This is a guest post by Tim Willingham, a college freshmen at Texas State University. He also runs a dope music blog about song remixes, new music and music news. Make sure to check out his SXSW section.
Remember that company in the 90’s who would send you free “Frisbees” in the mail every month? Yes, I’m referring to AOL. Well, imagine that same company but instead of 4 free months you get a paycheck. Introducing Seed, AOL’s new social media experiment where you create the content behind AOL’s 80+ family of websites.
How It Works
I love to write, so I decided to give this thing a try. Once you sign up, you will see a list of available assignments. The assignment will have a title, topic, how much they will pay you and how long until the deadline.
Click on a topic to read detailed information about the assignment. Once you have found a project you feel like you can accomplish click “claim”.
Seed gives you the ability to save your assignment so you can work on it anytime before the deadline. Every time you log in Seed shows your current assignments, and also your completed ones.
After you create material for the project and submit it to Seed, there is a five to seven day waiting period after the deadline where your work is looked over. If AOL decides your work is good enough for one of their sites, they will publish it.
I actually got my second assignment purchased by Gadling. It was only a 10 dollar score, but I only spent 5 minutes writing the article. That seems like a good “profit to work ratio” to me.
Writing’s not your strong suit? Make sure to check out the “creating content” section for writing advice.
Payment
Once you get an assignment accepted, and you’re ready to be paid you must fill out the W9 for tax purposes. Make sure you know your social security number for this.
Payment at the moment is usually $20 to $50 per assignment. Although, Seed hopes that in the future there will be a “Shared Earnings” feature. This feature would enable you to split the advertising revenue off of your work.
Non-Monetary Benefits
Seed will be publishing your stories to some of the most trafficked sites on the internet. For your resume, what could be better than to say you have an article published on Engadget, or a photo published on Stylelist. Even though you may not make all of the projects you apply for, the skills you will sharpen from writing more frequently could be valuable for school and a future career.
3 Comments
I’m going to have to check this out. I have just recently rediscovered how much I love to write. This does look like a great way to improve writing skills. Thanks for the post!
I agree. Thanks Tim for reviewing this site. Congratz on getting your first post published by Gadling. I wonder if they will have any big payouts, Like 100 dollar articles or more.
MAN THIS ARTICLE IS BALLIN!!!! GOTTA GET THAT MONEY SON!!!!