I\'m Summer, a mouthy, sarcastic bitch. I\'m passionate about natural birth, long term breastfeeding, and living naturally. I curse too much, love tattoos, and will some day be crushed to death by my book collection. I homeschool, dream of gardening, and swing to the left. 
Gone Sour
I make money from writing. I love it, it’s a great way to earn extra cash and blab on and on about things I enjoy. But lately I haven’t been loving it, mainly because the company I earn the most of my money from is having issues. Their issues means less money for me, and I’m not happy.
One of the blogs that I write has been down and out for a while. At first it was just constant server problems and lots of high load error messages. When I managed to actually get in on Friday night long enough to get two whole articles written I was thrilled. However that was shortly snuffed out by Saturday when my site became nonexistent. No longer just server issues, the whole thing seems to be gone.
And it’s not just me. A lot of other people writing for the same network have been complaining of server issues and sites suddenly missing. With a pay scale that is based on number of articles written and number of visitors monthly these constant problems are taking their toll. Last month my pay was nearly half of what it had been the month before. And that was a decrease of what it had been the month before that. Mama ain’t happy.
Calls have been made, to no avail. Numbers listed as contact numbers are either disconnected or just ring endlessly. Support tickets go unanswered. I have been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the recent bad weather knocked them out, maybe they bought used cisco communications products that stopped working, or maybe aliens landed on their servers. However with each passing day I’m regrettign not leaving when I had originally planned to a few months ago.
I’ve been applying at a few other writing gigs in hopes of being able to smoothly move on. So far I’ve only heard back from one job and that was a no. I read through the freelance writing jobs posted at several places daily, but I’m not going to jump at the first job I see if I know there’s no way I could actually write about the topic. Which seems to be what every job listed seems to be right now.
I’m not expecting to be some 6 figure income blogger like the big shots, but it was nice to be able to pay a bill or buy a few things here and there. The way it looks now, I just don’t know.
[tags]blogging, writing, income, money[/tags]
I’m also a writer and I understand what you are going through.
Great blog… I just found you via Adoptic. I look forward to reading more of your entries.
http://www.ChaseNKids.com
I hear you Summer. I have been going through the same thing and it’s maddening. It did inspire me to purchase my own domain and start my own website. At least it won’t be down as much.
I assume you are talking about a company that rhymes with “beehive?” I applied for and was accepted as a new writer in January. One of my friends, a channel editor, gave me a heads-up as to all the commotion going on, and I said, “No, thank you!” If you are interested in web-based writing, have you looked at About.com? I could also give you the name of the company for whom I used to write, although the pay is not great for the amount of time you spend writing (which is why I left).
Have you considered writing for print? Aside from Root & Sprout, that’s my ultimate focus and goal. It’s a lot more hard work, I think, but there’s just something about seeing your name and/or work in a magazine or newspaper.
Actually nope, a different company. I have applied to About.com but haven’t heard back yet. I’ve been told that they take a long time to get back to applicants so I’m still holding out hope.