I agree with most of your points. I’ve always argued that every company is going to have complaints. It’s impossible to please everyone. That being said, doing the scam search does help you figure out if the complaints are warranted or just people whining. When I do that scam search I’m able to see patterns or lack there of. I’m also able to identify real issues vs personal vendettas. So I do think it’s still worth conducting that scam search if you’re able to read between the lines. I don’t buy that doing such a search leads to only one sided opinions. When a company is good and folks are throwing shots at it, their defenders come out in full force. A perfect example of this is this post. Read the comments below and you can see that they cover both ends of the spectrum. I’ve also seen it for many of my other posts. So trust me you can’t run around calling good companies a scam and their members aren’t going to speak up. You will get both sides of the story.

In any event, I totally agree with you regarding the lack of reading and the lack of responsibility taking of folks. I even wrote an article about this a while ago:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/read So many people would be able to avoid scams, misleading products and problems if they actually took time to read the fine print. But no, some people want you to do the work for them. It’s no wonder why we’re in the financial mess we’re in. We’re not taking responsibility for our actions and acting accordingly. However, I’ll admit the following. Nearly every terms of conditions page I’ve ever read is always designed to protect the company that created them. You can usually sum them up in one sentence. “You’re signing away your life to us by using our site and we can pretty much do what we want.” If you don’t like this policy, don’t join our site. So you’re pretty much at the whim of all these companies. If you don’t like this, you better start your own site. This is exactly the reason why I don’t like the idea of spending too much of my energy on things that I don’t personally control. It just doesn’t make sense to whine about it when you have other options. So I totally hear your points. It was tough love but very true in so many respects. lol

Why is it that people use the fact that people are complaining as proof that the company must be a scam or engaged in unethical or otherwise negative practices? If you google ANY company name along with the words “scam” or the like, you’ll get thousands of results of people giving examples of why they think that company is garbage.

At the end of the day, if a company states everything upfront and acts according to exactly what they’ve stated upfront, you can’t call them a scam. You also can’t blame a company for the fact that people enter into agreements without reading them. You think if you go to court against a company that you’ll win the case if your defense is, “Well, yeah, it was in the agreement, but nobody reads those, we’re all too lazy, so we just agree to get started faster!”

No. You wouldn’t.

Bottom line is this.

1) If you don’t work for AC, your information regarding how they do things on the backend is irrelevant.

2) If you don’t write content on AC, your opinion regarding how they treat content providers is irrelevant.

The only thing that matters are facts. Not hearsay, not “well look at how many said this so it must be true!” If you don’t have FACTS to support what you’re saying from documentation and firsthand experience, there’s no reason for you to even bother commenting.

I’ve been writing on AC three years now. I’m an actual freelance writer and published author, so I didn’t do it because I’m not a real writer and aren’t good enough to be published elsewhere. I did it BECAUSE I like the fact that it’s a content based site and it’s fun to use when you want to write about something that you don’t need or want published in a more serious setting.

Have they ever not made good on the agreement put forth or resolved any issues I’ve had regarding payment and the like? Nope. Have other people have problems? Probably, but again, the same can be said for EVERY company. There is no such thing as a business that has not one complaint on record from someone who feels they were treated unfairly.

The trouble these days is that everyone wants something for nothing and when they discover that not everything (especially making money) is as simple as signing up on a site and having a check 5 minutes later, they want to make a stink about it.

It’s fairly simple. Read the agreement. Adhere to the agreement. If a company breaks the agreement, sue or file a complaint. You cannot sue or file a complaint against a company just because you don’t like the fact that they took steps they were legally well within their right to take against you. All you can do is whine about it in your blog or to your friends. It still doesn’t make its practices illegal. If it’s stated anywhere on AC’s website that they can take certain action against you (eg. the penalty people are mentioning), they can do it. Period.

Don’t like it, don’t accept the agreement – but oh, that’s right, you probably didn’t bother reading it in the first place…

In any event, I’m totally against doing multiple blogs. Just focus on a niche you have a passion for and know about and pour your heart into it. This way you’re not spreading yourself thin and you can actually provide some real value to your users. This is how you build a long term business instead of a quick hustle. I don’t know why so many of these gurus are pumping that. It might explain a lot of the thin sites we see out there that provide little value to user.

By the way, I’ve read Tim’s book. Good stuff.

Thanks for chiming in. Page views will vary day to day on any site. My page views tend to be higher at the start of the week and then drop down on the weekend. It makes sense because people usually spend less tim on the computer on weekends. So what you’re experiencing is normal across the board.

That being said, I agree with you. Owning your site and content is the way to go. It’s the same amount of work either way.