My experience with Written.com
Blogger tales as I’m not feeling like writing about kids stuff today (it’s been a hard two weeks.) Back in March of 2016 I was approached by a representative of Written Inc who wanted to license some of theITbaby’s content for a car blog using the Written plugin/platform for WordPress.
As I deal with scams on a daily basis for work, someone wanting to pay me money for three of my articles (each a low traffic, resplendent with incoherence,) seemed too good to be true. Especially when they wanted a lot more information about me, asked for access to my analytics, and wanted a W2 (if I remember correctly,) for payment purposes.
I forget what caused me to not flee in panic but I didn’t, and I ended up installing the plugin and allowing them analytics access which ended up showing what their clients were interested in were some abysmally performing entries here about car seats. I believe one of the entries was getting nine hits a month at that point.
Their client ended up wanting to license three of my pieces, and for some reason the next month they decided they wanted more of me and wanted another, which at this point being paid by a PayPal deposit I was fine with. Yup, I got paid what they promised.
The initial terms were each was licensed for three months at which point I could choose to renew or retrieve my articles. I didn’t do anything and they renewed, I kept getting a monthly PayPal for each article, and the articles were temporarily (while licensed) hosted elsewhere so visiting them on theITbaby ended up bouncing you to where they lived now, and visiting the client’s site they were hosted somewhere considerably more robust that my little server.
At six months I’ve been paid six times for three of the articles and five for one other. I got a note that my licenses were not being renewed and this would be my last month, which I’m guessing is the last they will be dealing with me unless they have another client who’s looking for highly specific oddly researched blogging about babies and tech.
Anyway, if you’re wondering if Written Inc / written.com is a scam, it’s not. At least not from my experience in 2016. Then again I could be part of a scam.
My articles will be returned to me next month, which means even though they’re here currently they’ll point back here and my advertising will kick back in earning me about three cents a month.
It was pretty awesome while it lasted.
