ContentGather

Earning potential: 2 stars

Quality of content: 2 stars

Quality of the platform: 4 stars

Overall star rating: 3

ContentGather is interesting because, in addition to the client-requested writing jobs, it also has a content marketplace, where writers can post pre-written content for sale.

What’s Great About ContentGather

This content marketplace is a useful feature for writers for two reasons:

• It sometimes happens that you have written a piece for a client, but they decline it for some reason. It can be difficult to find a place to sell these finished pieces, in order to recover some of the time you’ve already invested in them.*
• You may have an idea for a good piece of content, but it’s often difficult and time consuming to find someone to pitch it to in order to get paid for it.

A content marketplace is a fantastic idea for these orphan posts and orphan ideas, and a great feature to have inside a content mill.

How the ContentGather marketplace works:

• A writer who is already signed up with the site and approved submits an article to the marketplace. It’s a short form in which you include how much you want to charge per word for the article (ContentGather pricing typically ranges around 1-5 cents/word).
• The submission is reviewed, approved, and rated by Content Gather editorial staff. Posts that are higher-rated by staff are featured higher in the marketplace. You may may choose to revise it based on their comments, or post it as-is (assuming they have accepted it).
• Upon approval, you need to go back into the site and create a 1-2 sentence summary of the content. Clients can’t read the posts before purchasing them: they get a headline, the first few sentences of the text, and your written description. Obviously you want to write this description to appeal to potential buyers, but also be accurate about the content of the article.

The article then sits in the marketplace until it sells. After a few months, it will automatically be deactivated, but you can reactivate the listing with a click from your dashboard in the site.

ContentGather custom jobs:

For clients who don’t see what they want in the marketplace, they can create a custom job and submit it to the site. These jobs are not always offered to all writers; the client can specify a rate or the writer’s overall reputation on the site or other factors that may screen these listings away from some writers. You can enable email notifications so you get an email when a custom job is created that you are eligible for.

If you claim a custom job, you have 8 hours to finish it.

To be honest, I have never personally claimed or completed a custom job on ContentGather, because I have always found them to be low-quality topics, where you just cram a bunch of keywords into a paragraph for a penny per word. But it’s probably precisely this lack of engagement that has kept me from advancing in the site and earning better jobs. I know writers who have had much more success with the site because they have invested more in it.

ContentGather Pros:

• Content Marketplace for orphan posts
• No bidding against other writers for jobs
• Fast and fair feedback from editorial staff
• Curated content keeps it from slipping too low in quality
• Rates are fair for highly-rated writers

ContentGather Cons:

• Marketplace isn’t very active. Posts sit there for a long time, even highly-rated ones
• Rates are low for new writers
• Quality of jobs is low for new writers

ContentGather is recommended for:

Writers who are brand-new to online writing, and who are committed to the platform. They can use the feedback and ratings system to get better jobs within the platform, but it’s optimized for those who can respond to new jobs right away and complete those jobs right away. It is also recommended for those who feel like writing a stream of impersonal, saleable posts on whatever topic they choose.

ContentGather is not recommended for:

People who need to earn rent money right now. People who require a lot of explanation, feedback, and client contact in order to write custom jobs. People who aren’t available to jump on opportunities on short notice.

Tips for ContentGather success:

• After you sign up, spend some time reviewing the marketplace, and read the sample sections of the highly-rated posts to get a feel for the tone and what they like. Write some short articles (300-500 words) for the marketplace and take note of the comments and ratings you get from the editors. Those will help you get a feel for the style of the site, so that you are better prepared to pounce on custom jobs when they are posted.
• Continue to take advantage of the marketplace (you get a small payment just for posting content there) in order to build your rating and reputation on the site, so you get higher quality custom jobs and can earn higher returns in the marketplace.

ContentGather Conclusion

ContentGather may be one of those sites where you spend a long time building a reputation in order to earn better job sand better opportunities, so there may be higher-quality jobs and clients on that site than I personally have ever encountered. Personally, the custom jobs I was seeing early in my time on the site were so poor that I was unwilling to do them even for the sake of building a reputation with the site, but I know people who have been with the site for a long time and have some good regular clients there. The combining of a pre-written content marketplace with custom jobs is a great innovation, and I can see how people would really enjoy using the site.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I personally have recycled some declined posts written for Blogmutt onto the ContentGather marketplace and sold them there. Many Blogmutt writers are advocating for Blogmutt to add a marketplace for this very reason.