I had almost given up on hearing from Life123.com. I contacted them back in August, stating my interest in applying to write for their site. A couple of days ago, I received and email from them saying they were interested in having me apply to write for their site.
Rise Through the Ranks
Anyone can fill out an application to become a Member of the Life123.com site. Once you become a member, you can submit your first article, and if it is approved by the Life123 Editors, you become a Contributor on their site. Contributors can submit a maximum 10 articles per month.
Once you've published 10 articles, and have at least 500 users viewing your articles, you get promoted to being a Writer. Writers can submit a maximum of 40 articles per month. Once you've written at least 25 articles for Life123.com, and have at least 2,500 users viewing your articles, you get promoted to being an Expert. Experts can write a maximum of 150 articles per month.
Life123 Retains Copyright
All articles must be original, and not previously published on the Internet. Life123 retains all online copyrights to your articles. But they have a non-exclusive copyright to other versions of the article. So in theory, you could submit your articles to a print publication, or bundle all your articles together and have them published in a book.
Life123 requires the articles to be between 300 and 1,000 words long. You are not allowed to add pictures or links to the articles.
Earning Money on Life123
I can't get into the details of how writers earn money on Life123, but it is based on unique page views. Each article you submit to Life123, that is approved, can earn a maximum of $20. It's not clear if the writers on Life123 are currently attracting a lot of readers. It is a fairly new site, but they claim to be receiving around 1 million unique visitors per month. Another site I write for gets around 8 to 12 million unique visitors per month, so I'm not sure if Life123 is big enough to attract enough readers to earn it's writers a decent return on their investment.
Testing Out Life123
I submitted an article yesterday afternoon, and received an email this morning stating they have accepted the article, which makes me an official contributor to the site. They don't require pictures or links with the articles you submit. In fact, you are not allowed to submit pictures or links.
The article I wrote for them didn't take very long to write, since I didn't have to take photos, upload photos, find related links to add to the article, etc..., like I have to do for some of the other sites I write for.
The Jury is Still Out
Here's a link to the first article I wrote for Life123, just FYI: Duathlons; Multisport Event for Non-Swimmers.
There is no obligation for me to write a minimum number of articles for
them per month. I'll give the site a chance, and see if I make any $$
from it. Otherwise, I'll file the site under, not worth writing for.
Take care,
Lynn Smythe AKA the Writing Diva

