Greeting to everyone!

Recently we have launched our own site related to Microstock photography and photography in general: http://www.stockforfood.com [nofollow]

Although we have a lot of ideas to write about on this site ourselves, unfortunately our time is very limited by our full-time jobs and crazy lifestyle of our home city. However, we would like to make this site useful as soon as possible, so as a startup investment initiative, we offer you to become an author on this site. Not only it will help us build up the content faster, but we think it's also benefitical to have different people's view and experiences. And we are sure there's much we and our visitors could learn from you !

So we are looking for authors/copywriters ! We'll pay 5$-15$ per accepted article.

What we need

We'll be glad to publish unique (i.e. written by you and unpublished before) and interesting articles on different subjects, which could be valuable for Microstock contributors and buyers. It could be anything of the following:

- General discussions on anything related to Microstock photography, photographers, problem matters, lifestyle, etc;
- Reviews of any related products or services (including, but not limited to photography equipment, photo editing and organising software, stock agencies, online services, etc.), describing how a stock photographer or buyer may benefit from them

- Tutorials, step-by-step guides and hints on things you know well
- Forum discussion topics on any related topic put in a format of an article
- Case Studies - stories of success or failures of any image or endevador that you or somebody you know had experienced. You may also post your progress reports. Interviews with other stock contributors or buyers are also always welcome
- Commenting and analysing news or rumors you heard of (not rewriting press-releases, but expressing your own ideas and opinions)
- Publishing links and screenshots of where your images from Microstocks were used, with little stories and commentaries may also qualify as an article
- Other ways of getting income of use on photographs, or just photography arts - in comparison with Microstocks
- Any specifics of Microstock business in your country
- Anything else you think may be interesting for the microstock community

Below are the most-demanded topics - surely interesting subjects, but things we know very little about ourselves. We'll pay 2$ extra, i.e. 7$ per article if it falls into any of these categories:

- Microstocks from buyers perspective - if you are experienced with buying and using pictures from Microstock, we are interested to hear your opinions, know better your requirements, etc
- 'Insiders' stories - if you are or used to be on the staff (inspector, developer, customer service, etc) of any Microstock agency, we are interested to hear how it works 'from the inside'
-Selling vectors, illustration and video footage at microstocks. We have no experience with any of these, while it is a huge part of the pie - so it's interesting to know and details and specifics

Should we find your article interesting enough to be posted in "Featured" articles, we'll pay you a bonus of another 5$.

We are also planning to translate most articles in Russian for our mirror site in Russian to be launched soon. If you are a native Russian speaker and could provide your article in both languages, we'll pay another 3$ extra.

That means, the maximum you may earn per article you send to us is 15$ (an article in both Russian and English, on a "most-demanded topic", which we chose to put in "Featured" category).

If you are interested, please read the details of the offer and our requirements at http://www.stockforfood.com/become-an-author [nofollow]

In any case, you are always welcome to visit our site.

Best Regards,
Vitaly and Maria
http://www.stockforfood.com [nofollow]

Woefully inadequate.

I did a research and the average amount paid for a blog article by specialized agencies is 3-5$. You can buy the ready-made content for your site from those agencies for even less.

We are not one of those glossy journals, who are ready to pay hundreds per an article are we are not targeting authors of those either. We are a private site at the very startup and we are seeking individuals who have knowledge, but only about to try themselves in writing. And we did have received a few proposals as of yet (we have only started this initiative).

What others do and what is right are two different things. What others agree to do for you and what is right are also two different things. Providing examples of someone doing wrong does not make it right.

It's like microstock pricing...... but for writing........ and without the repeat sales....... 

To the OP: guess you'll have to wait for your full time jobs and crazy lifestyle allow you to write your own content.  Although there really isn't a rush - there is already plenty of content out there already.

I would have to agree with the above that writing information that is intended to better and increase my competion is worth more than $5, especially if you're going to port it to Russia, home of the copy factories .

If you compare it to associated content, or squidoo, or hub pages, or ehow (there's a plethora of sites for this type of writing) the pay isn't bad.  The guys that make money at this (and it can be considerable) write their content in roughly 15 minutes and post 10 - 20 stories a day.  The stories are thin and to the point.  I could write a story about submitting to DT in 10 minutes - worth $5, but a tutorial on drawing an illustration of a Christmas present would take me a week .  

If you get $5-15 and keep the rights to the content you can then post it to those other sites that accept recycled work (not all of them do) it seems fair.  If they demand to restrict your rights to the story I can't say it is worth it unless you can knock 6 or 7 of these things off in a morning and won't get upset when you find them selling it to other services.

Quote from: Zeus on September 01, 2009, 10:11

Is it only me or is $5-$15 for a written article completely inadequate. It's a single sale on a specialized topic.

It's only you.

You bunch already spend your free time working for nothing supplying images to your agencies at a loss, then spend more free time over here writing about it for no remuneration at all.

The dude is giving you 5 shiny bucks for something you now do for free.

The ill informed jump in again to sort me out. I NEVER do any shooting for free. Well maybe for my mother-in-law.

Associated Content typically pays their authors around three to six dollars per article, and then they receive royalties on those articles for as long as that company is around. And they're also free to post their content elsewhere; thus, earning even more royalties from it. It's a small amount, but it adds up over time. Also, another company called Constant Content allows you to post your articles with them as well. For exclusive rights, it's not unheard of for a five hundred word article or so to sell for around a hundred dollars. But many members appear to short change themselves. So the amount the OP is offering is not nearly enough for an exclusive article.

It's nice there's such a discussion of my offer out there 

I'm not going to defend my price. It's only what I feel like offering as an incentive to attract authors to my site, which is not a set up business. I think I'll find a few people interested (and I already did).

If you've read the rules, I'm not asking for exclusivity, except for 7-days of keeping from posting the articles elsewhere. After that, you may post or even sell the article elsewhere. I'm also letting people write about themselves, their case-studies, linking their portfolios, etc. So it could be means of promotion for them too.

I do try to fill the site in with as much my own content as I can, but I know that at my speed of 2-3 articles a week (my time allows no more), it will take me a lifetime to fill it with the content. And I also like to have other people's views on my site, not only mine.

There's a lot of bloggers out there, who write stuff just for fun and absolutely for free. What's bad if I offer a bit of incentive to attract such people to my site? 

It's nice there's such a discussion of my offer out there 

I'm not going to defend my price. It's only what I feel like offering as an incentive to attract authors to my site, which is not a set up business. I think I'll find a few people interested (and I already did).

If you've read the rules, I'm not asking for exclusivity, except for 7-days of keeping from posting the articles elsewhere. After that, you may post or even sell the article elsewhere. I'm also letting people write about themselves, their case-studies, linking their portfolios, etc. So it could be means of promotion for them too.

I do try to fill the site in with as much my own content as I can, but I know that at my speed of 2-3 articles a week (my time allows no more), it will take me a lifetime to fill it with the content. And I also like to have other people's views on my site, not only mine.

There's a lot of bloggers out there, who write stuff just for fun and absolutely for free. What's bad if I offer a bit of incentive to attract such people to my site? 

LMAO....I knew where this was going....

Cool. Here's

Edit: link removed

Looks like you big meanies broke their spirit.  They haven't published since Sept 09.