1. You are not an employee or any other entity that would be entitled to any benefits by law. Your only available compensation is that of an independent contractor who earns profit shares by submitting articles for publication. In addition, you are not a shareholder or partner. Profit shares refer ONLY to the ability to earn a portion of the money as set out in these rules. Shares do not entitle you to any kind of voting or control of the program. You do not earn a salary or any other benefits and you do not have any kind of voting rights or management authority. Shares are merely a device to measure the amount of compensation you receive for submitting articles.
2. The profit-sharing pool consists of 50% of the money received by Writing Shares from advertising revenue from sites such as Google AdSense. Product sales do not count in this total.
3. You must write 30 qualifying articles within 90 days after getting your first article accepted. The first article does count, so that is 29 additional articles within 90 days after the first one is accepted. Otherwise, you will not earn cash in the profit-sharing plan. However, you may reapply and start over with a different account if you fail to qualify for any reason.
4. You earn one share for each accepted article that you write where you picked the title and topic. These shares start with your 31st accepted article. In this case, you can write about any topic you want AS LONG AS it follows the rules on the “Writing Rules” page. Just log in and start writing. You must also “Like” your own articles on your Facebook account and Tweet to your Twitter. Check out the Facebook and Twitter training guides if you have not started these accounts. Facebook and Twitter allow you to open free accounts, so there is no charge to get started. The training guides are commercial products, but they are optional. Once you have accounts at these sites, it is easy to “Like” or “Tweet” by visiting your articles and clicking the “Like” and “Tweet” buttons in the toolbar at the bottom of the page. You must also “Like” the Writing Shares home page.
5. You earn 5 shares for each article that you claim from our Recommended Titles section that is accepted. You must submit the article within one week of claiming it to get the 5 points. You must be the first to post a comment on the page with the recommended title to claim it. Stay subscribed to our email list to find out when the next batch of recommended titles is coming. This is the same list you subscribe to on the right-hand side of this page to apply to become a writer for Writing Shares.
6. You earn 10 shares for each accepted article if participating in our Special Niches program. However, only Special Niches articles earn you 10 points. The others still earn you one or 5 shares. Refer to the “Special Niches” page for more information about applying for the Special Niches program.
7. You must be a US citizen or lawful permanent resident to earn money for profit shares. If we find out that you have presented false information to get paid, you forfeit all shares and any earnings that you would have been entitled to had you actually been a US citizen. You also agree to pay us back 100% of any money you received from Writing Shares based on the false information plus $500 for the deceptive acts and inconvenience.
8. Writing Shares reserves the right to award any and all kinds of bonus shares. Keep up with the email-list mailings and the home page to find out about bonus offers.
9. Each share receives a cash value based on the amount of eligible advertising revenue (the “global pool”) divided by the number of global shares. For example, if the global pool is $10,000 and the number of shares is 50,000, then each share would be worth 20 cents. You then receive the cash value per share multiplied by the number of shares you have earned AT THE TIME OF SHARE TABULATION. If you have written articles that have not been reviewed by the time of tabulation, then you will have to wait until the next pay period to get paid on those shares because those articles have not yet been accepted.
10. You MUST write at least one article in a given month to earn money on your shares. This means you should submit at least one article in the first two weeks of the month so there is time to review and accept all articles. If you wait till the last few days, we may not get to your article in time to accept it. This rule is required to reward members that do not abandon us. Anyone can write at least one article a month. There is no excuse if you want to get paid.
11. Members are scheduled to start earning money on their shares for the period starting April 1, 2012 and ending on April 30, 2012. Advertising revenue accrued up to that point is not eligible for cash payments, BUT members will retain all profit shares earned before April 1, 2012. They will then start being paid on those pofit shares starting with the April 2012 pay period. Thereafter, the global pool is tabulated monthly, and members will be paid once a month, approximately 15 days after the end of the previous month to give time for accounting.
DISCLAIMER: THE AMOUNT YOU WILL EARN DEPENDS ON THE AMOUNT IN THE GLOBAL POOL DIVIDED BY THE NUMBER OF TOTAL SHARES AND THEN MULTIPLIED BY THE NUMBER OF SHARES YOU HAVE EARNED. THERE IS NO WAY TO PREDICT EXACTLY WHAT YOU WILL EARN PER SHARE. NATURALLY, THE AMOUNT YOU EARN ALSO DEPENDS ON HOW MANY ACCEPTED ARTICLES YOU HAVE WRITTEN, THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF SHARES YOU EARN FOR WRITING THOSE ARTICLES, THE NUMBER OF ACCEPTED ARTICLES WRITTEN BY OTHER MEMBERS, AND THE AVERAGE SHARES EARNED BY OTHER MEMBERS WHEN WRITING ARTICLES. FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOU HAVE WRITTEN 1 PERCENT OF ALL ACCEPTED ARTICLES BUT EARN ONLY ONE SHARE PER ARTICLE, THEN YOU WILL MAKE LESS THAN IF YOU HAVE WRITTEN ONE PERCENT BUT EARNED 5 SHARES PER ARTICLE.