Freelance Writer Guide Asks: Is Interact Media legit or is Interact Media a scam?
What is Interact Media?
Interact Media, also known as Zerys, is a content mill site, in the realm of Textbroker and Media Piston. The site uses a job board to present writers with projects. An initial star rating system, based on a writer’s sample, is used to determine what tasks are available to a given writer.
How do I get started at Interact Media?
The application process is long and somewhat convoluted. I actually got some of the way through and ended up leaving off because I had work at my already-accepted sites that was more lucrative than slogging further along. I eventually finished my application when a pleading email came from IM citing 400+ jobs had flooded in and they needed fresh writers to work at them. Here’s the hoops you need to jump through:
(deep breath)
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- Okay, seems simple enough.
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- Email auto-received after filling out form.
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- Whoa. Lot of stuff to do!
Once you’ve confronted the checklist, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and dig in.
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- Requisite profile “stuff”. An image is required.
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- Lengthy signup contract. Logs your IP addy, which I’m not keen on.
Here’s where things start getting complicated. Your next step is to pick “expert” categories to denote what subjects you will write about. Simple premise and not wholly unexpected, but there are four levels of each category, and a host of sub-categories in levels 2, 3, and 4. These sub-categories are extremely arbitrary, with paths for things like family > family crafts > craft terminology, and the inability to leave off if there’s further availability in the “path” – in that example, you couldn’t stop at “family crafts,” for instance. You must choose ten permutations and you must restrict yourself to no more than 5 level one categories. Sorry, renaissance people – you only get to be so talented.
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- The category-picking page.
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- The expanded info on “YoExpert” (which will come up again soon)
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- Random category paths I picked out for this walkthrough.
Once you manage to get through the odd system of category-picking (you can choose up to 100 paths, by the way, if you have hours to kill) you move to the inevitable sample page. I will give IM credit in that they allow you to choose whether you want to submit an already-written sample or create a new one, but the fact they expect the new one for free kind of cancels that credit out. Cue skepticism re: every place that’s ever fished for free writing, citing “valuable exposure”.
Gee, it’s not like they -emphasize- one over the other or anything..
Assuming you decide to continue from there, you can expect an email a few days later with a congratulation message for making it inside, along with your editor-issued star rating. (From here on out, your rating will be entirely dependent on client ratings of your work.) What they’ve neglected to tell you until now – and what you’ll quickly discover – is that while there are 2 and 3 cent/word jobs that show up on the boards, they’re few and far between, vastly outweighed by the appalling .007/word work. No, that’s not a typo of 7 cents, readers – that seven tenths of ONE PENNY per word. I’ve never in my career seen a legitimate American site paying such horrible rates, and I was very, very disappointed to find that a fairly well-known site is responsible for perpetuating that it’s perfectly fine to pay skilled, native writers in fractions of a penny.
The numbers don’t lie.
How do I get paid at Interact Media?
Hopefully, twice a month via the paypal address you supplied in the application process. I say “hopefully” because the site has, easily, the longest review times I’ve ever seen. According to an email I received in response to my query, “editors” – who don’t work for IM, by the by, and are agents of the clients who post the jobs – have 14 business days to look over your article, with the potential of 14 more business days after that if they request a revision on the tail end of the countdown clock. Direct clients, those that don’t use an editor, have a far more reasonable 5-7 business days to approve or reject the article. (EDIT TO ADD: More insight into this timeline can be found in the comments below. )
Screenshot of an actual email.
How is the overall experience at Interact Media?
For me, it was terrible. After waiting for the better part of two weeks to get a measly $5 article approved, a $12 piece I had labored over (an article subject instructed to be tied in with a business that had nothing to do with it, along with links) was unceremoniously rejected – literally the first time in 8+ years of writing on content sites that I’ve ever had that happen. No recourse, no appeal, no revision attempt or opportunity allowed. Just a dismissive digital hand wave and my hard work left me with nothing but a highly-branded piece on a very odd subject that I had no hope of reselling.
Helpful Hints for Interact Media?
If you decide to try it out, do yourself a favor and check out a client’s profile prior to accepting a project. There will likely be telltale comments from previous writers if he or she is difficult to deal with, or exceptionally demanding. Don’t rely on this site for fast money, as the review times are absurdly long and they only pay twice a month.
This is Beth Hrusch, Senior Editor at Interact Media/Zerys. First, let me say that I am sorry that your experience with us was a negative one. I hope I can explain and clarify a few things.
The application process includes steps that are necessary for writers to not only get set up in the system, but to succeed later on. The areas of expertise are limited to 5 main categories to ensure that writers are concentrating only on their true areas of expertise. This becomes important when clients want to filter writers by these criteria. Many niche industries require that writers have specific knowledge of the topic.
The option to submit a unique sample offers you the opportunity to showcase your writing to potential clients. We feel it’s important that they have the ability to look at your work before hiring you. Most writers do not have a problem providing a short sample one time, for the purpose of getting future work.
Also, we appreciate your concern about low rates for writers. We try to help buyers find the best writer that meets their needs. For some individuals, they can find what they are looking for at a lower rate. Others are going to search our pool of 5-star writers because they are in search of the best quality. Zerys has a marketplace with over 20,000 writers of all different experience levels. We are a marketplace, which means that we do not set the rates, the buyers do. Buyers can offer what their budget allows and writers are free to accept those rates or not. We do not intervene.
With any marketplace, rates usually settle where they should be. Buyers often find that offering higher bids attracts better writing talent. It’s like the old saying “You get what you pay for.” Writers are always able to negotiate rates, as well. So, if a buyer likes a writer, then the buyer and writer can work out an arrangement that both are happy with and feel is fair. If the rate is too low, the writer can always walk away or choose not to be notified of jobs that are posted at rates that do not meet their desired pay range.
Regarding review times: We have two types of clients in Zerys—direct clients (site owners) and agencies (representing site owners). For direct clients there is a 7-day review deadline. This is the absolute maximum time for review, and most clients take less time than that. For agency clients there is a longer review period because they have clients who also need to review and approve.
We do try to balance the needs of agencies and writers, and this means that review times will sometimes be longer than writers would like. But, our agency partners provide thousands of writing jobs each month, and most make an effort to review in a timely manner.
No system is perfect. However, we are constantly adding features and improvements in an effort to make Zerys the best content platform for both writers and buyers. We do have many writers who are very happy with Zerys and are finding success here, but feedback like yours is very valuable to us. We are constantly striving to enhance our system to try and create the most seamless approach for everyone. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Beth – I appreciate your reaching out! Of the reviews/mentions that I’ve done so far, you’re the only one that’s bothered to address the concerns and cautions that I offer to the writing community. It shows that you have an active interest in connecting with writers, and that’s a very positive step in my book. Let me respond to your answers in kind:
1.) The application process is clunky, and while I agree that some parts of it are necessary, I will stress that you need to explain, outline, and organize the category selection with far more consideration. Yours is not my first rodeo and there were several points that left me confused in regards to category selection. The breakdown of sub-cats should be a little more intuitive, they feel like they’re organized by order of writer creation which gives them a very scattered feel.
2.) I wrote a piece for my “YoExpert Profile” to be rated on Interact, and as far as I can tell it’s floating in the nether. I was unable to locate it on the YoExpert site, there’s no links on my profiles on either YoExpert or Interact/Zerys that indicate where it can be found, and a direct search on Google using lines from the piece turns up nothing. In terms of the claims that this piece would be used to gain me private clients or notoriety, I find its seeming lack of “live” existence a little troubling. If you can shed light as to where my piece went, I’d certainly love to know.
3.) I do not and can not agree with your site’s decision to offer clients and writers the option of .007/word. I don’t know if you’ve ever been a freelance writer yourself (I imagine you might have been), but low rates are the disease that’s killing the ability to write freelance as a career. Foreign clients already harbor a belief they can get blood from a stone, and an established site reinforcing that belief is, as I mentioned, abhorrent. In my very strong opinion, if you cared about fair pay for your erstwhile contractors you’d make .01/word the bare minimum available to both sides of the fence.
4.) I appreciate the clarification and apologize for misunderstanding the division of review times, I will correct the numbers in my review of your site accordingly. I still think that 14 days, no matter who it’s given to, is far too long for an approval. The longest stretch of maximum non-revised review time I’ve ever seen on other sites is a week of real time. It is the agency’s job to complete their interaction with the client in a timely fashion, and the end writer shouldn’t have to suffer without pay for product already delivered because the agency is dragging their feet. It seems incredibly unbalanced that we’re given 2-3 days to actually create a piece from scratch while they’re given almost six times that just to read over it and decide if it’s acceptable or not.
You guys have a solid model, but more attention ought to be paid to fair pay and reasonable turnaround times if you’re looking to woo more quality writers.
I would like to point out that while to low PPW is there, I have seen a huge number of 2 and 3 PPW articles. Which is a great change from some of the other writing sites. I do like the fact that you can rate the clients, I just figured that out and boy do I wish I had before I took this job I am currently working on.
Thank you again for your feedback. We are looking into ways that we can address the pricing issue in the future, to encourage buyers to offer higher rates. This includes partnering with major writing organizations and also demonstrating the level of talent our current writers have. This will allow buyers who are willing to pay much higher rates to make an offer with confidence, knowing that they are getting access to an elite group of quality writers.
I’ve been writing for Zerys for several months now and they made some significant changes that have greatly improved their platform. They now have an auto-accept feature in place for the clients that tend to “forget” they have work to edit, which has really sped up the process for writers to get paid if they work for such a client.
In their defense, I have to say I make more money per article than I ever did on MP, and after Scripted, MP was my favourite writing “home”. Now that I have been favourited on Interact Media by several clients however, I’m really enjoying their platform. You now have access to two job boards once you’ve built up favourites; a Favourite Writer Board, and the Regular Job Board. The clients are using the delineations, and I’ve been writing at 3 cpw and higher.
One more item I’d like to say in their favour is that any time I’ve had a problem, Beth is right on the ball with responding and trying to solve the issue. They do support their writers, unlike the site that swallowed MP.