Make Money Online With Demand Studios
I know I haven’t updated the Residuals and Royalties blog in a while – honestly, I am short on websites that actually do create legitimate ways to make money online. I just found a new website called Demand Studios and it might be the best way to make money online for writers. I have mentioned sites like eHow, Constant Content and other ways to sell your articles online – but I have never found a site like Demand Studios.
Demand Studios pays you $15 to write an eHow article on their chosen topics. They have thousands of topics to choose from and almost any good writer should be able to find a multitude of things to write about. Demand Studios is basically buying the rights to your eHow article. Then they post the article on eHow and pay you the $15 up front. But in the long run Demand Studios will earn the continual monthly residual income via eHow which makes for a smart business model. You do have to submit an application to Demand Studios along with a writing sample in order to get accepted. Demand Studios has a variety of article types to choose from and their writing guidelines are pretty stringent.
I submitted my application last week and I just got accepted three days ago. In those three days I have already made $90 from writing 6 articles. These articles take me about 20 minutes each and if I can write three articles in one hour I can average $45 per hour – before taxes. Remember that Demand Studios pays you as an independent contractor and you are responsible for your own taxes.
I met one writer on Demand Studios who writes 20 articles per week. In other words she makes $300 per week x 4 weeks = $1,200 per month. She told me that it basically pays her entire mortgage and some bills. Not bad for something that only involves about 8 to 10 hours of work per week.
Once you get accepted you are only allowed to select 10 article topics at a time. As you get more and more articles approved Demand Studios will eventually update the amount of articles you are allowed to accept. One guy that I talked to was able to accept up to 40 articles per week. Beware that there will be times when your articles are rejected and you will be prompted to rewrite them to Demand Studios standards. Get your rewrites done in a timely fashion to avoid any trouble with the copy editors.
Demand Studios is a great way to make money online and they even have a new option called “revenue sharing” where they pay you an upfront fee plus you share in the residual income that your article earns on eHow. The only problem with Demand Studios is the fact that they are taking me away from my goal of 333 articles on eHow by July 1st, but I won’t let it stop me!
You can visit Demand Studios website here: Demand Studios
Let us know what you think about this review of Demand Studios, if you have compliments, complaints, comments or you think it is a scam – let us know by commenting below…
Best regards,
Michael-John Wolfe
TAGS: Residual Income, Make Money Online, Royalties
16 Comments to “Make Money Online With Demand Studios”
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Seems like a scam to me hun. Sorry but why give away my article that may be more profitable in the long run just for $15 now? Ponder a moment this little joke. Three little boys were selling lemonade on their front lawn after a short time they had made $10.50. One little boy’s mama asked did you guys split up your profits? Her little boy said of course we did Mama. At the end of the day we had a ten dollar bill and 2 quarters, I kept the ten and gave the other two their quarters. Chuckles moral of the story I’d Write the story and submit it myself because it seems little short sighted to give up an article for relatively little money in the long run. My first article I thought would be somewhat popular (How to find AirG chat rooms From you computer) Its had 701veiws and as of today that has earned 28.43 since i first posted it on 4-2-09
I’ve decided I’m going to be like the kid who choose to take the $10 and not the quarter.
I agree with you that Demand Studios will make more money on most of those articles in the long run. But there is no guarantee that eHow will keep the same business model and pay out the same percentage of Adsense earnings that they currently pay. Plus, many eHow members are having articles removed due to the new “article sweep” – I don’t want to spend 3 months writing articles and get screwed if eHow somehow decides to remove them. By writing for Demand Studios I am guaranteed upfront payment. I made $330 in one week on DS so far. Multiply that times four weeks and I can make $1,320 – which is hardly chump change.
What I have decided to do is alternate my writing. I write one DS article, then one eHow article. This insures both upfront money and long term residual income. Why would I put all my eggs in one basket?
I think I’m gonna second the Demand Studios. As Freespiritchick found out with her AirG article, ehow can delete your articles at any time. The time you’ve spent marketing your articles is gone as well. Instead of stessing over ehow’s latest article sweep or wondering if ehow will keep accepting articles from any and everyone, I rather get my foot in the door and play it safe with Demand Studios.
I’ve had good luck with Demand Studios. I wish I knew of other sites like it. Revenue share sites may work for some but I like the flat fee option. Anyone know of similar sites?
Demand Studios owns eHow. I might try them out but I much prefer the long term income (until the articles get swept away anyway).
I am amazed by the crap on eHow from Demand Studios writers (labeled as Contributed Member or something like that). Guess they are worth only a few bucks.
Seems to be a lot of hit/miss experiences with Demand Studios. Still trying to figure out if I want to work with them. But one of the sites I can across is WHY DEMAND STUDIOS SUCKS and the piece is pretty humorous. You an find it here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Demand-Studios-4-Reasons-Why-It-Sucks
Hey Mark! Thanks for sending that article. It is pretty funny! I do remember that some of the editor comments were a little strange at times. There was one month where I made $330 from DS. The problem is they have not added enough available topics in genres that I am familiar with. This means that I would have to do a lot of research to write about other topics that I am not familiar with – yuck! If I am only making 15 bucks, I “aint” doing any research! (Maybe a DS editor can fix that last line for me?)
MJ
Hey,
I’m currently a member of Demand Studios and, though it can be stressful sometimes (with the rewrites), I still love the opportunity, since members are capable of earning full-time income if they put the effort in.
I have a few questions though. How much taxes are required to pay at the end of the year? Any ideas?
Also, what format do you usually write in? It takes me 45 minutes to get each Demand Studios article done. I usually do the “how-to” format. You had stated that it takes you 20 minutes per article, so I was wondering which format or article topics you generally write about? If I’m asking too much, just let me know.
Christina
Hi Christina! I was writing articles that were in the “Start-Up Business” category, since I have fairly strong knowledge about starting new businesses. I tried to avoid anything that I had to research too much. I did tend to add a lot of “fluff” to my DS articles. To be honest, I have really gotten away from writing over the past few months. I have a few other ventures that I am pursuing. But I still want the Residuals and Royalties blog to be a great resource for freelance writers – this is why I try to stay up to date on the best freelance writing websites. As far as taxes go, I am not sure – maybe one of my readers can help us out with some info? Like most online ventures, I assume you are an Independent Contractor and you are responsible for paying taxes on the full amount of your earnings. Keep us posted on your progress!
MJ
Oh I see. Thanks for the reply!
I think my problem was that I was doing too much research on each article. This was mainly to avoid having to do rewrites. However, even after doing extensive research, I found that I still had rewrite demands. Oh well.
So far I’ve earned $330, though I haven’t written for DS in a while. Those earnings were during a 2 month period.
Christina
I’ve been working for content sites for several years and consider myself a pretty good writer. All my clients love my articles.
But then I signed up at Demand Studios. They sent my Bio back 7 times…7 times! That completely rediculous! I wrote a couple or articles that got approved right away and then it seemed like every single thing I wrote got rejected or had to be rewritten twice.
These copy editors are clueless. Somehow they’ve got in their tiny brains that we’re writing “Great Literature”…we’re not! We’re writing WEB CONTENT! In my opinion the copy editors at Demand Studios all have God complexes and think just because they CAN send an article back, they should. Anyway, by the time they DEMAND absolutely NO “to be” verbs in anything you write, and other inane requirements, you can make alot more more on some of the others sites.
It’s been a while since I last commented. I’ve been working on Demand Studios more often and try to write at least one article a day (since I have other duties, both online and off). I also started a Demand Studios Work Challenge, where I work to improve my Demand Studios scorecard and overall performance. I update the challenge on my blog Cash Campfire every now and then, describing my tactics and various experiments I use to help improve my Demand Studios experience.
I’ve made rapid progress and found that, like you, I’m more knowledgeable in the business category. Since I’m also an aquarium fish hobbyist, I also take advantage of aquarium-related articles.
Since I started the challenge, I’ve managed to come pretty close to a 4.0 average on both grammar and research. So far, for this month, all articles have been rated over a 4.0. I just need to write more of these articles to bring my overall average rating up. My goal is to maintain a 4.0 or higher. Once this happens, I’ll most likely have an article limit increase and, as I’m more active on Demand Studios, I’ll be able to write higher paying articles (that earn over $15 an article).
The whole purpose of the challenge is to record my journey as a Demand Studios writer and, if I succeed, help other Demand Studios writers in their writing career. Since starting the challenge, I’ve learned a great deal more about what is expected as a Demand Studios writer and the articles copy editors are looking for. As a result, my rewrite ratio has decreased to around 1/10 and more articles are receiving a 4 and even 5 rating.
Overall, I love Demand Studios. Sometimes it can be stressful, but the pay has helped me in tight situations. If you at first notice that most of your articles are getting sent back for rewrites, just keep writing. Analyze the notes left by every copywriter. Once the article is approved, look at it for any revisions and incorporate those fixes in future articles. Stay clear of wordy sentences and be as direct as possible in your sentences. Quote sources in your work and stay away from adjectives. You should also pay careful attention to your intro paragraph and try quoting a source in the first sentence following an interesting fact, since this will dramatically increase your grammar score.
If you find that your research score is low, quote more sources in your work. I try to quote at least three sources and provide these sources in the Reference section. Quoting can be as simple as stating, “According to [enter source here], over [enter number here] people donated to charities in 2008″ or “Direct mail is the most effective marketing strategy, according to [enter source here].”
If you find that your grammar score is low, spend more time on your introduction paragraph. The first sentence of your intro should always start with an interesting fact related to the subject of your article. Follow the first sentence with information supporting the interesting fact and why the subject matter of your article is important. After the intro, use active voice and get to the point. Don’t write “Daycare centers are great because they help children learn at an early age.” Instead, write “Daycare centers educate children at an early age by…”
I’ve found that the above is the best approach (for me) to go about creating Demand Studios articles that won’t come back for rewrites. Now, the only rewrites I receive are ones where copy editors disagree with the point of view I used in regards to the title and these rewrites are rare.
Hope I helped!
Christina
One other thing I forgot to mention: I mainly use Demand Studios now to improve my own writing, rather than for the money (though the money is pretty good if you can write quality articles at a fast rate). I personally like that Demand Studios has high expectations and copy editors who work to fulfill these expectations in the work of other writers (though, copy editors can contradict one another at times). I also especially like comparing revisions, once each article is approved, to see what changed and how I can use these changes in my future articles (to help improve my writing).
At this point in my challenge (mentioned in the above comment), all of the articles that get approved the first time I submit them (which are the majority of my articles now) either have no changes made by copy editors or very few changes at all in the article body. I take this as a compliment and that my writing quality has improved significantly. Before I would constantly get articles sent back and even the very few articles that got approved right away were filled with sentence structure changes and additions when I would compare revisions.
Demand Studios has been, more than anything, a learning experience. I’m pretty serious about my writing and have found Demand Studios to be a huge help in my writing career. The pay is just an added bonus for me. However, every writer is different.
I disagree with what Christina says. It sounds like she’s doing PR for Demand Studios. Those anal retentive Copy Editors don’t help anyone by returning everything we write. They’ve got God complexes and have forgotten that we’re writing web content, not great literature. It’s a waste of time to work for them. I KNOW I’m a good writer and get plenty of free-lance work on my own…word of mouth. I write all-original, well-researched articles and my customers always come back. DS could work if it were managed properly, but it isn’t.
Demand Studios isn’t for everyone, and I agree they can be pretty strict, especially when you’re only getting $15. I’m only stating my observations after the tests that I’ve done when attempting to increase my scorecard.
And no. I didn’t waste away several hours writing those two long posts because I wanted to increase my or Demand Studios’ page rank. If that’s how it sounded, I apologize. I only linked back to my experiment page to show what exactly I was doing to improve my work on Demand Studios and to further explain what I was trying to say.
I agree that writers should earn more from their work, especially considering Demand Studios’ high standards and ridiculous requests sometimes. I was simply stating that I was using Demand Studios to improve my own writing. After months of working for them, it has improved in my personal experience. However, everyone is different. I was simply describing my own experiences and trying to lend a little help if I could.
Christina
thanks christina, i’m a mewbie at demand and your tips are very helpful!