An Expertscolumn Review - Is Expertscolumn Legit?

There are a number of online writing opportunities available. One of those is Expertscolumn. I signed up for an account in April 2012 and posted one article. In all honesty, I forgot about it as my life became hectic during this time with pregnancy and planning a wedding. It was when I was looking at my blogs that I remembered about it. I decided to check my account to find that I only had four cents in four months. After that, I did some research into what others thought of the site and was appalled by the information I found.

What Is Expertscolumn?

Expertscolumn is a website that allows writers to sign up and post articles. Writers earn money through pay per view – they gain money based on the number of views they gain. The more popular a topic, the more traffic they are likely to get. I admit that I didn’t promote my article more than, possibly, once but the article was on payday loans, which is a current popular topic. Four cents in four months is not a lot for something that pays per view – my own blogs earn more than that and they earn through pay per click!

The Good Parts

Unfortunately, there’s not much good that I can say first-hand. I have read others’ reviews to find out that they do pay on time and there is the potential to earn a good supplement income. Of course, the more articles you have, the more traffic you will gain. It is also worth doing research into the types of articles worth writing – evergreen content is great for long-term prospects.

There is a referral program, where writers can earn 10% of anything those they refer earn. This could lead to a great opportunity as there is no limit on the number of people you can refer.

You do not need to write non-fiction pieces. Expertscolumn allows short stories and poetry. However, these are unlikely to earn as much as information articles.

You do not need to write fresh pieces for the site. If you have content that you have used in other places, you can use again. However, you will need to make sure that those pieces are in the same name as your Expertscolumn penname. There are a few downsides to this, which I will explain later.

There is no need to use your own AdSense account with Expertscolumn. This is something that other similar sites, such as Triond, expect so you can start earning money. This opens up the opportunity to anyone in the world.

The Bad Parts

The main downside is the fact that you do not get paid for your work – you are paid for the number of views. There are some claims on the internet that I found that you can expect at least one visit a day to your articles and you gain one cent for between five and seven views – and that is without any active promoting. Obviously that is not the case!

Another bad point is that you have to site your sources. Of course, as a writer, if you use a fact or statistic, you should cite where you got it from. However, there are some articles that people write based on the knowledge that they have, whether that is from experience or from years of learning. There is also some information that is common knowledge but even that must be backed by a source – their argument is that common knowledge can be found on the internet, so there will be a source for it.

Pages can be deleted without warning. This could be for grammatical errors, plagiarized posts or just for not citing sources. I have heard of this happening and writers simply have no idea why their page was removed. The moderators claim that any professional writer should know why their page was removed so there is no need for explanations.

I have never had any interaction with the moderators but I have read comments from them. One page that I was one had numerous comments from one of the moderators. First of all, the comments were very difficult to understand. They were full of spelling and grammatical errors and some sentences simply did not make sense. Second of all, the moderator was sarcastic, rude and arrogant. She was arguing with the writer of the article for various reasons. This is unprofessional in my eyes and it led to my instant decision to remove my work and shut down my account. I did not want my name on a website with moderators like that.

The website also seems to be struggling. It has been put up for sale on Flippa. There is nothing on Expertscolumn about this and no warning that it is struggling financially. It makes me wonder whether it will be able to make payments later down the line and whether it will be a profitable option for budding writers.

To be able to reuse your work, you need to place a note to say that you write for Expertscolumn on the blog that you will take the work from. In fact, when I signed up for the account, I was informed that I had to place that link on all my websites, blogs and anywhere that I write for. This is impossible in some instances due to the nature of the websites and not something that I wanted to do at first, especially not knowing much about the website. I did but will now be removing the link as I have closed down my account.

You cannot include negative information about a person or company, even if that information is true and you can cite your sources. I don’t know why this is but there have been pages removed for people writing negative comments about celebrities. This infringes on a person’s right to freedom of expression and will also affect getting the truth out. The rule doesn’t make sense to me, to be honest.

There is no information about the location of the company or who owns it. Of course, it is possible to do some research into finding out the owner of the domain name but this doesn’t necessarily lead to the person who owns the actual company. Not knowing a physical address of the website owner leads to worries about the whole thing being a scam.

As I’ve stated, I no longer post information on Expertscolumn. The unprofessional attitude of one moderator instantly led to me removing myself from it. I’m not sure whether it is a profitable place to write so I leave the judgment up to you.

The Letter W

The letter W is the 23^rd letter in the English alphabet and is commonly pronounced as “double U”. However, the look is more of two Vs put together, which is why is it commonly noted as a “double V” in many other languages, like German and French.

When used in words in the Germanic language, the W is often pronounced as a V, since the V has a F sound. However, this has never been seen in the English language. The W came from the Nordic language, which was written as uu. This was commonly used from the 1300s onwards. Over time, the letter lost the curve and changed to a vv, which was then changed to a W. It took some time for the letter to be accepted and understood.

There are very few languages that actually use a W in the native words. These are usually in the Western European area, including Germany, French, English, Welsh etc. However, when it comes to the Welsh and Cornish languages, the W represents the letter U instead of a V.

The W can sometimes be seen as a silent letter, depending on the letters that follow. This is more common with words like wreck, which have the letter R afterwards.

There are some people who have trouble with saying some letters, especially Ls. This often makes the words sounds like they have the letter W in them instead. This is very common in some Asian countries, like Japan and China.

The letter W is not a common letter in the English alphabet and so is worth four points in scrabble. You will be lucky to get one, since there are only two letters in the whole game. If you do find one, you may want to look for the best way to use them and look for the bonus tiles available.