Hi Angela –

I read your post about Examiner being an evil empire who makes money off people’s clicks. While I agree with you for the most part, it isn’t all that bad of a business model, for them especially, but it isn’t bad for people like myself as well.

I have no writing experience, I am not a journalist. I applied and asked Examiner if I could start up a humorous but truthful column about the life of working in a cubicle for large corporations. They started me out on the Minneapolis Examiner and moved me to the national page last month.

I started in February ’09 and only made $40 that first month. Since then, I’ve eclipsed $1,000 each month and have been pretty steady at around $1100-$1200 per month. I’ve written around 80 articles (around 3-4 articles per week). Each article takes me about 1-2 hours to write. I spend about 5-6 hrs per week on social media and social networking sites promoting my work. All in all, I work on Examiner around 9-13 hrs per week or around 36-52 hours per month. For me, making $24 per hour writing humorous articles about the misfortunes of working in corporate America isn’t exactly the fleecing of writers. Based on those numbers, I’m the top Careers & Workplace writer on a daily basis (across all cities).

I also am aware that the Twilight Examiner is making over $10,000 per month pumping out massive amounts of Twilight related content. It’s her full time job and doing quite well — making the most among all Examiners.

However, I think she is in the minority and I know for a fact that I am in the minority. The majority of Examiners that I have talked to in online forums are making between $5-$50 per month and writing articles almost everyday. I agree with your article in terms of the number of people not making good money.

However, Examiner.com has been an opportunity for me to make far more money than I would have made if I had started my own blog and used Google AdSense to rely on revenues. From my perspective, it’s a great way for me to make money compared to blogging and less work. From the perspective of a professional writer or journalist, it’s a disaster. Professional writers and journalists shouldn’t be expected to promote their own work, and they should probably have editors. Examiner doesn’t provide that.

Dudley Dawson

ANGELA’S RESPONSE:

I never called them an “evil empire.” You did… For every one successful Examiner, there appear to be hundreds (or more) working for less than minimum wage. Readers, in case you missed it, please see stories from, and earnings of, typical Examiners HERE.