Thisisby.us - A New Writer’s Community
The other day, I came across Thisisby.us, a User Generated Content (UGC) driven site where they share the revenue with with their writers. I signed up for it pretty quickly; several months ago I had contemplated launching a similar project, and I was interested in seeing how well the concept worked from a user’s perspective.
The concept is very solid. The deal is they share 50% of their daily revenue with their authors. An author gets paid based on the share of ‘Current Goodness’ his articles and comments generate on a given day. ‘Current Goodness’ is determined by a simple formula give over 24 hours:
Current Goodness is based on views and votes received in the last 24 hours. Current Goodness is equal to (1+Views received in the last 24 Hours)*Votes received in the last 24 Hours.
It is a good system - it is much fairer than other sites such as Digital Journal who pay by the vote alone, regardless of the page views. this system rewards writers who cover controversial topics which generate a lot of reads; under other systems, the writer may not receive any votes, since many of his readers will disagree with him or her.
To test it out, I created a generic content piece titled, ‘The 5 Worst Types of Drivers‘. Once the piece was published on the site, I submitted it to Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us and Netscape.
My article rapidly rose in the daily ranks on the site, and is currently sitting as the #2 article in the last 24 hours with 1072 views, 14 votes, and a ‘Current Goodness’ score of 15,022 current goodness at the time of this writing.
So, as the second most popular article, one would think I would walk away with a decent share of the site’s daily rewards. Think again.
The #1 article on the site for the last 24 hours is ‘Tempur-Pedic Beds and Sex Do Not Mix‘. This article has gone successful on Reddit & Digg, and is currently at a Current Goodness score of over 800,000.
So it will be getting the lion’s share of the profits from today. Not that I am bitter - I am not doing this for the monetary gain! Rather, I was curious how well the concept worked.
Having looked at the sites advertising, it appears that the site makes ~$150 / day from Blogads, and probably another $100 or so from CPM advertising. So, assuming a $250 daily budget, $125 of the goes to the authors. Assuming that the site authors get ~845,000 total ‘Goodness’ cumulative today, the #1 author is on track to get ~95% of the day’s earnings, about $118. Me, at #2, am on track for ~1.75% of the earnings, about $2.20. The remainder (~$4.80) will be split up among the site’s countless other authors.
The best conclusion to take from this is if anybody is writing articles on a site like this for the monetary aspect, you better hope your article becomes successful on a social network. If anyone else does, you will not make anything.
On the positive side, it quickly became apparent that the site has a rather vibrant community. People are very free with commenting and discussions. While there is criticism within the users, it is generally of a constructive sort, especially within the ‘fiction’ area.
If you enjoy writing, I would strongly recommend checking out Thisisby.us. It’s a very friendly, writer-oriented site with a helpful, accessible community. Don’t go with the intention of making money unless you think you can make it on a social network; you won’t make much, and you would likely be better off running your own site anyways.
Edit: Just to confirm what I said above about it not being for the money… well.. I just got back the results for this article, and I have made $0.48, far less than the $1.20 I estimated. C’ est la vie.
ThisIsBy.Us is a total scam. You only get money the days you receive votes (and their revenue is view based not a flat daily fee). The whole TIBU communtity votes on new articles for the first or second day only. After that and forevermore, the money from the views that your work generates is divided among the writers who do receive votes that day. Since those writers will NEVER reach the 25$ payout threshhold, 95% of the money is forfeit back to the sites owners.
TIBU is a good place to generate new readers, but your still VASTLY better off at AssociatedContent.com or Constant-Content.org.
It’s absolutely not true that there’s a time limit on how long you get paid. Any day that a post gets one or more votes, it will earn income.
Still, it is true that if you want to make money, it’s not the best place to concentrate your efforts.
Interesting site review…. that Tempur Pedic article was hilarious
Dude, 1 vote x 1 view = a tenth of a penny at most. C’mon, get real. No one is going to get any whole pennies after the first couple of days, much less actual dollars. You really don’t see that? Don’t be stupid.
‘50% to the authors’ as the hook for this site is purposefully misleading. Good writers who do want to be fairly compensated do go elsewhere and that’s a damn shame.