Yahoo gave its writers several weeks' notice before it shut down. Squidoo didn't do anything until it got talked about in the comments to their blog announcement and then finally sent an email, with 2 weeks to go. Zujava sent no emails; it was announced on their blog but those of us who don't check that regularly missed it. I found out by accident when I visited a writers' forum that I used to hang out on but only check in with every now and then, because I'm not currently doing any writing.

Zujava's closing was not really a surprise. They'd lost their major income source, Amazon's affiliate program, and having worked at (but not for) Amazon for more than a year now I knew they wouldn't get it back; the big A doesn't work that way. But it would have been nice if they'd sent everyone an email about it. After I read it on that writers' forum I went to the Zujava forum and found a discussion there, including a request from the owner for everyone to please tell others so they could remove their content before the site went down. Well, duh - if you'd done that yourself you wouldn't have to worry about it. When the owners decide to close a site it's their responsibility to tell the members - not the members' responsibility to tell each other.

I already had copies of my content so it wasn't a big deal for me, but I did see in checking my account that I'd made a bit over $3. Zujava's minimum payout was $5 so I hadn't reached the point of collecting on it but, thinking that maybe when the site closed all those debts would be cleared, I sent a message asking about it. There was no reply - not even a message saying "Sorry, you won't be getting any money." The site closed three days ago, PayPal has not notified me of any payments, and at this point I'm not expecting one.

It also occurs to me that this was not the first time I've asked something and not been answered; it's happened before (although I can't remember the circumstances now). So Zujava wasn't being well managed for probably quite a while before the Amazon issue.

Anyway - that's the last of the sites with my written content. There are a few still around that I could write for - HubPages, for example - but I'm not sure how successful that would be; even the people on the writers' forum who went to HP when Squidoo closed seem to be unhappy with it now. And even if I wanted to do that, I really think "article farms" are on the way out. They were a good idea whose time has come - and gone.

The general consensus on the writers' forum is that the best - or maybe only - way to make money with writing is with your own site. This has been mentioned several times in the past; I remember reading it when I used to spend more time there, before I discovered Mechanical Turk. I'm just not sure I want to spend the time it takes to build something like that. Plus, it also takes money - hosting fees and the like - and my income is too low for much of that now.

Mechanical Turk was definitely a good choice as a substitute for writing. Since I started there my income has consistently been much, much higher than it ever was with article writing - I think my best month with Yahoo and Squidoo was maybe $30 and my worst month with MTurk has been about $120. So Turk was definitely a step in the right direction. But it's still not enough to get me back on my own and back out West; I am still suffering though this horrible Eastern climate. And Turk has its own issues. But maybe I should do another post about that...

Squidoo is going away too. (And after I spent all that time writing that long post...)

And how did I find this out? Did Squidoo email everyone many weeks in advance, as Yahoo did? Did they even email anyone at all? No, and no. Here is how I found this momentous piece of information:

I have an RSS feed set up for the blog of Zujava, another site I write for. A new post came through on the feed about problems at that site (more on this later) so I went there to read it. In the comment section someone mentioned Squidoo. Uh oh... time to visit Squidoo. I logged in and there at the top of my dashboard page was a big announcement:

Big News! HubPages is acquiring key content from Squidoo

There was a link there to a post by Squidoo HQ about this. Basically, it says that as of August 29th - 13 days from today - my content will be gone from Squidoo. But hey - I can move it to HubPages! And they'll even handle the transfer.

Except I don't want to transfer. First of all, I noticed how that big announcement said "key content." What if they don't think my content is good enough to publish there? What if it doesn't fit with HubPages' style? And finally, I discovered via one of the comments after the Squidoo post that HP has a $50 minimum payout, which is twice as bad as Squidoo's. My articles are more informational than sales-oriented so they don't tend to make much. How long it would take me to accumulate $50 on HP? And what would happen if I didn't make it in a certain period of time?

There's also the issue of how long HP can survive. The Yahoo Contributor Network is gone, Helium (from what I've heard) is also either gone or going, and now Squidoo is too. Have the "content farms" run their course?

Things certainly aren't getting easier for the survivors. The Zujava post I mentioned earlier was about their just being notified by Amazon that they'd lost their Associates account - which is probably where most of their non-ad income comes from. I feel really bad for them; Zujava is a nice site, clean and well-run, and they didn't deserve this. But now, because the cancellation is effective immediately, they have to scramble to find other online retailers that will accept them as associates. Or else they'll be trying to stay alive only with ad income.

Even if Zujava survives I can't put my Squidoo content there; they don't allow that. So I made my decision. I'm not going to HubPages. And I've deleted all my Squidoo articles.

I do have copies though - as I do with my Yahoo articles - and they may end up here at some point, if Mechanical Turk - which is where I'm spending most of my time these days - goes downhill. But I'm not sure I want to put them on another revenue-sharing site.

I've updated my articles page here so that it doesn't include dead links. But it's going to look pretty sad with just six articles on it.

Still - I think they're good articles. Maybe someone will want to read them.

What a week.

I started writing for Squidoo several years ago, got busy with other things, and then forgot about them - until the payments started coming in (surprise!). They weren't big but they were still something, and I decided that since I was now making money on this site I should spend more time there. So I did. I made more lenses (the Squidoo term for articles) and I think got up to 15 or 16.

Then things changed.

Google introduced its infamous "Panda" and other algorithm changes and the article sites suffered terribly. Squidoo was one of those to get caught and its traffic went down - way down. It's been trying to recover ever since, mainly through the use of what it calls "filters" to curb (unpublish) content that it thinks Google won't like. But who really knows what Google likes and doesn't like? Your guess is as good as mine...

Long story short - those filters have created an amazing number of glitches, some of which have been completely incomprehensible to the lensmasters (Squidoo writers). People have spent a lot of time trying to guess what the filters are doing and how to get their content to pass them so that it can be seen by the world again. That's been hard to do without any feedback from the people who run the site. It doesn't help that the staff is small and probably doesn't have the time to deal with all the questions and requests for special consideration for a lens that seems okay but for some reason won't pass the filters. Oh and the bug reports. There have been so many bugs...

Because of all this nonsense I decided last year not to publish any more content on Squidoo, at least until things settled down. I removed every lens I had that wasn't making any money, with one exception - a story about dealing with a massive infestation of poison ivy at this house. I left that up mainly as a kind of public service, in case anyone else was in the same situation.

As of today I have 8 lenses published. They haven't been updated in a long time - more than a year, actually - because I'm afraid to touch them. I worry that some simple little thing I do will trip a filter somewhere. So they are old, and that's not good.

But now something else has happened that's worse. And because I hadn't been out to the site in a very long time I didn't find out about it until July came and went without a payment. I decided it was time to log in again.

And I discovered that Squidoo has now raised its payout threshold to $25. My monthly payments have never been much, and lately they've close to $5, for all 7 of my "paying" lenses. But now they're even lower; for the entire month of May - which was supposed to be paid in July - I made a grand total of $2.12. For June, which was just paid this week, I made $2.54. That's $4.66 I can't collect from them until I get to $25. And if I don't get to $25 within 12 months they will take that money and donate it to charity.

I understand that Squidoo is trying to make money; if they don't make it they can't share it with us. The reason they gave for the threshold increase was the cost of PayPal transactions; this increase will allow them to make fewer of those and they'll save money. That makes sense to me but I'm seeing a different picture. I think this is a sign that they are in trouble and are just trying to stay in business. But can they?

I've checked the two main Squidoo forums about this. Some people are getting out; others are just trying to ride out this "down phase." I'm not sure this is a phase.

Squidoo shares its ad revenue with its members based on how their lenses rank; the higher the rank the more the lens makes. But right now you need to have a really high-ranked lens to make anything even reasonably decent. My lenses aren't in that category, and since I'm afraid to update them I doubt they ever will be. That leaves affiliate sales - the other way to make money - as the only way to make anything decent. And with old (un-updated) lenses that's not very likely either.

By the time I found out about the new payout threshold it was so late in July that I decided to check my lens ranks on the 31st to at least estimate what they would make for September. I got those figures and now that I know the ad revenue for June I can estimate what those lenses would make for July. And it's the same as last month - $1.78. With estimated sales from last month my cumulative earnings at this point are still less than $10.

So, it looks like I might be able to collect that $25 in less than a year. But that's assuming Squidoo lasts that long. And I'm not sure they will. Two other article sites are now gone - the Yahoo Contributor Network and Helium, a site I never wrote for. I am really wondering now if article sites have had their "day in the sun" and the sun is now setting.

So, what to do? Wait many months until I can earn enough to collect that $25 and hope Squidoo is still around to pay me? Or pull the lenses now and let them disappear from the search engine pages so I can post them somewhere else later? Like maybe here?

I'm a Libra and not very good with decisions unless they are clear. This one isn't; those lenses are still making money, and right now it looks like I may reach the threshold before I lose the money. I think I need to find some other criteria to use to decide.

I'm working on it...

I've been writing articles since 2006, starting with Associated Content and then later adding Squidoo and Zujava. Several years Associated Content was purchased by Yahoo and I suddenly became a writer for the Yahoo Contributor Network (YCN). Well, I am no longer.

Two days ago YCN was shut down by Yahoo and the articles I wrote - all 225 of them - were removed. The rights to those articles have now reverted back to me, which means I could publish them somewhere else if I wanted. But I have other work to occupy my time now and even if I didn't, those articles are all at least three years old; most would need updating. And some just needed to come down anyway - something that was almost impossible to do with YCN (I know; I tried).

I originally set up this site just for a list of all my articles, because with three sites to track I wanted one location with links to everything I'd published. I still have that here; the page is just a lot shorter now because I've removed the YCN articles.

I wasn't going to do a blog. I've lost count of the number of blogs I've started and lost interest in, and honestly, I don't think another one would have any more chance of lasting than the others had. But with freelance writing having been my main online work for so many years I decided an explanation was in order, in case anyone who didn't know YCN is gone has seen my page and is wondering what happened to it.

It's the end of an era for me. Before Associated Content the only money I'd made online was on eBay. AC gave me another way, and it didn't involve methods that were questionable or required competition with skilled and experienced internet marketers - something I had no chance of succeeding at. The pay per article wasn't great but I think that over the years that has improved because of the royalties I was making every month from the page views. That of course is gone now but it was such a small amount - usually under $10/month - that its loss is not going to take a huge chunk out of my income.

That's all for now. Feel free to leave comments if you'd like. I'm especially wondering how other writers feel about this change, or about the changes to online writing in general. I have my own opinions of course, but that's a topic for another post.