Want to write for us an earn the big Pocketables bucks?
I’m being a bit silly on the big Pocketables bucks, but long story short the site is stuck in a rut and also as part of a publically traded conglomeration we can’t escape it. Really, it’s kind of silly. I’ll go into detail when it matters but basically I could leave the site, nobody would ever post again, and that would be less hassle than to sell me the site.
OK, so here’s what happening, what needs to happen and what Pocketables/Crowdgather can offer.
It was a dark and troubling time
The page views we have per day are less than they used to be. Obviously with one article per day vs the twelve or so we had back in the peak days, we should be going down to roughly 1/12th.
We have fewer articles per day due to some things:
- Crowdgather stopped paying regularly
- Authors left, leaving me here to talk about my health problems
- Advertising revenue tanked as we weeded out the spammers
- No money to hire new authors
Now, the cost per piece vs site impressions has gone markedly up, but it’s still what you consider a position that looks bad. Ad impressions aren’t paying squat, and a useful tutorial or news article which gets people back start looking like a waste.
That’s a problem. Without something new and interesting and original content we’re a reblogging site, or a gadget reviews site. These are OK, but there’re a billion of them. I tried to temporarily pivot Pocketables to reviews so that Pocketables would make money on commision sales as there’s very little way I can produce something about how to do something for free that’s going to make them much of anything.
Seriously, the average RPM – which is the rate per thousand page impressions, is like a buck on a good day. maybe Five on a highly targeted site.
What we’re looking at doing
Getting some people who can write something intriguing and useful for Pocketables readers as well as writing reviews for gadgets. Here’s the rub – the only thing that’s going to make money for the site is lots of page views, and sales through the tagged links.
Here’s more of the rub. I can’t have people posting positive reviews about garbage. I’d rather the site shuts down and doesn’t come back up than become Scamazon. No really, I see one more five star review of a two star product and I’m going to throw a chair.
Any revenue (for some amount of months) generated by the reviews, overviews, etc of a product will get paid to the reviewer. Theoretically. They’re working on figuring out how to track by a page. This revenue will be paid for so many months and then tracking will stop on it and revenue will go toward feeding the site.
Simple huh? Details still working, but that’s the only way we can figure out how to take a site that’s not generating any revenue and turn it into something that does.
This is a problem
I realize this is a problem. Sometimes you’re going to write an amazing 3000 word opus on how to do something that gets a million hits and generates $40 that you’ll never see, then write a product review about something that nobody should buy, and also see nothing.
Sometimes there’ll be a high performing review that you did that’s only performing after the timeframe (maybe two months?) and then you’re screwed.
It’s the only way to pay we’ve figured out that works at the moment. I mean, feel free to chime in with a better idea, and anyone who wants to write for free on the hope that someday they’ll be making the big bucks.
About you
Passionate about something in the mobile world. I guess we could do desktops or gaming system too, just not something that we really cover and they’re really covered elsewhere. Willing to treat the users of the site with respect. Have an opinion and not afraid to express it.
Technical background not required, but being able to talk tech is a must.
Thoughts?
I got nothing at the moment more. Hoping for some input.
If you want to write for us, comment on this page that you do, and email me at paul at pocketables dot com. Let me know what you like writing about or are interested in, links to anything you may have done, any thoughts you might have.
I’ll discuss the other revenue methods I’m trying later, having a day at the moment
