Blog Network To Avoid
UPDATE 2009: 451 Press has closed it’s doors as a paying blog network. However, the company has left ALL articles online from past authors, removed author access to the articles so the authors can’t remove them, and taken all author NAMES off of the article. 451 contract stated that they could continue to use your content with credit to you in perpetuity (which is a terrible contract clause, by the way, authors). It also stated the author could use their content elsewhere after a certain period of time. Taking the names off is in violation of that contract, as is prohibiting access to the posts to authors (and thus making future use difficult).
Update: I was contacted by some of the powers that be at 451 Press, who informed me of some changes in the last month that may alleviate some of the issues below. It seems they have now automated their payment system, including the payment tally. This means that for the first time last month all bloggers were reportedly paid on time. That’s a huge step in the right direction, and I wanted to make sure it got mentioned. Now, if the automated tally system works as well, paying bloggers the correct ad revenue for all types of ads, bloggers, do let me know so I can take 451 off the hot list.
Update: Further updates can be found in the comment section of this post, as I receive them.Â
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According to this self-released press release, 451 Press has proclaimed themselves the largest blog network. What they aren’t saying is that they have the highest turnover rate of any other blog network, with bloggers leaving in droves, and the worst pay rate and payout record.
Many bloggers at 451 are lucky to see pennies on the dollar, in spite of signing a 40% revenue share agreement. Even on months when page views for the sites double, triple or quadruple with skyrocketing unique hit counts and ad impressions the bloggers are lucky to get paid at all, and the company is ever ready with excuses as to why the stats are great and the pay is low.
451 has also been consistently late with monthly pay outs, not to mention the fact that they rarely come through with contest winnings and pay for placement ad rate revenue, with some bloggers waiting as long as 7 months or more for a simple $20 a month share of a paid placement ad on their site or their share of contest winnings. Recently, the powers that be claim to have addressed late payment issues, however; the ad payouts are still generating dissatisfied reports from current and former bloggers on the network.
451 has also garnered a reputation for locking bloggers out the moment they say they’d like to quit, offering them no chance to take their writing with them, even though the contract clearly states that the writers own the rights to their work after 30 days at 451 Press. This has been an issue with several bloggers who have left on both good and bad terms, though I must give credit to 451 for reaching an amicable agreement on my content with me when I quit a few weeks ago.
They offer a writer’s forum, but at the first indication that the writers would like to publicly discuss the lack of payment, the pay structure (currently Ad Share, but with rumblings of a change to CPM soon), the high turnover, the use of spam writers to generate filler without a writer’s knowledge, accusations of plagiarism by some of the spam filler writers, and more the forums are edited and shut down, ending open and frank discussion.
All in all I’d say 451 Press has behaved as a blog network that treats its writers like so much disposable garbage, and my recommendation is to stay away until or unless they sort out these issues. If they do sort out these issues (as in, have several months of solid, on time payment and resolve the outstanding other blogger beefs), do let me know so I can update this entry.
End note: Those of you who read this blog will note that I was writing for them myself for several months not too long ago. I thought they showed great promise, and liked the full rights to the author language in the contract, as well as the 40% ad revenue share. In the end I left because of the forum practices outlined above, after giving them every chance to change for the better. I personally did not experience the low pay issue, though I did experience the late pay issue. It’s too bad, really, because as a young network they had such unlimited potential to grow and a stable of great, eager bloggers to draw from.
Hire Me On 
August 1st, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I am sorry you experienced problems with the network. We have had growing pains like most companies. We are still young and trying to figure things out. We wish you the best luck in your future endeavors.
August 1st, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Yup – it’s all true! =P
August 8th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
All of the above has been said before, but you summarized the issues very well.
The part about the forums was particularly frustrating while I was there.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:32 am
451 is not alone. Interesting post. I was approached by B5–which I thought was one of the best. They wanted 24 posts a month on a medical subject for a whole hundred bucks a month! I said the last blogging job I had paid 10 times that! I passed.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I’m finding the entire experience of writing for blog sites to be disappointing. I’m currently writing for two (who I won’t name, because so far they’ve at least not held back payment), and it’s pretty much not worth it. Either they’re doing a terrible job of SEO, or the blogs simply aren’t of any interest to many.
A question: is anyone working for a blog site or network that they’ve found truly lucrative, organized, and such?
August 16th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
I hear ya loud and clear. 80 cents for three months worth of work.
The press release makes it sound like a small team of award winning bloggers are writing all the blogs but that’s not true at all. How many of the 300 blogs are actually “award winning.”
I find them terribly disorganized and more interested in spending the money to purchase new domains and become the biggest, then to pay bloggers more money and focus on becoming the best.
I wondered the age of the people in charge because I always had the feeling i was working for a bunch of kids.
August 16th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Wow.
As the 451 blogger about blogs, and a professional blogger on self-owned sites as well, all I can say is “this is definitely NOT my experience.” Yes, there are some months I don’t do as well as my best months. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a payment for “pennies” – well, I know I haven’t. Usually more (though I don’t think I am allowed to say how much under the NDA – and that’s standard. I don’t want anyone talking about my business deals either.)
I’ve also found the people involved to be knowledgeable, interested, caring, and highly responsive, considering they’ve got so many blogs and bloggers to look out for.
I really wonder whether some of this is coming from people who didn’t know how much work is involved in getting top traffic stats, and perhaps had unrealistic expectations going in. Perhaps not, and this is just representative of an anomalous experience. But I can say this – I asked around, and while lots of colleagues had suggestions for improvement, not one offered a serious complaint along these or any other lines.
Very strange.
August 16th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I have thus far refrained from doing the “I told you so” dance.
You know my experience; when I emailed with concerns about the professionalism (or lack thereof), the next thing I knew I was locked out of my blog, and had a “This blog looking for writers” notice posted on it.
My experience with 451 has soured me on working for a blog network. I’d much rather run my own domain and work with an ad network than have to deal with an administration layer that really doesn’t seem to do much but cause problems. Any time you see the rollovers you do with the 451 blogs, you have to realize there is a management issue.
August 18th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Perhaps those of you who know of a good blog network to get involved with can express it here.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
@Sheryl Sisk – This isn’t sarcasm so please don’t take it the wrong way. Since you don’t blog the network minimum do you feel you’d be better motivated to post almost every day if you were paid more than a 40% rev share?
For those who are looking for a good network, I love the peeps at b5. They pay a monthly fee plus traffic bonuses. I totally clean up each month because I have a blog with good traffic. Plus the pay rate goes up every three months for the first yearish. They’re great about talking up their people and promoting the blogs.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Thats WHY I left too!
September 29th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
It hasn’t changed much. I signed up with them at the end of July. I constantly had issues with servers being down and with my blog being inaccessible. When you complain on the forum, the threads either get locked or deleted.
I complained that the response I was getting was unprofessional and have been booted from the network. I also was told that the network now owns my writing even though my contract grants no rights to the network.
I’ve written an email asking for my work to be taken down. I hope to avoid a lawsuit over this but after the way I was treated, I am willing to pursue that if I have to.
September 29th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Thanks Lewis. Several other bloggers on 451 have mentioned recent changes as well. On the surface the changes sound like a step in the right direction: $2 per 250 word post or per two 150 word posts in a day, plus a token amount for page views/ad impressions. However, digging deeper the changes only seem to benefit 451 and actually create so much more work per post for the bloggers (especially the entertainment bloggers) that it ends up costing them to blog. For example requiring an image per post, plus two links back to 451 sites is self serving and spammish, not to mention a right PITA for the blogger. Add in the required one outside link per post as well, which would actually help promote the network, and which most bloggers already do and it costs more time. The token sidebar “control”, heavily crippled by 451 to prevent many of the fun things that draw in traffic, the shutting down of threads in the forums that 451 does not like, the lock out of previous writers before they can get their writing down, the battle over content with some writers (not all writers), the ongoing battle of payment with a few writers who left the fold (BB comes to mind), and so much more… It all combines to paint a picture of a network that continues to not value its bloggers, in spite of an exceedingly high turnover rate and a constant need to seek out and train new bloggers (they have long passed the time when already trained bloggers sought them out). There are people on the staff I consider online friends, and whose life I made very difficult with this post, and I’m sorry for that, but those people have no decision making control over these issues and can not fix them. Only Steve can fix them.
October 27th, 2007 at 1:52 am
I’m also a former blogger for 451Press. I *dared* ask questions about non-payment on the private company forum, and was fired and threatened with lawsuits if I pushed the issue. This after working ceaselessly for them for months, doing daily blogs and promoting the hell out of my blogs. It was just about the time when my blog traffic went through the roof (thousands of page views) that they fired me and was immediately locked out of my account pages, forums, and blog. I was never paid for those last months, either. Since I am a professional writer, there was no way I’d allow them to keep my content, so I made sure I had copies of everything. Some of it was written before I even heard about them, so as far as I’m concerned, I was justified in doing that.
I was also threatened with lawsuits if I even talked to any of the other bloggers there, some of which have been friends of mine for years. That’s just ridiculous.
The problem is that there are too many “writers” there that don’t care if they get paid or not; they are in it for the prestige and/or experience. And they are afraid to make waves, afraid that they’ll get fired. That’s fine, but a company shouldn’t promise payment if they can’t afford to pay it. There are a few of the employees who were sympathetic, but were powerless. The only formal explanation I got was that I wasn’t a “good fit for the network.” yeah, right. If I wasn’t, then why did I have thousands of readers?
bobbi c.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
And still bloggers write about 451 in unhappy terms, most recently blogger Daniel Perez: http://bibitob.blogspot.com/2008/03/word-to-wise-avoid-451-press.html
May 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I just joined 451 Press, and I must say that I agree with you. The community of bloggers are great and are fun to work with, but their pay is horrible! I’m about to post something along these similar lines in the forums. I guarantee that I won’t be with them long if their pay does not improve.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:52 am
I currently write for 451 Press and have been with them for over a year now. My pay keeps increasing every month I get paid. I think mainly, the complaints are from those who did/do not post good content and don’t have very many readers. (ie. page views). It is unfortunate that there are those who no longer work for the network that continue to degrade the entire process for those of us who enjoy their writing and get paid well for their efforts.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
This is not true! I had thousands of readers and hits each day. I posted long articles and photos everyday, won several awards for my blog, etc. I got paid once in all the months (and hundreds of posts) I wrote for them.
They basically broke their contract for no reason at all. They have a habit of locking their writers out of their blogs if you even dare to make any comments about pay in the forums.
I personally know at least five pro writers who left there voluntarily, or were fired, after spending hundreds of hours working for them for free.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Troubles rise again and the natives are getting restless. A month without pay makes even the most loyal writers sour towards the company.
It’s a live soap opera with unpaid bills and building dissent in its wake…
April 24th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I just left after blogging for them for two years, and the issues that were raised in 2007 in this article are still well in full swing. Low/no pay, broken promises, not valuing writers/bloggers, not abiding by the rules of their own contracts, but heaven forbid a writer break the rules just as they did, for they will not hesitate to withhold pay. This is one hypocritical network that I would advise to steer well clear. They talk out both sides of their faces.
Whats that awful taste in my mouth? Oh that’s bile. 451 Press has forever soured me on blogging with another network ever again.