If you have your heart set on working for a mill, you need to know what you are getting into before signing up. You can search for places like Glassdoor and Indeed for reviews, but be forewarned. Many of these mills use their employees to write a sparkling review to attract more writers.
The first place I am going to review is Contentgather. Now, it is not like a traditional mill where work is available for you to grab and write away. This site is one of those places where you write an article and hope someone wants to purchase it. Contentgather tries to be different by offering a percentage of your asking price, but only when you reach the Silver Level. And by percentage, it’s only 1 or 2 percent, so literally pennies on the dollar.
The application is pretty simple, and that should be your first red flag. An email address is the only requirement for signup. Once you get in, you enter at the Bronze Level. The more articles you write, the higher you move up in their levels. Seems simple enough, right?
For every article you submit, you are graded on a star level from 0 to 10. Your first article will be the baseline for your initial star rating. Contentgather claims this will help you become more visible to clients and their custom jobs.
Now, this all sounds fine and dandy, but Contentgather has been a little sneaky. From my personal experience, I submitted five original articles to the Marketplace. They have been approved and were rated at an eight by the editors. I go to check a few days later, and my account was suspended. I have no access to my work, my account, or even the help desk of Contentgather. While I didn’t put a lot of work into the articles, I was still pretty pissed off.
But then, I saw complaints from other writers are well.
It was all going good for me on the site, my articles were selling well as they were getting good ratings and also I was pricing them low at 0.02 cents per word. I ended up having $50 in my account on the website that I hard earned. But one day I log in and my account is suspended without any reason why and the site owners are not responding to my emails with no way for me to withdraw the money I have earned.
I had bad experience with Contentgather.com , if they reject 2 articles simultaneously, they ban the account, without giving any reason.
So it looks like I am not the only one screwed over by Contentgather. It’s still puzzling to me because I never had an article rejected from the site or had been flagged for plagiarism. I guess I’m in a Kafkaesque nightmare without any resolution from Contentgather. Like a pissed off ex, they haven’t responded to any of my emails either.
If that is not enough to play Russian roulette with your earnings, you should be aware that the site is pretty transparent with their recent sales. A quick browse will tell you that articles priced at $0.01 to 0.02 are the leading sellers with only a handful selling at higher prices.
I haven’t seen any positive reviews of Contentgather. It seems like the majority of people are suspended or can’t sell their articles on the site. If you are willing to write for pennies per word, you are better signing up for a mill that provides work for its writers. The rumor on the street is that an editor from Constant Content quit the company and decided to create Contentgather based on the same platform and concept. No word if the editor’s name was Michael Scott or not.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5 stars
