The Examiner experience

A few months ago I applied to become a Kansas City Weight Loss Examiner Writer. Little did I know at the time, they "hire" everybody who applies as long as they can form a complete sentence. Shortly after being accepted and around the time I was writing my first article, it was brought to my attention that The Examiner requires/wants/prefers the writers to compose things in a local, newsworthy manner. This was a bit disheartening because my initial impression was it would be more op-ed or blog than news reporting. I couldn't imagine trying to skew my weight loss/fitness writing to a local audience. Regardless of this big snag, I decided to give it a go. The first article I wrote was about figuring out how much food you are really eating:

How much are you eating?

Shortly after I posted the article I received the following email from The Examiner:

As part of our Local Incentive Program, we are reviewing local Examiners’ articles to ensure that the content is relevant to a local audience. The article you recently published...doesn’t meet the criteria for a local article and doesn’t qualify for the Local Incentive Program payment. However, you will still earn your usual payment based on the traffic your article receives. As a local Examiner, it is important that you localize your articles so that you can establish yourself as a credible source on your topic and in your area.

Whatever. At least they didn't say "we're going to hold your daughter hostage and take away your peanut butter until all of your articles have a local twist". But I decided to make an effort at writing something local anyway, just to see if I could even do it. Unfortunately, I failed miserably:

Kansas City fitness center continues to grow 

It was a forced piece of writing. But at least it qualifies for the local payment, whatever that might be. Yippee.

Shortly after writing my first two articles I decided it would be a good idea to peruse The Examiner to see what other writers were putting together. How were they localizing fitness and weight loss with their articles? Wouldn't you know, several of them were treating it like a blog. Their philosophies seem to parallel my thought that the "Local Incentive Program payment" is not worth the struggle. Why not just treat it like a blog? What's the worst they can do? Take it away? Boy, that would be sad.

So I wrote another article that was somewhere in between opinion and "how to", but definitely not localized:

5 easy steps to losing 5 to 10 pounds in 2 weeks 

And I haven't written another Examiner article since. But now I'm thinking of adding some of these blog entries here at The Magic Pill. Again, why not? It seems to be common practice for Examiner writers. Plus, Examiner stuff shows up at the top of Google searches. Go to Google and type in "Brad Carl". The first thing that pops up is my Examiner page.

But wait, there's more. I recently came across another site called Associated Content. You simply submit your articles and hope they get accepted. If they are accepted and have not already been published elsewhere, you can get paid upfront for your piece. If it has been published elsewhere, you are not eligible for advanced payment but can still receive a performance payment that's based on how many times your article is viewed/read. Here's the problem. Nowhere on the site do they define what a "previously published" article is. Does this blog count as being published? You would assume it does, but for clarification sake, I'd like to know the policy. So I sent Associated Content a note and asked them. Twice. Still no reply. To either note. Makes you wonder how long it would take to get paid, doesn't it?

All in all, it's not about the money. I'm not going to get rich writing and publishing stuff online, although some people claim to do so. I just like to share my thoughts in as many places as I can and maybe get some feedback/comments. So I might start posting some of my blog entries on my Examiner page. Maybe I'll even submit some of them to Associated Content as previously published material, just to see what happens. After all, I'm a man who likes excess...

I have no idea why I just typed all of this out. I guess I just wanted to share something that's been on my mind.