I've written about Independent Publishing a couple of times here and a lot of it was done out of frustration. Let's start off with what I know about this place. I found the site with a simple Google search of "get paid to write for us" and they were pretty far back in the pages but I signed up and got approved about 3 weeks ago.What I Know (according to their website)
1. They are owned by a German company, according to their website, "Independent Publishing is a service provided by Beaufort Media GmbH"
2. They do have a full contact information page. Their site also claims that they bring clients and authors together so freelance writers can do what they love the most, which is "write articles"
3. They pay two cents per word, however I have completed only 350 word articles and been paid $6.93
for each one so I am figuring that their cut is the 7 cents but I'm still working on figuring that out.
4. Their articles are fun and easy to write. They give you the exact format of Title (provided), Lead sentence (key word included) a main body paragraph (key word included) and then at least two subheadings and one more main body paragraph for each heading. Key word density is required to be between 1% and 3% and their site text input system has a counter right there for you.
What I don't know about them (and haven't been able to find out from their website or searches):
1. They claim that I can feel the thrill of reading my articles online but have yet to find out how. I don't know who their customers are and that is fine. I work for some content mills where my clients are designated by a number. But don't claim that I can read my stuff when I can't find it.
2. I don't know what was wrong with them for the first three weeks I wrote for them. I completed 3 articles and when pay day came around (every 14 days) they created an invoice, I got an email that said the money would go to PayPal. But it never did. I sent in a trouble slip and ten days later they got back to me and said they were sorry, they understood my frustration and I would see my money "one day next week".
3. I don't know much, actually. The FAQ page on the site is broken so not much help there.
Ok, so that is what I intended to write about for the last week. But then a funny thing happened. Well, a couple funny and pretty neat things happened. I started getting feedback from them and I got paid. My money from the initial miss was put in PayPal today, along with another $60 that I had accumulated since then. (So when you think about it I missed a pay day and they made up for it one the next one.)
One thing that I don't like about the site is that the terms state that the client has 3 days to accept an article once it has been submitted by an author but that is not true. Several of mine have gone to 7-12 days and I still have one not accepted from 10 days ago. However, on the upside, when I sent a message to the help desk they asked which article I was referring to and they told me they would contact the customer and ask what the hold up was.
I hate to admit this but when I didn't get my first payment I sat on an article for ten days that I had no way of releasing back into the content pool. The terms say that I have 3-5 days to write an article but I sat on that one for about 10 days and no one ever asked or questioned me about it. When I did submit I sent a note to the customer apologizing for the wait and that it was completely my fault and not that of IP's.
In the end, this is a site that is still in beta (the writing service only started early this year) and they are working through their issues. At first I was angry and thought I had been duped-but the communication in the last 96 hours is a great plus and let's face it...they paid me!
Overall: Worth looking into but freelance writers will need patience while they work through this beta thing just like other sites. Also, there isn't much work on it so when you see an article...grab it up!
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