Elite Visitors website was taken offline yesterday as the owner put it up for sale and too all the adsense revenue. The others involved set up a new site and transferred some of the data, but they need to apply for a new adsense account. I hope all the writers involved saved their content, but this is a risk you take when you provide content for free.
I am glad I did not submit my articles to this site. It had been recommended to me as a place I can make money. Some of these sites do not stay up for long, it is hard to find a good site to make money on.
Well, to be honest I was never a fan of Elite Workers. I had heard about it especially after Bubblew bellied up and thought I would investigate it further. I really didn't like the over all lay out and found it a bit confusing to understand how it shared revenue. So, in the end I decided not to sign up for it. I am glad now that I listen to my inner voice telling me that this website wasn't worth the effort.
One of the owners skipped off with all the money at Elite Visitors. All of our data is fine but we lost all our earnings. It seems legit social blogging sites are few and far between these days. I am still a member of the new site BestWriters but must admit, I don't have much motivation since my earnings were lost. I doubt I will continue there much longer.
I hate to be so cynical but I do wonder if they're all in it together? I just keep thinking, what if it happens again with the new site? How're we to know if indeed what happened went down the way the BestWriters people have told us it did? I don't know, I'm just a bit meh about the whole thing. I'm thinking of scooping out my stuff and trying elsewhere.
I'm going to wait a little while before going for BestWriters. The way I found out about the issue was by going onto Elite Visitors with the intention of signing up. Thankfully my timing worked out ok and I didn't lose money. It just goes to show how fragile a space it is.
I think this is why sites where there is no 'About us' or contact page is a little suspect. What I discovered in my Sherlock Holmes mode is that one was in Belgium (the one who owned the domain and had the adsense account), one in the UK and one in the US. The other who resigned I don't know where he is from, but must have known what the Belgium guy was up to which is why he resigned and then came back. I just don't think they have a clear idea of how to run things and if people expect back payments, then it just won't happen. If they try to please people to do that, then they will financially be in the red.
Wow, that's crazy! From Belgium to UK to the US! The thing about the "about us" missing from some sites is a good one to watch out for, because lately I've seen a few sites like that and I've just backed off straight away. I just don't like that. You want to know what or who you're dealing with. Have you gone on BestWriters and checked it out? Do you think they still getting up to the same stuff?
I do think the remaining admins are making an effort and are genuine. However, whether they will succeed is another matter. They have a loyal following because the writers are known to each other, but whether the ad revenue can generate what they promised and compensate them for their investment and time only time will tell. Split three ways and with the time put in, I think it will be loss generating for a while. As a hobby it is fine, but they need to ask themselves how long will they let it go on for if the profit is low?
I have heard of Elite workers but I do not think I have submitted any articles there. It seemed like a very fishy site. I prefer other sites better.
I think the best way for a writer or contributor to protect themselves is to keep a copy of everything they submit to these companies. Yesterday, I went through an old list (maybe 2013) of leads and was shocked at how many places like Seed (part of AOL), Suite 101 and others were no more. If a person writes a lot, it can be tiresome keeping it organized but worth the trouble so it can be sold elsewhere once it is no longer visible.
This is a risk that always comes with signing up with revenue-sharing sites. I’ve seen this happen to a couple of websites that I used to submit content to. With that said, if you are going to join any revenue-sharing site, always remember the risk. To prepare for this risk, always keep backup copies of your articles so that you can reuse them later should the website shut down.
@dannyluke1, I'm one of the people who learned the hard way! Luckily, I was able to salvage all my articles because I saw it coming and started to copy them all over. I too saw three of my revenue sharing sites fold one after the other, and sink without a trace, all before I could cash out too. That's why I try to steer clear of them now.
It is a shame when these websites go down, because I know that a lot of people put their time and trust into them, and some actually manage to earn a fair bit of money from them along the way. I always used Triond when I was first starting out, and I was lucky that I was one of the highest earners on there. I certainly put a lot of time and effort into the articles that I wrote, and I enjoyed the rewards of doing that.
