I'm Just Sharing

Yesterday I castigated Helium for some issues I was having with them. Today, it’s Demand Studios turn.

I’ve written about them twice. The first time I wrote about them, I was introducing them to you as another site where writing might not be such a bad idea. The second time I wrote about them, I decided to update you on how I was progressing, so to speak.

Today, I’m telling you that I’m done with them, and I’m going to tell you why. In this case, it’s two things; I’m not sure how the third thing is going to play out just yet.

In the update, I mentioned that they had turned down one of my submissions. There were two problems with this. One is that they don’t tell you why they’ve turned it down, other than to say it doesn’t meet their standards and to read their pdf about it. Well, I’d read the pdf, wrote in their format, and they didn’t like it. I even totally rewrote the first submission, only for them to kill it.

It happened again on Thursday. One of the articles I wrote they asked for rewrites of a couple of areas. I did that, resubmitted the article, only for it to be rejected without a reason why once again. That’s enough of that, I figure. Understanding that I’m not perfect in writing in a style for someone else, I’m willing to try to learn and try again. However, if they don’t give you a clue, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Also, on the Demand Studios site, you have a work desk area where your performance, money, etc are all listed. Everything disappears once they process things except the articles that they reject. It stays there forever, like a scarlet letter, and there’s not a single thing you can do about it. Sorry, but I don’t need a constant reminder of my supposed failures; I’m not a dog who needs his nose pushed into his own urine on the carpet.

One other quick gripe. They changed up their article formats, and that really started to spell the end for me. They have articles in different formats. Two I worked on were “about” and “how to.” “About” was my favorite format, and relatively easy also, because you could write the entire article, come up with at least 5 categories to place your information in, and that would be that. There used to be lots of articles in that format, so you had a lot of pretty good choices. Suddenly, they changed up on us, and the majority of articles were now “how to.” Now, there’s not a lot wrong with that, except with those articles, you’re supposed to lay out a step by step process for getting something done, then provide reference links that back up your article.

What’s the problem? Here’s an example. Before I realized that they had changed the format, I wrote up an article on how to bring down one’s blood glucose, something I’ve talked about with my modified eating plan (and, by the way, it’s working like a charm; also lost 5 pounds). When I went to the site to post it, I realized it had changed to a “how to” type of article.

The problem now was that my article didn’t fit because there’s no one way to give a true step by step process for how to lower glucose levels. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to find any reference material relating to it. With the initial article, I talked about lowering carbohydrates, eating more fat, eating many smaller meals during the day, which are all covered somewhere online, so I had lots of references. With the new format, nothing fit. Then I realized that all the articles I’d selected to write on were in the new format, and none of them fit; at least they didn’t fit if you asked me.

So, earlier today I got paid for the last articles I’m ever going to write for their site. Once I saw the payment in Paypal, I went to their site to close my account. Lo and behold, once again, there’s nothing on their site I could find so I could close my account. What the hey? So, I’ve had to write them through their help desk to ask them to remove me. I haven’t heard anything yet; we’ll see.

One big thing I’m now learning is that, before I sign up with anyone else, I need to make sure I can easily leave if I want to. I always thought most sites had that sort of thing, but I now see that’s not true. Very lackluster on my part to not notice that; I’m going to try to learn from this mistake for the future. However, the main thing, once again, is that Demand Studios turns out not to be the panacea I had hoped they’d be. I did make some nice money there, but with the changes and other stuff, it’s just not going to get it done for me.

Oh well, back to the drawing board; who else wants some writing services?