Google Algorithm Update 2011 - Downdate?

On February 23, 2011, the first major Google Search algorithm update since Mayday in 2010 started to show itself. Today, February 24, Webmasterworld is bursting at the seams with talk of a "content farm" update mentioned recentl by Google's Matt Cutts - and here is the announcement by Google. Judging by the panicky topics of forum threads today, general-interest "magazine style" sites like HubPages and Suite101 may have taken a hit in the search engine results.

What does this mean for content writers? At best, it may mean some instability in the ranking of our articles; at worst, it could mean serious ranking drops, with perhaps more tweaking by Google as the new SERPs settle into place. The sites on which we write may suffer the stigma of bad-quality content farms and be penalized by this algorithm update. Writers, in short, may do better publishing on our own rather than on the big sites. Writing on your own site, short-term earnings might decrease, but long-term earnings could match or even exceed the old.

Although my articles on HubPages and Suite101 have taken a pretty noticeable hit, on a tiny site I have that is not monetized by Google AdSense, views have increased, while on a slightly larger but still small site that IS monetized by AdSense, visits have stayed the same.

We'll see how this pans out. As I've said before, the Web is always changing. This is about as rough as it gets. But it's not the end of opportunity for the little guy - just the beginning, in fact.

Copyright Nerd Writer Mom

Content Farms Are Not Evil, Just Upstarts

If you've heard the term "content farms," then you've heard people rail against websites widely considered to be content farms: Demand Media's eHow, About.com, WiseGeek, BrightHub, Suite101, HubPages, InfoBarrel, even Wikipedia...and hundreds more.  As content farms, these websites either get their content from crowdsourcing (that is, they get their content from everyday people as opposed to those employed on a contract or permanent basis) or from contract writers with not necessarily journalistic qualifications.

Google has recently declared war of sorts on content farms.  It's not clear at all to me whether their definition of content farms is the same as yours or mine, or even whether Google considers properties like Demand Media to be farms.

But regular folks do use the term "content farm" for the websites above.  They complain that:

1. They are not "authority" websites.
2. They are spam.
3. They have copied, spun or scraped content.   
4. They produce volumes of content just to make money.  
5. They don't offer value to the user.

I'm here to disagree, or rather to defend content farms, and in a big way.  Yes, I write for some of those websites.  I'm also a user of some of those websites.  And I see a different perspective. 

• Do these websites exist to make money?  Yes.  So do newspapers.  So do massage therapists.  So do call centers.  So do doctors.  So do the big banks.  So do food producers.  So does any profit based business. They all produce a product or a service, sometimes out of love for that product or service,  sometimes not, but at least out of the desire to make money.  Content farms are doing nothing that the businesses they are competing against are not also doing.  Is it moral?  That's for you to decide.   But the question at hand is, is their product or service useful?  I'd say that we can spare the big banks, but not so much the content farms.  We need those, for reasons I'll explain soon.
• Are content farms spam, existing only to be "monetized" by Google AdSense?  I don't know, and furthermore, only Google does, and they haven't been saying much about it.  
• Do content farms have copied, spun, or scraped content?  From my perspective, I see far more content copied, spun and scraped from content farms than by them.  But I'll admit this is anecdotal evidence and that yes, some content creators do copy or spin content on some of these content farms, despite each sites' attempts at quality controls.  (Incidentally, the websites on which I've published do not want recycled or rewritten content, which is considered plagiarism).  However, the problem of intellectual property violation is by no means limited to content farms.  Rather, content farms are a front-stage but relatively small part of a much bigger show.  The huge problem assaulting the web is the inevitable challenge posed by digital technology to existing intellectual property laws designed in an infrastructure of print and controlled media.   What does that mumbo-jumbo mean?  Basically, that it was hard to copy things before, and now it's easy, and the old intellectual property laws were designed to protect property that was already well-protected by physical constraints.  For example, in the world of magazines, people used to read only the few magazines sold in the physical bookstores or by subscription or in the library, and you had to physically copy them, transport them, covertly resell them, etc.  Now to copy and publish material, all you have to do is search for one of the billions of bits of published material freely available, copy, paste, post, and earn...it takes less than twenty minutes and chances are you won't even get caught.  The laws and the technology have to catch up with what people can now do in their new environment without stifling necessary free expansion.  This is hard, and not a problem caused by content farms, but by the Internet itself.
• I'll deal with #1 and #5 together, since they're related.  Does the content in question have authority?  Value?  Yes, a goodly portion of it does.  Content farms are not always sourced by authorities in the traditional sense, but that does not mean the content does not offer value for the users as good as, and even better than (since many are more concisely and clearly written), that of so-called authority sites (so-called because our criteria for calling a website an authority are controversial).  They're valuable because these "farms" utilize the skills of the unproven but talented (read: youth), the authority of the freelance little guy rather than that of the hired drudge (what's the difference, again?), the garage expert rather than the certified and accredited expert.  But wait, now...they utilize the certified and accredited experts, too, because the opportunities for jobs in the traditional job market are fading.  Sure, those experts could have their own websites, but content farms make publishing easy for the non-techie.  In fact, that's what the "content farms" that aren't editorially controlled are, like HubPages: they're massively popular self-publishing platforms.  Even Suite101, though editorially controlled, doesn't dictate titles or topics.  Those that use established professional editors like About.com and Demand Media actually seek experts to write for them, and get them, too, because the experts are out of traditional work.  So yes, the expertise IS there on these websites; and where it's not, we have homegrown expertise, creativity, and talent coming from out of the woodwork, just as it did at another time of a critical economic shift - the Golden Age in the early 20th century.

Everyone who reads this blog knows that I tend to proselytize about the "new economic model" of the Internet.  Though I'm not really a preachy person, I'll probably keep doing so on this subject until I'm done.  Think of the World Wide Web as a big, new territory opening up from what was a shrinking, overpopulated, and highly competitive territory.  Online, there's lots of space and resources and people are moving here for economic and social reasons: it's cheaper, faster, more equitable, and more bountiful than the economy built on the technology of the train, car, telephone, airplane, and TV.  
Content farms provide something akin to a ramshackle mall structure in this new land: they provide a framework for people to enter the land and get down to business.  Writers publish not just the stereotypical "made for AdSense" or "MFA" pages, but marketing pages for struggling businesses (the much-maligned affiliate model), creative works, and the "how to" tricks of human enterprise that allow people engaged in all trades, from cooking to boat building, to set down their knowledge when there is no apprenticeship model or family inheritance model any longer for transmitting this knowledge.  Content farms offer publishing platforms for what will soon be a new Golden Age of creativity and information, the first truly bright spot in progress since the World War II era.
The people publishing on content farms now are not mostly scammers or spammers.  They're disreputable, but only as the pioneers of the past were: they're the immigrants, the newcomers, the non-established, non-certified  new blood, and in a dying economy, what we need is this new blood.  
Yes, there's a lot of dreck produced on content farms.  I don't like that, but I consider it not much different from the dreck produced and sanctioned by corporations calling themselves newspapers.  (Why do we need the Associated Press again?  AP was invented alongside the telegraph, so that regional papers could get non-regional news.  Well, the Internet takes care of that now; with a click of the mouse, I can read about the earthquake in the newspaper of the city in which it's happening.  So shouldn't newspapers let go of all recycled content?)

To get good content, we have to open ourselves up to all non-harmful content.  That's what content farms are good at doing.  Sure, it's a search engine's challenge to lead people to content that isn't harmful.  But that doesn't mean getting rid of those upstart content farms, despite the speculation running rampant all over the Web, including a recent discussion on Webmasterworld.com.   Hey, somebody come up with a real content management system that your grandmother could use, and then maybe we can get rid of content farms.
What do you think?Copyright Nerd Writer Mom

Is CPC Overrated When Deciding on Keywords?

When writing revenue sharing articles and researching keywords, CPC - the metric that stands for "cost per click" and, when using the Google AdWords keyword tool, represents the estimated bid amounts advertisers can expect to pay for keywords - may not be as important as SEO experts will tell you.  In my experience, CPC never jives with actual Google AdSense earnings, even after taking into account the 68% publishers get after the split, and I don't give it more than a fleeting glance when I do keyword research.

50 Reasons Writing Online Pays Better Than Regular Jobs or Print

There is no shortage of people who will tell you that writing for money on the Internet is a scam, sweatshop labor, unprincipled, selling out to The Man, and undervaluing yourself.  That's one way to look at it, I guess.  But I look at it differently.  Before I tell you the fifty reasons I think writing online is the greatest opportunity for people to earn money in a century, I have to qualify it:  It's not all perfect.

Is Rewriting a Copyright Violation?

My  last post covered rewriting and plagiarism, but I wanted to do a quick post on copyright infringement as regards to rewriting articles, too.  Why?  I recently had to file a DMCA notice with Google AdSense regarding a copyright infringement of an article I wrote.  My article wasn't copied word for word, however - it was rewritten.

How to Optimize for Google, Bing and Yahoo Without SEO: A Philosophical Guide for Writers

This is not an SEO guide for web content writers, webmasters or publishers.  There are no tips or tricks or techniques here.  And you know what? Many search engine optimization techniques lose value when they become popular, anyway.

What is here is a description of the way I believe the Bing, Google and Yahoo! search engines "think."  Why is that useful?  Because understanding the way search engines think can illuminate how to get good rankings in the SERPs over the longterm.  The goal is not to trick the search engines into ranking your website for every keyword imaginable, but to give them what they want so you get ranked for the terms you should be ranked for.

Pros and Cons of Backlinks: Not Worth the Effort Anymore?

Writers or web content publishers who are also search engine marketers often tout the value of backlinking their own work.  I'm a maverick.  I think backlinks created for "link juice" are pretty valueless and getting cheaper daily.  I write web content for revenue share, and I don't systematically backlink, and my articles, many of them hosted at HubPages, don't do badly at all.  And I think I'm not alone.  I know, I know.  A lot of people swear by creating strategic backlinks.  But there's another group of people that don't touch the things and let the backlinks develop organically.  And it's looking like that may be okay.

Suite101 Scam? No, It's Not. You Just Can't Ignore SEO.

Many writers wonder whether Suite101 is a scam.  I've been writing for Suite101 for over 6 months, and I like it.  It's not HubPages; it's suited to different types of articles.  So is Suite101 a scam?  My answer is that it depends how you define scam.  Suite101 is a legitimate company and they have freelance writers with professional portfolios writing for them.  They ask for no investment but time.  They pay in a timely manner.  They have a solid reputation in the online publishing industry. But Suite uses one of the new earnings models known as revenue sharing.

Why Writers Write: To Communicate

I hear a lot of writers talking about why they write.  "To express myself."  "Because I have to."  "Because I'll bust a gut sneezing if the writing doesn't flow regularly out of my literary sinuses."  Whatever.  I'm more inspired by George Orwell, who demystifies the act of writing in A Collection of Essays in pieces such as Why I Write and Politics and the English Language.

EHow No Longer Publishing Articles Except by Demand Studios

I've been suggesting writers new to revenue sharing at article sites  and writing online web content in general start with an account at eHow.com.  However, minutes ago a pop-up appeared on eHow.com stating that "Demand Studios is now the exclusive platform for writing new articles for eHow.com."  This means that community members can't self-submit articles anymore.  There is a note to check your email for details, but that email has yet to arrive.

Why Opportunities for Earning an Income from Writing Online Aren't Going Away Anytime Soon

The chance to earn an income by writing online can seem almost too good to be true.  While the economy's shriveling, writing opportunities online are growing as they haven't in nearly a century.  Writing sites are everywhere.  Is it all a scam?  No.  Not all of it.  It's hard work, but the best kind of work.  You work from home, you work convenient hours, you have no boss, you can take time off, you're far more in control of your income than if you had a job...all while getting paid to put words together on a page, bless your soul. 

But before you invest a lot of resources in your writing career - specifically, the resource of time, as most legit writing opportunities are free - you may be doubting this pipe dream can last.  Well, I don't doubt it anymore.  I think it's here to stay.  And here's why I think so.

Published in Print But Not Making Money Writing Online? Tips for Moving to Writing for the Web

Many nonfiction freelance writers published in traditional print media - specifically, magazines and newspapers - are eager to start writing on the Web, but learn quickly that writing online is a whole new ballgame.  Many don't understand the different business models for earning money online, largely because the models are still so new and constantly in flux.  And if they do get how to earn money by writing online, many think the business models are inherently unfair and exit the game barely after beginning.  Which is a shame, because the Web needs the talent being bled from the dying print market as much as the writers need the work.  And the work is there.

Why Earnings Increase and Decrease So Crazily at Revenue Sharing Sites

Here are 20 factors affecting the rise and fall of earnings on revenue share articles (before you read this, read the introduction on page 1, 20 Non-SEO Reasons Earnings Go Up & Down at eHow, HubPages & Other Revenue Share Websites):

20 Non-SEO Reasons Earnings Go Up & Down at eHow, HubPages , & Other Revenue Share Websites

Writers often notice mystifying fluctuations in earnings while earning money with revenue share programs at websites like eHow, HubPages, Suite101, Squidoo, About, Triond, Helium, Xomba, InfoBarrel, and others. One day earnings are up, the next they're decidedly down.  This rise and fall happens even when writers write perfectly good SEO articles (search engine optimized).  Watching a radical decrease or even increase can be frustrating for writers trying to understand why they are earning the amounts they do - all the more so because the algorithm for calculating earnings is already shrouded in mystery at many of these article sites.

Using Creative Commons Photos on the Internet: Intellectual Property Rights in Transition

The questions pop up frequently on the eHow forums, HubPages forums and other writing and webmaster sites.

Is it OK to use any photo I find on the Internet? If I find a photo in the Google Image Search (TM), can I use it any way I want? On Flickr? If I find a Creative Commons photo, can I change it or post it on my Web page? How do I find out what kind of license a Creative Commons photo has? How do I know what license protects a photo I find on the Web?

The answers are rarely what you want to hear. You can't use just any photo you find on the Internet. You can't use just any image you find on the Google Image Search (TM), Flickr, Yahoo!, or any photo sharing site. You need permission to use them.  Permission may be granted by licenses stated explicitly on the photo sharing site.  Permission may have to be requested.  But even then, it's not that simple.

The rules for intellectual property of photos are much the same as the rules for intellectual property regarding text. You need to hunt down permissions. You must hunt down who owns the copyright and what, if any, rights the creator is offering. Often the rights offered don't allow commercial use and don't allow you to modify the work. Sometimes it's obvious; more often, it's not.

Although I'm not a lawyer, I am familiar with some of the basics of intellectual property law regarding using images online in the U.S.  The most common infraction I see on the Internet is people taking photos from a website - an e-commerce site, usually, but others, too - and putting the photos up on their blog or website along with a photo credit and maybe even a link, reasoning "It's okay as long as I credit them.  And besides, the photographer is glad of the exposure."

Neither is true.  You need either explicit permission from the owner of the photograph (and that owner may not actually be the e-commerce site itself) or you need to establish that the appropriate rights are associated with the photo and that you are doing everything you need to do to use the photo legally.  For example, if you use a photo on Flickr that has a Creative Commons License, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can use the photo.  You must understand the different types of Creative Commons licenses and then do your part to include the necessary credits, use the photo only according to the rights the owner of the photo grants, and so on.

The second most common infraction I see is people assuming it's okay to post on their own website, article page, or web page a photo or image they downloaded at a photo sharing site like Flickr or Wikimedia even when it doesn't offer rights for commercial use.  Not all use of images is commercial, true.  But these people think that putting the image onto an article page with ads isn't the same as using images for commercial use.  That's wrong.  It is commercial use to put up a photo on a hub at HubPages that has ads, for example, or on an article at Suite101, or on an article at eHow.

What is commercial use?  I'm not a lawyer and if I try to define it for you, I'd get into territory I have no business going.  But trust me - putting an image up on a page that will earn you money by advertising or affiliate links is commercial use.  Don't do it unless the rights granted you to use the photo include commercial use.  

All this can be terribly discouraging and confusing for website owners and online content writers who act in good faith to not go against the intellectual property rights of photographers.

I used to have an example here of one confusing search using the search Creative Commons function.  The confusion's since been fixed, it appears - yay!  But the whole thing remains a confusing mess and the only way to do the right thing is to study the rules.  Basically, if you want to use somebody else's work on the Internet to make money for yourself, you'll need to understand the licenses very well. That's part of your job.

Whenever you find a page like this fabulous one describing how to use Creative Commons Images from Flickr, you feel lucky - it explains at least some information about interpreting the licensing code for Flickr photos and Flickr images. But mostly, you have to piece together the info like the veriest usage license detective.

It gets even trickier when you talk about a site like eHow. EHow uses the content of hundreds of thousands of users on its site. It accepts text content, video, and images. In its terms of use, it lays down the law: you must own or legitimately lease or borrow the rights to all content that you post.

Now, consider this. Many eHow contributors take their own photos or create their own images. Others get permission to use photos on eHow. Many eHow members pay for the use of photos. But even when you pay, you may not always have the right to display the photo on eHow.

Why not? The terms of certain photo sharing sites state that the paying user can publish the photos, but not modify them, or in other cases transfer them to a third party that will distribute them. EHow states in their Terms of Use:

"You hereby grant eHow a worldwide, royalty-free, freely transferable, freely sublicensable (through unlimited levels of sublicense), non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, transmit, distribute, [my emphasis] publicly perform and display (including in each case by means of a digital audio transmission), and create derivative works of the Content, in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed."

EHow is reserving the right to use the content - for content, read text, video, and photos - almost any way they want. So in some cases, even using photos that you've paid to use by publishing them on eHow instead of your own site may be a bad idea.

What's more, if a photo features a person's image, then that person may have certain rights, such as model rights / personality rights, not to have that photo published. In the UK and other countries, there may be the potential issue of defamation if the photo is used in a way other than what is intended.  The person in the photograph may have released the right to publish the work bearing their image...or not. The rules are complex. Wikimedia Commons touches on these issues here in this article on using images from Wikimedia.

Seem like there are no simple answers? There aren't. Even lawyers don't agree on a number of intellectual property issues. The problem is that the Internet is changing the way we treat intellectual property. We're living in a period that later will be viewed as a time of radical transition.

Traditional trademark, patent, copyright, and other intellectual property issues are based on a world of tangible media, finite publication, slow development processes, and easy identifiers. The Internet is a world of virtual media, eternal publication, rapid development, and diffused identifiers. What this means for intellectual property is hard to tell. But I sure would like to be around in fifty years to see what it's like.

Copyright Nerd Writer Mom 2008-2010 - All Rights Reserved

Writing Till I Drop: Tales of an Exhausted Content Writer

I've been writing tons of how-to articles at eHow.  And since it feels like the recession is already here, I'm writing articles on celebrating Christmas during a recession. Doesn't the economic crisis feel like a replay of Hurricane Katrina? You can see it coming, you know it presages disaster, but not enough people are taking it seriously....Maybe I'm just feeling negative today.

And then there's the articles at Constant-Content. They all follow this format I like. Catchy Title: Long and Informative Subtitle. I'm really getting into titling my articles. I think I may just try to market the titles alone. Anyone know where...? Oh, boy, now I am getting cynical...

Copyright Nerd Writer Mom 2008-2010 - All Rights Reserved

I'm Starting to Sell My Writing Content Online

Yippee! After being off of work to take care of my baby, I'm now starting to work again from home. And I get to do what I love best, write.

I've already started to sell articles at Constant-Content. I've even started an account at eHow.

This is not exactly scholarly stuff and it's not the fiction that is my first love, but it's bringing in - gasp - money!

I'm just tickled that I can actually earn money from home this way.

Oh, and I'm also writing for Textbroker and Demand Studios. So we'll see how it goes. Once more...yippee!

Copyright Nerd Writer Mom 2008-2010 - All Rights Reserved