Demand Studios Sucks

Demand’s Political Agenda

Patrick — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:09:36 +0000

How to Hack

From the reader mailbag:

It’s my first time here, and I’m very happy to see that this site exists. My only experience with them so far was with their site Cracked dot com, and fortunately I was not duped into contributing anything to their shitty site.

What I have also seen there in my time lurking – besides the fact that they are ripping people off – is that they are subtly promoting a Neoconservative ideology to their large audience of youth; most of whom are not yet media savvy enough to understand the kind of subversive tactics that are being used on them. I’ve also been reading similar allegations on the ‘net directed at eHow.

I have also been warned by an Anonymous member that I recently met – (yes, *that* Anonymous) – to “stay the fuck away from sites like cracked dot com. don’t even mention their name. okay?” I’m pretty skeptical about any claims that come from that group; but this individual seemed to know what he was talking about, at least when it comes to the internet, and he is definitely more involved with things than most Anons are. He has no reason to trust me(because I have nothing to do with them); so I’m hesitant to ask him any more… But he was pretty clear to me that this was a serious warning.

Scary!!! What do we think? What would happen if cracked.com went down?

What would happen without eHow?!!!!

Smoke & Mirrors

Patrick — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:49:07 +0000

How to Continue to Write for Demand

Hey there everyone,

Man.

Hard to believe that we’re still here after TWO YEARS.

Nuts.

Sure, traffic might be down, and the forums weren’t the wonderful place they used to be back in the olden days, but we’re still hanging on.

I noticed this comment in the forum where a poster was talking about how nothing has really changed, despite all the fancy new title sections, exciting new YouTube channels, and sudden rise in the stock price.

I’ve had a couple of other posters send me the same information. Apparently, DS is trying to be all “journalistic-y” and apparently try to put some kind of value into their titles for the sections that continue on, such as Tech and Home & Garden.

The original advice we wrote two years ago still applies.

1) Spend as Little Time on Your First Draft as Possible

You’re being paid a fixed rate. In order to make money, you need to finish the article quickly. If you have any doubts, write less or be less specific than you need. Don’t put any extra effort into research. Finish the article and pass it along.

Why?

Because – we’re back to the major flaw in the Demand system – you have NO IDEA who is going to get your article.

It could be someone who knows something about your subject. More likely, it will be someone who knows NOTHING about your subject. Even with all these fancy pants new sections and “higher standards.”

2) Do a Google Search and Find the old eHow Article

Our sources tell us that DMS is still recycling old titles. They’re just asking for a little more research. Dig up the old eHow title to give yourself a little head start.

3) If in Doubt, Throw it Out

Rewrite request too long? Not sure what they’re asking for? Drop it. Yes, it’s painful. It sucks. But, in the long run, you’ll be much less frustrated. Move along to the next article.

The gravy train is quickly coming to the end of the ride, kids. Ride it while you can. No time to cry over spilled rewrite requests.

Oh, yeah, and just to let you idiot commenters know, it costs about $4/month to run this website. As long as we get $4 month worth out of entertainment or annoyance to Demand Media, we’ll still be around.

Seems Like Old Times

rhead — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:58:33 +0000

Hey there kiddos. Long time no smell, as my brother would say. Frankly I got so bored with Demand Media, shares of DMD and the peanut gallery on DSS that I devoted my time to other pursuits. As much as I wish it wasn’t, time is one of those finite resources and I never seem to have enough. Today’s title has nothing to do with the 1980 Neil Simon romp starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase.

Link to Video on Youtube

Taking a page out of Patrick’s book and turning my starry eyed reminiscences back to the days when shares in Demand Media were anything other than somnambulant, i.e. when DMD wasn’t stuck in that $6 to $8 grind for months on end. What happened, you ask?

Let me deconstruct the sequence of events for you. There are a lot of code words that may need unraveling, but it’s really quite simple. Further, if the purported “buy out” of Demand Media was to have happened, it would have been for shockingly less than the IPO price. Makes me feel like a soothsayer for nailing that to the wall … before there was ever a public share of DMD available on issue /pats self on back/.

Someone (read: A Demand Media insider) floated a story to Kara Swisher over at AllThingsD last week, purporting that blue blooded private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners offered up to $11.28 a share for DMD. I happen to respect Kara and believe that she is a legitimate financial journalist, unlike an illegitimate wannabe financial blogger such as myself. I’m sure the tip checked out when she researched it, so they ran the story on Saturday with a headline, “The Billion-Dollar Inside Story of How Demand Media Almost Went Private Last Week (And Then Didn’t).” Surely most of you who find this have seen and read that piece by now.

Here’s why I know that a Demand Media insider floated the story to Kara. Follow the money. Who stands to gain from leaking it? What is Demand Media insider for $1.2 Billion Alex? You mean the same insiders who had their greedy hands in the till ready to cash out at two-thirds of the public IPO price as long as they could cut and run? Why yes, I do.

There were also large cash-out provisions for major shareholders, as well as for CEO and co-founder Richard Rosenblatt.

From what I can piece together from Kara’s story, it appears to be a classic case of private equity acquisition. Seems they wanted to buy Demand, cleave off the eNom domain registrar business for a quick sale, roll up a few other content farms into a loan and then cash themselves out.

sources said Lee and Demand also discussed the addition of a large loan as part of the ongoing discussions, for possible acquisitions related to a content roll-up strategy it had, which would bring the total up to $1.2 billion.

Private equity has been all over the news with Mitt Romney’s run for the rose garden. For those of you who don’t understand the general methods by which PE operates, I recommend this Planet Money podcast from NPR or check out the entertaining piece put together by MoveOn starring Robert Reich. Perhaps shades a bit towards agitprop, but a nice introduction to the general concepts.

Link to Video on Youtube

If you’d like an industry perspective, they’ve probably spent millions to put together this bit of counter-agitprop over at Private Equity at Work. It sounds so benign and friendly to the working stiff, just from the URL alone. My heart is all aflutter at the jobs they destroy.

The long and short of it is this: A private equity firm was interested in pumping some ether into DMD’s moribund body. TPTB went to the table and heard them out. Rosenblatt jumped at the opportunity to cash out at 66% of the IPO price as long as it included an opportunity to jump ship. Internet legend Marc Andreessen was asked to evaluate Demand Media’s prospects. He said they stunk. Thomas H. Lee Partners began to backtrack. Negotiations broke down. Demand insiders floated the story to AllThingsD in a classic lemonade out of lemons strategy. The market reacted to the news this morning. Eventually shares will be back around $7, and then lower.

For the speculators in my audience, there is a good short-selling opportunity here, but I would wait for the dust to settle and give it some time to work through the system. Typically these gap-up rallies on news do not stop at a single day. This one has already faded somewhat off the opening gap though, so if I was to short it, I’d set my stop at today’s high.

Demand Studios – Just Like the Good Old Days

Patrick — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:40:10 +0000

How to Return to the Good Old Days

Hello DSSers!

I hope that you’re out there enjoying the Spring weather, where ever you are. Now that Demand has freed so many of you from the shackles of the Content Mill, take advantage and head outside for some much needed sun.

And for the rest of you that are still around, things are – believe it or not – just as easy as before!!

As one of our last guest posters pointed out, eHow is back to its old trick of recycling titles.

Don’t believe us? Just take a look at some of the titles in the writing queue and then some of the helpful eHow articles that are already out there on the Interwebs….

Queue: How to Delete Folders Automatically in Ubuntu
Interweb: How to Delete Folders Automatically in Ubuntu

Queue: How to Import dBase Files Into QuickBooks
Interweb: How to Import dBase Files Into QuickBooks

Queue: How to Print a Page to Email Options in QuickBooks Pro
Interweb: How to Print a Page to Email Options in Quickbooks Pro

That’s good news for you writers out there (still left)! Don’t know how to tackle a particularly complex title? Google it and see if someone has already written the article for you!

Don’t think of yourself as a simple writer regurgitating another boring article. This where you can really let all of your creative writing abilities shine! Try and see how many different ways you can find of saying “log in” or “delete”!

PS: We’re turning the comments back on. Be good.

Guest Post – Matt Cutts Gets Punk’d

Patrick — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:35:56 +0000

How to Squeal Like a Pig

Hey kids,

How goes it? Know it’s been a while since we’ve posted. One of our kind readers was nice enough to send in this story. Other news of note is the lawsuit that some Alabama lawyers are bringing against Demand. Probably won’t go anywhere, but still interesting to see.

P-Duffy

Matt, Matt, Matt – did a salaried kid like you really think he was going to outsmart a zillionaire tech mogul like Richard Rosenblatt?

Did you really think Panda would stop Rosenblatt from figuring out another way to game the Google algorithm?

One of the reasons rich people are richer than us is not because they work harder, it’s because they’re smarter. They know how to exploit the system, wherever they work.

Latest case in point — Richard Rosenblatt is channeling his inner Deliverance character, standing behind a ben-over Matt Cutts yelling, “Squeal like a pig for me, Matty!”

Cutts thought he could improve Google SERPs by punishing content farms that flooded the market with duplicate or similar content. It worked well enough that most farms died, and Demand Media did remove hundreds of thousands of articles with content similar to each other.

But once Demand’s competition was out of the way, Rosenblatt figured out a way to reintroduce similar content without Cutts being able to catch him.

Demand is now selling its “super-secretly-generated” titles to “partners” like Motley Fool, the Houston Chronicle and The Knot, posting articles using those dupe titles on different sites to avoid Matty’s cleaning crew. But Demand still gets the revenue.

Any Demand writer who writes for Motley Fool, Chron or the Knot’s The Nest project knows the first thing they need to do when writing one of these titles is to put it into Google to find . . . the exact same title already written for eHow Money! Most or all of the titles being supplied to those three clients look to be dupes of existing eHow Money titles. Word for word. MF, Chron and Nest writers can find the eHow Money article, take the content, re-word it, plug in the same references and resources and get paid!

And when Google users search these basic money terms, they get one eHow Money and either one Motley Fool, Chron or Nest title at or near the top of Google’s SERPs.

Motley Fool, the Houston Chronicle and the Knot pay Demand for rehashed titles and Demand Media gets to backdoor Cutts and Google.

This might even be happening with Rachel Ray’s food channel and SF Gate using dupe LiveStrong food and health titles.

Yep, looks like Demand Media might be flooding Google SERPs with zillions of similar articles again.

Nice try, Matt.

You may think you won the war, but Rosenblatt will keep coming back at you with battles like this. And winning.

You’re not as smart as Ritchie, which is why you don’t have a yacht called AdSense (ed note: this is fake, we know). You fought the good fight, but unless you want to divert your attention away from other important aspects of Google’s business to keep Demand Media at bay, you’re going to have to concede that Ritchie and Demand will always find a way to get around whatever barriers you try to throw up to protect your little search engine.

You’re smart Matt, but not as smart as Richard Rosenblatt.

Squeal like a pig for us, Cuttsy!

Side Note: Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. Every time the Help Desk sends a patronizing email to a writer, DSS gets a blog donation. Next up – Rachel Ray Punks Her Readers.

We’re Still Here

Patrick — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:43:27 +0000

How to Live Tiny

Hola, DSSers,

Yep, believe it or not, we’re still here. Two whole friggin’ years. Kind of scary.

We know the updates haven’t been like they used to be in the olden days, but we’ll still get around to it every once in a while.

Old Richard is hard at work on a new gem about some of the DMS stock moves that we’ve been seeing, so it’s only going to get more interesting from here.

Saw this little gem below on the “Work/Life Balance Award” or whatever the f**k they call it these days.

I’m actually surprised that Demand has enough writers left to give out these awards, but somehow they manage.

Our third Work/Life Award goes to writer Renee Morrison. Renee is busy finishing up her last year of University in Journalism while living in a 7-square-foot apartment with a roommate. Needless to say, it can be hard to keep their space tidy. Renee’s plans for this award include a bright new coat of paint and a comfy second-hand sofa to brighten up their living space.

A SEVEN FOOT SQUARE APARTMENT?!!!! That’s like, what, two feet on each side? Jesus, she must be TINY! Or really, really cramped. Are there really seven foot square apartments? Manhattan, I take it?

Because if such apartments do not exist, that means that this is……an ERROR?!!! Maybe it’s time to turn some of those CEs loose on the Demand Blog?

Demand Studios: Maybe Doesn’t Suck?

Patrick — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:57:28 +0000

Well, DSSers….

Don’t let it be said that we don’t drop praise where it could be merited.

We’ve long said here at DSS that the major problems with the system, as it was, were crap pay and dumbass CEs.

DMS never listened to us. And the Zombies said that we were just complaining.

It took a slap from the Google Panda to show Demand the light.

Just got this in through the anonymous contact box.

So take it with a grain of salt.

Surprisingly, I haven’t seen anything about this posted here or on the DMS forums. I guess the writers selected (like myself) haven’t wanted to deal with the whines of those not chosen.

Martha E. Flores, the new vice president of editorial, has been holding phone meetings with selected writers. Writers get a chance to voice their thoughts on recent changes, suggest improvements, etc. I’m not naive enough to think these meetings will change
anything, but it did seem like Martha does want to improve things for writers.

She didn’t spew the typical DMS bullshit and acknowledged problems within the system.

It seems DMS is targeting long-time writers with high scores and trying to keep them with the company. She said the company is trying to figure out how to provide more titles for those writers who have been good to DMS.

Comments are Closed

Patrick — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:02:41 +0000

How to be an Ass

Yep. Closed.

Things were just getting a little out of hand.

Look, we love free speech here as much as the next guy. But now we’re getting into threats and just really uncool stuff.

Go talk shit in the official Demand Forums and see how long that lasts if you think they’re so great.

If you want to stir some sh*t up, go over to the FORUMS. They’re open to everyone and you can say whatever you want, unless you constantly make an a** of yourself.

But don’t think that DSS is going anywhere. Nope. We’re working on a whole new DSS2.0.

Now that the demise of eHow as we know it is just about upon us, we’ve decided it was time to shift our agenda.

Our traffic is down? No sh*t, Sherlock. eHow, the site we founded this blog on, has absolutely ZERO articles available to everyone but a select few and, in the next few days, they’re about to a**f*ck anyone else left.

Take internet stats with a grain of salt tho – these are the same places that are valuing the domain “demandstudiossucks.com” at 50K and say that we’re making $50/day in advertising revenue.

Adios, My Friends (PS: We were right)

Patrick — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:20:25 +0000

How to Repurpose Someone's Tossed Salad

Once upon a time there was a magical place.

A place that overflowed with the fruit of thousands of titles telling the reader how to do the same thing, only in minutely different ways.

These magical titles were generated by a Top Secret Process ™ and were proven to be articles that people wanted to read about.

The garden of plenty ran wild. Writers were so happy in their element. In no time they were churning out thousands of articles on how to make the best grilled cheese sandwich or toss someone’s salad.

But between these writers and this delicious fruit were trolls. Mean trolls known as “Content Editors”. It was the CE’s job to guard the sweet fruit from the writers.

The Content Editors were the gatekeepers, as it were. Even, as it was discovered, they knew absolutely nothing about the subject of the tasty nectar that they were guarding.

Some of these writers tried to make a stand against the trolls. But no one would hear their pleas. The Content Editors all inhabited a place called a “Forum”. In addition to the trolls, this “Forum” was populated by Zombies. The Zombies wanted all the fruit to themselves. The Zombies knew that the fruit would be around forever! Anyone who talked badly about the absence of fruit was to be banished.

So these writers went off and started their own “Forum”. Here they could talk about the Zombies (including Motherly Ones!). But, eventually, even this forum attracted the Zombies. Some evildoers even posted instructions on how to “hack” into the “cyberweb”.

So we’ve heard this rumor from several ex-DMSers now. The end is nigh mutha-f***s.

If you’re not in a special section, you are g-izzle-one pretty damn soon.

But, stay tuned, we’re not going anywhere.

We’re hard at work on DSS2.0!

The Last Title Drop

Patrick — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:40:58 +0000

How to Find Titles

Hey kids,

It looks like the investors rewarded Demand’s earnings report on Friday by boosting the stock to over the $7 mark.

How’s Demand doing this, you ask? Why they’re firing EVERYONE.

DSS regular passed us this email they received over the weekend. Apparently it was also received by other Titling departments, not just QA.

Dear Title QA Community,

As many of you are aware, we’ve been making some changes to our titling workflow to keep up with the changing needs of our content partners. Thanks to your contributions and through the efforts of our entire Title QA community, we have successfully created a library of millions of titles. As we now shift our focus from eHow to creating content for various partners, we’ll be able to use this existing library of titles.

Unfortunately, this means we will not require the services of a Title QA team at this time and will remove permissions for everyone in this role on February 21, 2012.

While this may be the end of one opportunity in the Studio, it is the beginning of several new business initiatives. We invite you to read more about Demand Media’s plans for new content creation. We realize some of you have been with us in this role for quite some time, and we sincerely thank you for your contributions and dedication over the years.

Sincerely,
Demand Media Studios Titling Team

Demand Studios Sucks

Demand’s Political Agenda

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Comments are Closed

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