. If you do not think you need an editor, you should not be in the business of writing. Everyone can use second and third and fourth pairs of eyes on their work (and in the case of DS, pairs of eyes with consistent copyediting principles and expertise). It helps YOU, the writer! I am thankful to my writers and to my copy editors. One would not be as good without the other, period.

-Please, please look into who copy editors are, what they do, and why they do it. Great sources for this include the Subversive Copy Editor blog, the book by the same name, and a blog called Love, Your Copyeditor. It’s important for every writer out there to know how this position functions within and outside of publishing houses, blogs, newspapers, magazines, etc. (Note: I’m not affiliated with either of those blogs or that book.)

-Lastly, please respect your editors. We’re not perfect, and neither are you–but please trust us with your content. It’s what we’ve been trained for years to edit. Writers are always learning new things to improve their writing. Copy editors–just the same–are always studying their style guides and tools to help the writing (your writing) look immaculate.

-So, for those of you at DS who can’t stand your copy editors, look into their recommendations and suggestions. Not only should you question their changes, but verify them. I would never change any copy without fact-checking that I was correct. And no copy editor should–because they want to be experts at their job. If you consistently find incompetent work from your copy editors, email someone at DS and tell them. If you like the company for which you work, you should do them the favor of letting them know how to improve, too.

But if you haven’t worked with copy editors outside of DS, I encourage you to do so. Hopefully you will find some that help your writing in ways you never thought, or at least you’ll gain some perspective. No one’s writing is perfect.

I wrote for Demand Studios for over a year. Not only were most of the article titles things like “how to change the label on a vending machine” they were completely mis-categorized. A title such as this would be very likely to appear in the ‘gardening’ category, or something else just as ridiculous. It took me approximately 90 minutes each day just to weed through the multitude of incorrectly categorized titles to find just 10 that were suitable to write about. In the beginning, 10 a day was what I aimed for.

I can write 10 articles in about 5 hours, however, I quickly realized that Demand Studios editors will ask for rewrites on roughly 80% of every article you turn in. I attributed this to the fact that the editors need to justify their pay. After adding up the time spent choosing the articles, the time spent writing, and then the time spent rewriting, I was looking at 10 hour days. Add to that the editors often said they wanted A, B, C, and then once the article was re-written and re-submitted, would reject on the basis’ of either A, B, and C ‘still not being done’ or on D, E, F, which were never mentioned in the original edit requests.

From that point on, I only took on DS articles when I needed or wanted a little extra money. Until this year when we lost one household income due to a layoff and I decided to write for DS full time to replace that income until the layoff was over.

In the first week, I submitted 22 articles. 9 were approved, (some with rewrites) and 3 were rejected even after a rewrite following exactly what the editor requested. But, 10, TEN, of my articles sat in the queue for over a week with nary an editor’s glance, and were still sitting there when I got the email from the ‘content curator’ stating that my rejection level was too high and that they would no longer accept assignments from me.

I responded to his email voicing my own take on the situation that with 10 articles submitted and in the queue which were not even looked at yet, I hardly could see a true mathematical percentage of the rejection rate, but he would hear none of it. I asked him what I should do about the articles that were in rewrite and the ones that I had claimed and written the night before and was planning to upload that day. He told me that I could finish the rewrites, but not the claimed articles as the system would no longer accept submissions from me.

Two days later, I got another email from some other department at DS which stated that I should finish any articles I had claimed. The right hand doesn’t seem to know what the left hand is doing over there.

Jump forward to yesterday (Jan 21, 2011) when I read the news about Google’s upcoming changes regarding the ‘content mills’ and found a post on a forum about Demand Media’s upcoming IPO next week. When a company is moving toward an IPO, ‘cleaning up the books’ is a given. Demand Studios can pay much less per article to third world English speaking countries like the Phillipines, and it appears that their mission right now is to weed out their highest paid writers through a system of sitting on content for a week while rejecting just enough to justify firing them so that Demand Studios will show less expenses (and most likely a plan to recruit the lower paid third world writers) to their prospective investors before and during their IPO.

Always one to hedge my bets, I pulled every one of my rejects, refused to submit my claimed articles to DS, and submitted them to Associated Content and Constant Content for upfront payments, and revenue sharing, without any BS from ‘editors.’

I think Demand Studios has set itself up for lawsuits and I would personally stay as far away from this IPO as possible.

How very naive your comments are. You make writers sound like helpless children who need to be guided by copyeditors. No, everything does not sound good in the writer’s mind, nor do they existed to be edited. It is true that writers are often attached to what they have created and new additional perspectives to bring their work to its fullest potential. But to imply that a copyeditor is superior and knows how things ought to be is just laughable. An editor has a perspective that is less artistic and conceptual than the writer. But if the copyeditor had the ability to conceive of the work in the first place, then you wouldn’t need a writer. Don’t make the assumption that all copyeditors are or have been writers, or that they are better when it comes to composition. You’d be making a pretty foolish assumption.

And, just for your enlightenment, this is my personal website. I am allowed to express my personal opinion, which is, nevertheless, based on experience. But don’t take my word for it. Read the comments by others.

I’ll generalize a few things I’ve learned over the years:
* Authors exist to be edited.
* Editors aren’t small-minded; they simply know how something _ought_ to have been written.
* Most authors can’t tell good writing from bad—it always sounds good in the author’s head.

On another note, Wilfried, am I detecting a little bit of bias in what you say?

My writing style does not change. I have written excellent articles for content mills that have been rejected. I have also written mediocre articles that have created inbound links, traffic, and adsense income for my website. I even had people copy my articles word-for-word and use them on their websites.

If my mediocre articles can produce traffic, inbound links, adsense income, and outright plagiarism, why am I having a hard time getting a decent article accepted?

Now I know why. Copy editor positions are being mass advertised…right along with the freelance writer positions. What a shame.

Demand is different but I don’t think it is a scam.

Demand Studios may claim to offer assignments that suit everyone, but those are few and far between and have been snapped up very quickly.

On a final note, after finally completing my second $15 assignment, twelve hours after starting it, i found that i was unable to load it to the website, as the website is currently experiencing some technical problems.

I am a struggling writer and was hoping that writing for Demand studios would be an excellent credential for my writer’s CV, but now i’m wondering whether it’s worth it.

Any advice from you would be greatly appreciated.
Again thank you for writing this article

Maxine

However, if you can make up to $1000 plus a month, then that is better than most, if not all work at home sites. For Demand Studio’s to have a reputation of paying on time, consider yourself lucky. It’s sad but true.
Also, I think that people who think this place is a scam is looking at it as a full time regular job. It should be looked at as a way to make extra income in your spare time or as they post, for inbetween jobs. They do not claim to be an employer and people need to realize that.

Nonetheless, hearing everyone’s experience is a valuable tool in deciding if you want to write for them or not because if it happen to one it can happen to you. And always if it doesn’t produce results like you were expecting in week one or two, move on, simple as that!

This is a reply to Copy 2 Edit, who wrote (on June 20) the following about being a Demand Studios copy editor: “…I edit the way I want to, regardless of my harsh 30-day reviews and the 75/week quota.” (well, that’s an excerpt anyway) However, I’d be grateful for anyone’s reply, not just his/hers.

I’d like to know how strictly DS enforces the 75 article/week quota. Just yesterday I posted on this topic in the DemandStudiosSucks blog, but the blog reply I posted on was old, so I’ve only gotten one reply so far. (I doubt most folks will ever even see my question, but at least the one person so far who did reply helped ease my troubled mind a LOT).

I’m a part-time caregiver for a chronically ill family member, which is one of the reasons why I never know, from day to day, how much time I’ll have to dedicate to copy editing. My other problem is adult ADHD, which makes it extremely challenging for me to meet my quota (not to mention keep my life together overall). I’m seeing a counselor & just got a promising medication to try, so I’m sure things will get better for me. But in the meantime, I’m very scared of DS giving me the boot because I rarely, if ever, meet the quota. So far I’ve only had one review, and it was very complimentary and encouraging, so that makes me feel somewhat relieved. :”> But I’ve only been a DS copy editor for about 1 1/2 months, so I’m far from being lulled into complacency. Quite the contrary!

The sad truth is, between my family caregiving duties and my ADHD, I can’t accept a full-time job anywhere. My last job was a dream, because I got to copy edit for a magazine publishing company whose subject matter interested me and whose scheduling was extremely flexible. I only worked 3 days per week, and I didn’t have to be at the office until 9:30 a.m. (I’m absolutely NOT a morning person). The pay was great too! Unfortunately I was laid off in 2009, along with a surprisingly large number of other employees, due to the company needing to restructure in light of the crappy economy. In 13 months of unemployment, Demand Studios is my first actual job, because almost any job I see on job websites would require too long of a commute, or too many work hours per week, so I don’t even try applying. I’ve also applied for many telecommuting/freelancing jobs, but none of those worked out because they were fantastic positions and way too many folks applied than there were jobs for. In short: I never heard back. I’ve worked retail in the past to make ends meet, but the bizarre hours didn’t work out well for me, and also I started developing foot and back pain problems & varicose vein issues due to standing on my feet all day. (No, I’m not a senior! *chuckle* I’m only in my late 30s).

So basically I’m in a very sticky and limited situation, which is all the more reason why I NEED to keep my Demand Studios copy editing job, despite the fact it doesn’t pay what a copy editor is worth. Hence, I’m very concerned about the 75 article per week quota. The person who replied to me at DemandStudiosSucks.com said that in his/her CE experience, as well as in that of his/her CE friends, DS does not seem to strictly enforce the quota and certainly did not fire my replier or his/her friends. He/she also said DS has enough other problems/issues to deal with than to keep a tally of the number of articles every single editor edits, and that I shouldn’t sweat it. I’d just like to hear that assurance from one other person, tho, before I stop worrying so much. *blush* Thanks!!

“Flora”

DS has a lot of problems, but pay isn’t really one of them. If you can master the ropes and adopt a proper time management strategy, you can squeeze quite a bit out of the system. Mind you, doing so means recognizing company BS for what it is, like their admonishment to try and complete every rewrite and so on. You need to know when to cut your losses.

I do not have an issue with the business model, but do have an issue with the way they misrepresent themselves to dupe writers. This is no different than a multi-level marketing type gig.

Here’s a rather humorous content mill satire site I came across recently. I thought your readers might enjoy it: http://www.contentmillstudios.com