Want to Earn $7 an Hour as a Writer?

Mahalo is a web-based community that does have some things going for it. It's fun to answer the questions and it used to be fun to write for. I used to write for them. But, I'm a writer, not someone who needs a clique to feel good about themselves.

The previous payment system there meant that writers got 75% of the M dollar offered for their work. Of course, they have their own store as well, so you can always spend your money there. Just what I need, more coffee cups and t shirts. No thanks.

Today they announced their intention to change the way the site operates. Instead of allowing writer to work at their own pace and develop their own content, they will have "guides". These guides will have to apply for the position unless they are Vertical Managers. Vertical Managers were supposed to help Page Managers to promote and improve their pages. In return, those VMs got a portion of the PMs earnings. Personally, since the site offered an overview of the history of the page, I found that only a very small percentage of my pages were ever touched by VMs, but they still got part of my earnings.

You can dispute all you want, but you're likely to find yourself blackballed or spending time rewriting things that didn't need to be rewritten in the first place.

All page managers will now lose every page they have. As of today, the task system is shut down so that people who haven't made payout, which is $150 Mahalo bucks will have no chance to earn it now, before the system switches over. There's nothing like forcing your independent contractors to spend money on your site to ensure that you make a buck, now is there?

For those that were dedicated to the site, it has to be a striking blow. They might not only lose money, but will be restricted to writing a set amount of pages, updates and answering questions every week. I thought part of being a freelance writer was enjoying the freedom to write on your own schedule. Maybe not?

The bottom line is that the numbers work out to be around $7 an hour and that's working full time, which limits any time you have to write elsewhere. Not only that, but it's your job to pay the taxes on that income, which tends to bring that $7 an hour down to about $5 an hour for most people.

In the tutorial today, some rather unprofessional and rude comments were made. Apparently those that have not made payout yet just weren't doing much for the site anyhow. If you weren't a high end earner there, they really aren't concerned about you. You weren't a "good writer" anyhow.

Or, maybe you had other endeavors? No, you couldn't possibly have been working on other projects that didn't involve being in a clique or maybe they just paid more than once a month. Maybe those same payouts weren't set at a whopping minimum of $150? I'm just saying. I could be wrong, I know.

For myself, I happen to know a lot of "good writers" who can make more money someplace else and do it with some dignity. Hey, they might even get treated well! The only good thing I can see about these changes is that those who do write for the site won't have to worry about having their work rejected just because the Quality Control person doesn't like them or resents the fact that they spoke up. Then again, to even write for the site you have to be a part of the clique.

What's your take on this?