Up-date About Today.com~~Hope I Can Get My Material Back
By pyewacket
@pyewacket (43903)
United States
August 31, 2009 5:59pm CST
Well I had started a discussion about the seemingly spamming emails I got from the blog site Today.com that I supposedly had signed up for survey points and advertising...unless I have amnesia, I most certainly did not.
I started writing my blog at Today.com since several of my MyLot friends had blogs with them and they got paid. The premise was, that one signed up to blog at Today.com and one would be paid $1.00 per blog post per day. One reached payout at $50.00. Then, like most writing sites they did a switch-a-roo. I had only been with them for awhile when they suddenly decided to switch to page view payments only which, of course making it a lot harder to reach payout. As soon as they had done this I have to admit I lost interest and didn't blog as much there. The thing is, I did a good number of entries, and very lengthy at that and many entries were rather dear to my heart...talking about my cats, about what I went through with my mother, and on and on. If I had known they were going to pull this crap, I would instead have made my entries in my private blog where I don't get any monetary compensation.
Anyway, I have a feeling Today.com changed it's TOS policies, since I DID read them before signing up. I emailed them just last night...here is my email to them
[i]Dear Today.com
I have a question which I hope you can answer.
I have to admit I haven't been as active in writing my blog as I was when I first started. Back then I faithfully posted an entry to my blog on a daily basis. Then various health problems took place and I wasn't able to. By then, the $1.00 payment per posting was reduced to page views. Due to that, even though I did earn some "money" I am no way near the payout of $50 and would take forever for me to do so.
I was looking at the terms of service and didn't see what I was hoping to find. That is, do I own the rights to my blog entries or do you? You see what I would like to do is repost some of my entries on my personal blog, where I don't get paid at all, it's just a personal on-line memoir type thing.
But rather than re-type basically the same thing I previously typed for my Today.com blog I'd rather simply copy my blog entries from there and enter them in my personal blog...can I do this?
Also, I'm getting a lot of emails from you where you are claiming I signed up for bonus survey points and advertising...I did none of this, that is sign up for any of them, so wondering why am I getting these emails?
[/i]
I just got a response from them and it's this:
[i]Hi
Today.com owns the content and there is a non-compete clause in the agreement.
From the Terms & Conditions (which can be located in the account area
for review):
5.1 NON-COMPETITION.
Notwithstanding anything that may be contained herein to the
contrary, Contractor may perform services for any competitor however
Contractor must refrain from publishing the same material published on
TODAY.COM on any other website, blog site, or publication.
Sincerely,
Today.com Support [/i]
Like I said they must have changed their policies since I never remember seeing this in their TOS---you'll notice they don't address the issue about receiving their emails about my so-called signing up for their programs.
I just wrote back to them asking if the rights of my blog entries could go back to me so I can repost them at my private blog, if I delete my account and forfeit any monetary earnings I may have accumulated...remember I never got paid by them officially since I hadn't reached payout.
If I had known how Today.com was going to be in "reality" I would NEVER have done lengthy, personal blog entries with them and instead could have done them at my own blog...but lets face it...I was lured by the idea of earning money there. With the exception of Associated Content, I'm beginning to think the vast majority of writing sites are full of crap and short-change and pull a fast one to their loyal writers somewhere along the line....
Has anyone else gotten deluded about various writing sites?
Has anyone else gotten deluded about various writing sites?3 people like this
5 responses
@snowy22315 (208798)
• United States
1 Sep 09
I'm glad you wrote this now I will not write for them, as I was tentatively planning to do. I had bad luck with Textbroker. I think there are other sites that I will investigate as well. They are sites that I really used to like but they are not lucrative anymore. I agree they do the old switcheroo.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Sep 09
The only writing site to my mind that stays consistent is Associated Content. I had bad luck with eHow as well..long story, and then of course Ciao review site closed down...grrrrr
@BarBaraPrz (51811)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
1 Sep 09
Since your personal blog site is non-commercial, I don't see how it could be competing with today.com.
So... if you were to copy and paste those blogs onto your own site... who's to know?
Ah! But you tipped them off. Would they be looking for your personal blog site?
Ah! But you tipped them off. Would they be looking for your personal blog site?
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Sep 09
They could probably do a check the same way I check when I'm tracking down plagiarizers here at mylot...
@paula27661 (15811)
• Australia
1 Sep 09
I was looking into Today.com ages ago and changed my mind; I’m glad now. I have the same old stuff on Helium, Associated Content and Bukisa because I haven’t added anything new in months. Ac only pays me for page views because I’m in Australia.
I have lost my will to write online and I agree that there is no real money to be made writing anywhere unless you pitch an idea to an editor and earn that way; those jobs are few and far between though. I have earned good money selling to magazines but the problem is that the gods, oops sorry the editors sit on your submission for months and months before advising you whether they like it or not and if they decide to publish it you don’t get paid until the piece goes to print which could take another six months. It is all too painfully slow...
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
7 Sep 09
I think the one problem with on-line writing sites is that they have in a sense "cheapened" writing, if you get what I mean. And yes, print magazines do take forever, but they do pay better if your work is excepted...that's a big "if" though
1 person likes this
@paula27661 (15811)
• Australia
7 Sep 09
Yes it is a big "If". I had an editor sit on my piece for over a year with a promise that it would be published, only to be told after such a long wait that he had shut the magazine down! It is not the thing to do if you need money urgently, which I do now to pay for vet bills so I may look into obtaining regular work and keeping the writing as a hobby.

@crimsonladybug (3112)
• United States
1 Sep 09
AC is great about their payments and they always notify their writers if they are changing policies. Honestly, since I joined them, eight months after they first "opened their doors," so to speak, I haven't bothered finding any other paid writing site. I looked into Hub Pages but couldn't think of anything with enough commercial appeal to draw the traffic needed to make it worth my time and energy so I gave up on it. I figured anything I could put on there I could also put on AC for page views and make the money that way.
Constant Content is a kind of clearing house for articles. They recently lowered their minimum payout from $50 to $5 so writers now get paid a lot faster than they/we used to. With them, you write an article, set your fees for it depending on what kind of license you want to sell (full-rights means that someone can buy it and put their own name on it, etc.). The editors review it and approve or reject it based on any number of reasons and then, once it's been approved, it sits in the "library" and waits for someone to buy it. The great thing about it is that I have ten or twelve articles on the site and I don't have to do anything (I figured out recently). If I have an article up that fits a buyer's needs, they buy it and I get paid.
They also have content requests but I've found that by the time you get a request, write an article for it, get said article through the approval process and published, someone else who already had one written has sent it to the buyer. Their approval process can take up to ten days which is a little slow when you are trying to sell something before someone else does. I've figured it's just easier to write something that will sell and hope someone needs it then keep an eye on the requests to see if something fits. It's kind of a passive way of doing things but it seems to be the best way with them.
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Sep 09
I have two articles over at HubPages...never went back to writing more for them though. I just rattled out an article for AC about some of my negative experiences with different writing sites...the only consistent one seems to be AC, so plan to stick with them







