Having come this far in chronicling the site’s slow, wince-worthy slide into functional obscurity, I feel a bit duty-bound to share what I hear around the web from various writer friends of mine. They’ve reportedly been hitting their 1st/15th payday date targets with less and less accuracy, culminating in the email below being sent out to what seems like a wide swath of, if not all of, their writers:
“Hi,
I wanted to let you know that you are one of a group of writers being affected by what we believe to be a Paypal transfer delay that is being caused by the 4th of July holiday.
As you may know, we typically transfer earnings to you within 3 business days from the end of the pay period (1st and 15th of the month). In this case, that would mean you would be paid by this Thursday, the 6th. However, due to the holiday and the above mentioned PayPal transfer issue, we are expecting some payments to go through later this time around. As a reminder, our payment policy suggest that you allow for up to an additional 14 days after the end of the pay period for the funds to clear your account, to account for rare circumstances beyond our control. For more information on our payment policy you can refer to our writer forum post here.”
We can’t tell you exactly when your specific payment will be transferred to you. It may be tomorrow, or it may be next week, but rest assured, we are doing everything possible to transfer the funds to you as soon as possible.”
While other sites have certainly had payment hiccups of their own, this is just the latest in a troubling trend for Zerys. To wave one’s hands about and indicate that payment “could be today, or it could be next week” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in writers that often live paycheck to paycheck. When a site is already infamous for a glut of sub-penny-a-word projects and expecting free work as SOP, issues like this are definitely not doing them any favors.
As I’ve said before, freelance fledglings, steer clear of Zerys.
The Freelance Writer Guide 
It’s August 2017 and there is another payment delay. This time no email confirmation. Maybe the wheels are indeed coming off at Interact Media.
Yep. August 14th payments delayed. Nothing until I reached out through social media, then told it is a mass payment problem on paypal’s side. Contacted PayPal. No problems they can find on my account or on the account of the sender (steve@zerys.com). They also had no reported issues with their mass payment system. Looks like Zerys is having cash flow problems.
It’s now August 19th. still no payment. No email saying sorry we haven’t paid you yet. Nothing. It’s been coming in at about the 18th for me, but this time I actually needed the little bit of pay Zerys owes me. Guess it’s time to let them go completely before the inevitable happens. It’s just a matter of time until the pay isn’t just late, but non-existent.
The scariest part is the lies. Zerys blames PayPal instead of telling the truth or simply changing the payment cycles. Trust is everything in this business.
Ugh, Zerys…the site went way downhill after they started forcing writers to give free samples to get work. I used to make good $ from the site…they used to be my main source of work…no longer, all my steady clients have since fled and I won’t give free samples to get new work. So, I haven’t written for them in a long time. I imagine they have lost many writers after the change. Without writers, I’m sure its just a matter of time before the site disappears into thin air.
The latest!!! Their generic “your content has been approved” email now starts with “Congratulations”. What an attitude! Translation “Congratulations–you actually got paid for your work. Isn’t that Terrific?”
No , it should be expected!!!!! that you’ll be paid.
Although they have an odious rule in place (for years) that buyers don’t have to pay for anything the don’t like (for any reason)– the fact is that rarely happens. Most buyers would feel guilty not paying, unless the writer was extremely unskilled or difficult to deal with. I worked there for years, off and on, and only got 2 or 3 out of hundreds of projects rejected. Of course, I blocked those buyers.
So, the majority of clients/buyers have been decent, despite the power Zerys gives them–but this “congratulations, you actually got paid” email shows how clueless the company is. They should assume that nay writer approved to work for them is good enough to be paid. How are they offering services to buyers saying “At Zerys, our writers aren’t very good but don’t worry you don’t have to pay and you might get lucky to get usable content once in a while.”
what an attitude.
That makes them look sooooo bad, and they cannot even pretend to treat writers and buyers equally.