Examiner publishing and I part ways

I gave the Examiner a shot for about a year , writing a variety of articles relating to kayaking, paddling, etc. - it has come to an end. No new published articles.

 The articles still appear at -----  http://www.examiner.com/kayaking-in-detroit/willi-gutmann

The reality of it all is that Examiner just doesn't pay for the time most writers will put into their stories.  By the time you get a story idea in your head, to the time you research some facts, find some pictures and videos, and then edit it all and publish - you're already on the dark side of the cold moon to recoup any costs.  Forget about getting into the Google News feeds.  Google and Examiner.Com don't play nice with each other any more. Examiner.Com has a rule about waiting until after an event happens for it to be considered news.  Absolutely no promotion of an event as a news feed before the event takes place is poor business.  Writing about an event as commentary, advice, opinion, etc. ; sure that was okay; but forget about getting into a news feed for large pageviews. Forget about Press passes because Examiner is not considered the press.  Each writer is an Independent Contractor, taking any liability responsibility off of the Examiner.

Examiner .com used to pay around a penny a pageview back in late 2009. After restructuring their platform and adding a tremendous amount of advertising to every millimeter of the webpage, payouts dropped to 7/10 of a cent per pageview.  In order to make $25.00 a month, I needed to generate enough interest in my work to get 3,500 pageviews, or roughly 120 page views per day , each and every day. Pretty damn tough with this paddling topic in the greater metropolitan Detroit area of Michigan. Writing daily for fresh new stories while staying laser focused on your topic and specific city venue  is damn tough.  Over a 12 month period (365 days)  I published around 200 articles and made a total of about $250.  The pay per pageview varies and fluctuates - please don't think it's locked at a specific number. Based on a black box of variables - time spent on the webpage, number of subscribers, number of clicks, etc., etc. it averages out to something like 7/10 of a cent a pageview. Some days are a lot less, some days are a teensy tiny bit more. No consistency at all on pay.

Examiner.Com does a great job at selling a dream but they don't deliver on it. Please be wary of thinking you'll be able to pay any of your bills by writing for them. You won't. People have extremely short attention spans on the internet, and unless you stuff every articles with pictures of celebrities, fashion, gossip, drama and hype, the pageviews just aren't there within the Examiner.Com. Getting on the front page and staying there for more than 15 minutes, forget about it. You'll get 15 seconds max,  and then be banished under some drop down menu into obscurity .  Even the super hardcore news websites are struggling to stay afloat.

Examiner .com does absolutely zero, nada, nothing, to promote any writer on the internet. ALL they do is provide a platform upon which someone can write about a topic. That's it. No more. Each and every pageview is a hard earned effort, scraped out out of every corner of the internet, bordering upon spamming all your known contacts, their friends, their contacts and for what - around $25.00 a month. Some months were a bit more with monetary incentives to write local articles and write daily. ROI is laughable.

I started writing on Examiner.com because I had a ton of info built up over 10 years + of scanning the web for paddling info on a massive variety of topics, issues, concerns, etc.  I felt I had something to offer from a unique perspective and definitely did not want to write Kayaking 101 articles every day.

I learned an awful lot in the beginning,  by paddling often with those more experienced than myself. Paddling is a learned skill, it is not inherent to our DNA at birth. No one "just knows how to paddle".  Acquiring good technique, situational judgment  , accurately determining if you are in over your head,  truly knowing the scope of your abilities, takes time in the cockpit with a paddle in your hand. Finding a paddling group that fosters an environment for learning plays a big role in evolving forward as a paddler.

Learning never stops ...we evolve as we move through life.
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Examiner has fallen, and that's a fact proven by worldwide internet pageviews
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