Examiner is a hot place for online writers right now. But is it worth your time and effort? From my own experience, I say no. But there are some who claim to make a decent amount of money and get exposure for their work.
I can only speak from my own perspective, but to be fair, I will give you some reasons why Examiner might be a good place for you. Keep in mind that I wrote for the site as the Southeast Michigan Pagan Examiner for only few months in 2009. Things may or may not have changed since then.
The Format
This is one of the most attractive perks of writing for Examiner. At the time I wrote for them, posts needed to be a minimum of 200 words. They encourage you to write several a posts week if not several a day to build up traffic and earnings with the requirement being 1-2 posts per week.
They have local and national Examiners and prefer that you write about current topics relevant to your area. They did implement a 101 program which did seem like it could encourage some evergreen content which I believe has long-term earnings potential.
Their platform was pretty easy to use. One drawback was that I couldn’t quickly edit something after it was published and sometimes had to wait several hours to do so.
Earnings
This was not clear from the outset. They said it was based on page views and at first it seemed to be 1 cent per view with a payment threshold of $25. However, this changed with no explanation until writers made a stink of it in the forums. Even then the explanation was that pay might be based on how long someone stays on your page, but there seemed to be a drop in pay for many of the writers all at once.
Rights to Your Work
You technically own your posts and can repost them where you want. You can even reuse some of your blog posts or other articles. However, you do grant Examiner the right to use your work as they wish. Now that I’ve left, I’m not earning anything from my posts still on their site and I can’t have them removed since Examiner can do what they want with them.
Style Guide and Quality
Examiner claimed to have a style guide. I saw no evidence of this. They have editorial guidelines including encouraging writing in third person. This was not enforced at all while I was there. I honestly can’t imagine how they can enforce any style guide when there are no editors.
The quality of writing suffers because of this as well as there being no standard set for citing sources. There were emails sent out encouraging these things, but I believe that it should be enforced more strongly from day one, especially from a company that claims to hire experts in their chosen topics.
National vs. Local
I was a local Examiner. They also had at least one other local Examiner in a very closely related topic. They claim that this is because we all come at things with a different voice. While it may be possible to work together with other writers there to increase traffic, I believe having many writers in one topic hurts writers in the long run as far as traffic and earnings are concerned.
From what I’ve read in different writing forums, national Examiners earn more because of the exposure.
Why I Left
The lack of clear communication regarding earnings and no enforced style guide were my main reasons for leaving Examiner. I did, however, realize that I prefer to write broad evergreen content. I don’t really enjoy writing local news-oriented stuff, unless it’s sporadically, and that is no fault of Examiner.
Should You Write for Examiner?
I would advise against writing for Examiner unless you are able to get a national position or a lucrative local topic. An example for my area would be if I covered Detroit sports. You are able to put affiliate links in your articles such as for Amazon. You also may have more time on your hands than I did to write enough for them to make it work.
Examiner may be a better fit for you than it was for me. There are other sites I write for such as HubPages and Squidoo that don’t have any type of style guide, but at least they don’t claim to have “experts” and they’re a bit more communicative with the writers.
If you want to gain experience and exposure for your work, then go for it. Your chosen topic may even bring you recognition from print outlets.
Learn more from the Examiner website.
*I’d like to reiterate, that Examiner’s policies may have changed since the time I was there and this review should be read as one person’s experience.