Back in January 2018, I made a decision that I know shocked some writer friends. I quit writing at The Inquisitr. It was a place I’d written at for a couple of years by that point, and a place I once highly recommended for writers looking to make money online. Yet, my views about the place started changing to the point where I just outright quit.
In July 2017, the pay model on the site changed. Once I would make $300-$500 per week writing just three to five articles a week. Suddenly with the new payment model, I was barely making $100. I cut my outlay down to just two or three per week because it wasn’t worth it for me financially. And then I went two weeks without being paid for my work because I didn’t make a minimum view threshold. Without rolling over the views to the next week, I was working for nothing.
Erm…no, thank you!
So, once a prolific writer for the site, my work was no longer being read. I knew it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the site and its lack of position in Google. In fact, I barely ever see the site pop up in my Google Alerts for various topics because nobody is writing about them and the site isn’t ranking well.
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But why don’t I regret quitting?
Honestly, I’d actually forgotten about The Inquisitr for a while. One article did pop up in a Google Alert. I think it was about Outlander but I can’t even remember now. It made me think back to the site, and how much I once enjoyed writing there, but how I feel now.
My time for Hidden Remote grew when I quit at The Inquisitr. It opened the door to take on other writing gigs, which has landed me editor roles at various places. In fact, shortly after quitting at The Inquisitr, I was given the opportunity to become the Co-Expert (co-editor) at Hidden Remote. It all really did fall into place.
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I don’t like jumping through hoops
While I understand that pay models have to change, I don’t want to jump through hoops. The Inquisitr introduced a lot that would penalize writers. We’d lose points and, really, it meant that the site got away with not paying for content it was happy to keep on the site. Hmmm……
I’m not one to jump through hoops to get paid. I’ve quit plenty of other places when it’s turned out they’re more interested in the profit instead of keeping good quality writers.
And then around April 2018, I learned that there was a huge writer cull. Hundreds of good writers were fired, mostly the ones that didn’t pull in “enough” views. You tell me what “enough” is. It’s relative, right? There was a lot of focus put on people writing clickbait content instead of producing high-quality content, and that was the first sign I knew I’d made the right choice in leaving.
Using time more wisely
While maybe the views would have picked up, I don’t work on a “what could have been” level. I will weigh up pros and cons before I do quit a revenue share site, but once I make the commitment, I don’t look at what my earnings could have possibly been in the future. There’s no point.
Instead, I use my time wisely. That’s something I was able to do after The Inquisitr. Instead of stressing over whether my articles would pull in enough views just to get paid (honestly, I hate those systems), I was able to spend the time researching and writing great articles for other sites. I even had the time to put effort into my own blogs. And stress is just what the site was causing. I was worried about making minimums and being fired because I knew I was just another writer on the site. I wasn’t appreciated or really wanted, except for being able to write content.
Even if I could write for The Inquisitr still, I don’t know where I’d find the time for it. And it would have been a site that I’d have slowly forgotten about anyway, because it was making me nothing.
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In the end, The Inqusitr became a site I’ve forgotten all about. It was only when the site popped up once in a Google Alert that I thought about it. Obviously, I can’t regret walking away from something that I’ve completely forgotten about!
Have you quit writing sites before? Are there any you regret? Share your thoughts in the comments below.