Another One Bites the Dust... well, TWO actually

The online writing business continues to be "not much of anything."

One-time (and short-lived) Bubblews "alternative" CGP Gallery has shut down. Or maybe been shut down by WordPress for deceptive practices. Or maybe they didn't pay their bills... not surprising, either way. The site reeked of "making promises we can't keep," so the demise was almost inevitable.

Meanwhile, one of the "serious" writing sites-- Zujava-- has announced that it will be closing down in July. I always liked Zujava-- it had a nice clean interface, and would only accept "real" writers who put up quality content.

Unfortunately, the wheels sort of fell off when Zujava ran into trouble with Amazon Associates and lost their affiliate account, meaning that contributors were left without one of the primary ways they could earn income from the site. Things never quite recovered, and the flow of new content more or less stopped.

Whereas I never really got very deep into publishing on the site, I was able to "triangulate" from my four published articles that the entire site was barely taking in $200-300 a month in ad revenues... to be divided up among 4000-odd articles. Basically, a handful of change. There's a limit to just how much "serious" writers are willing to create content and get nothing in return.

At this point, I am sort of "soured" on the whole writing online for money experience. I will continue to add some content on HubPages, and I will probably transfer my Zujava content there... but that's about the extent of it. I am somewhat worried that HubPages is now pretty much "the only came in town," and especially as it relates to better quality content. That's a bit scary.

I definitely need to make sure I have backup copies of all my articles there.