Constant-Content has tons and tons of articles. Sometimes the biggest challenge that we face is helping people find the articles that they need for their projects. Consequently, we’ve introduced News Feeds to make things simpler for publishers to find what they are looking for and to keep up to date on the latest articles in their niche.

Introducing Search and Author News Feeds

For the uninitiated, News Feeds are a technology that allows you to subscribe to a stream of information. With a News Feed you subscribe to the stream of information once and you will receive an automatic update in your news reader every time there is new content posted on Constant-Content. This video does a great job of explaining RSS News Feeds.

How does this work on Constant-Content? For the past few months we’ve had news feeds for each of our categories. This made it possible for you to tune into the latest submissions in each category and keep abreast with the latest articles submitted in that category. Now, in addition to the category news feeds, we’ve introduced two new options, the Search Results News Feed and the Author News Feed.

Search Results News Feed

Now you can create a search query that will turn up articles that meet your topic, license type and price requirements and then subscribe to that news feed and automatically keep up-to-date with any new articles that match your criteria. This is great because you no longer have to come back to Constant-Content and repeatedly do your search on the site to see if there are any new articles that meet your needs. To set up a Search Result News Feed, just head over to the Search section enter your keywords (and other criteria if you’re using the Advanced Search) and search. Once you find a search that is bringing up articles that are appropriate, hit the subscribe link and copy and paste the url into your favorite News Reader Application.

Author News Feed

The author news feed is a stream of the title, summary and price for each and every author on the site. If you have an author that produces dynamite articles in your field, now you can tune in directly to all the articles that they make available for sale.

With a news feed, prospective articles come to you instead of you having to repeatedly go searching for them! It’s a great way find and purchase relevant content for your site or publication!

In the life of every website there comes a time where the old design starts to show its age and look, well, dated.  And since we wanted to tune up the site and see its success last long into the future, we’ve spent a significant amount of time developing a new look for the site.

For Customers

In terms of how the site functions you’ll find that things are very similar to the previous version.  For customers, you can still make requests for unique content, search or browse through the archives of articles, communicate with authors and buy the content that you need to develop a health flow of visitors to your site.  From the customers side these changes are almost entirely cosmetic. One thing that customers who have been using the site for some time will notice is that the category system has changed significantly.  Previously we had all the articles separated first by writing style and then secondly by topic.  We’ve changed that so articles are simply separated by topic.  This should make it easier to see all the content that we have available in the topical areas that interest you.  In doing this we have had to pair down the number of categories.  Consequently, some of the more specific topics are no longer on the site.  Among the categories that got the ax was Articles >> Middle Ages >> Dragons and Travel >> Canada >> Yukon.  Not that they aren’t worthy categories, but they didn’t see a particularly large amount of action.  We’re hoping that using the search function will allow you to find the specific articles that match your purposes.

For Authors

You will notice a number of changes, although the basic process of submitting articles, responding to requests, accepting of refusing offers is effectively the same.  That said they will also notice some that we’ve consolidated a number of the pages in the authors account to simplify the process of being active and involved in the Constant-Content community.  There are some small changes here and there which authors who have been writing with us for some time will notice, but like any good design project we’re hoping that in fact you don’t “notice” that many changes and that the improvements that we’ve made will feel natural and easy to use.

As always if you have any suggestions for improvements or get stuck somewhere by all means let us know.  The best way to get in touch is to send an email to support@constant-content.com. We’ll be rolling out regular blog posts highlighting new features of the site in the coming days to help you get acquainted with the new look and feel.

Happy New Year!  For the New Year we decided it was high time to roll out some of the changes that we have been working on, so that we could start 2009 with some excitement!

Improved Request System

Constant-Content’s Rquest system has had an update which should make it easier for boht authors and customers to use. We’ve tried to streamline the process. Hopefully, this will make it easier for everyone!

For authors, we’ve introduced a few new changes.
Most notably is the opportunity to submit your article to a request when it is first submitted to the site. This means that there is no need to attach the article to a request after it is approved. As soon as the article is approved it will automatically be submitted to the customer for review. Just that simple. Don’t forget to put a interesting short, long summary as well as choose the appropriate category for the article because if the customer doesn’t buy the articles it will be automatically put into the general pool articles and be available for sale. If you’re interested to know a little more, we’ve drawn up a a step by step overview of the system

For customers, we’ve created a new page for you to manage your requests. This will keep your requests organized and help you to keep on top of the articles that have been submitted for your requests. Not only that, we’ve also made it easier to give feedback to the writers. Hopefully, this will make certain that the articles that you are getting are well suited to your needs. If you’re having any trouble using the request system, or have any trouble we’ve also laid out how to use the customer side of the request system. If you have any content projects that are too large or just don’t know where to start please get in touch with support@constant-content.com and we’ll do our utmost find writers to fulfill your content needs.

We’ve added expiry dates for requests so that you can see if there is a drop dead date for the request. Another small change you’ll notice is that we no longer are using the Q/A section. It’s still viewable, but now all communications with the author will be done through your inbox.

Payment Changes

On the payments front, we’ve heard that the most motivating moment in a writers career is one moment after they have been paid for an article. So, we wanted to try and make those motivated moments a little more frequent. As a consequence, we’ve started out by paying everyone who was owed money and had a valid Paypal address! Please make sure your Paypal address is up to date!

We’re setting a new payment threshold at $5, which hopefully will mean that most people that make even one sale will see their money each month.

We are doggedly pursuing a system that allows us to balance strong protection for our writers’ articles and at the same time allows buyers the ability to easily find, read and purchase the documents that they are looking for. This month we had two major steps forward in our ongoing efforts.

First off, we’ve developed a technique for embedding a Google Alerts Phrase into our articles. Each author now has a personal Google Alerts Phrase that is invisibly embedded into their articles. Log into your account and go to the “Your Account” page. You’ll see your Google Alerts Phrase. If you set up a Google Alert to monitor this phrase you’ll receive an email from Google should an unauthorized copy of one of your articles be found by their search spiders on the web. This is a great way for you to keep an eye out for any content that has been posted to Constant Content and help us ensure that the site continues to be a safe place for writers to market their work.

The second piece of technology we’ve added makes it difficult for both real live people and robots to get at the HTML source code. We’ve moved the article long summary out of the source code of the page. If you view the HTML source of the page, you’ll find that the article long summary is no longer there.

Anything that is viewable on the Internet is at risk of being copied and re-posted, but we’re working hard to protect your articles, doing everything we can to stop your articles from being stolen. We’re always open to new ideas to make the site more secure, so if you do think of a great idea for boosting the site’s security please let us know!

One of the key features in constant-content.com is the request system.  Up to this point there has only been one means to see new requests.  As an author, you login and click on the “Requested Content” there you can see all the Public Requests as well as any requests that have been sent to you specifically.

We do offer a service to send you an email each time a new public request comes in.  And many of you have signed up for these emails.  This has worked pretty well, although there has occasionally been problems receiving these emails.

That said we wanted to roll out a new way to check up on the latest Public Requests. So, we’ve built a News feed that you can add to your News/RSS reader.  You can find the new URL at http://www.constant-content.com/feeds/publicRequests.xml

This news feed will update whenever a new public request is issued.

If you’re new to News/RSS feeds I’ll give you a short primer.

As with all News feeds you need a reader (or aggregator) to subscribe to the news feed. Many email applications come with feed readers built into them.  There are a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.  If you prefer something that isn’t web-based you can try Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows – integrates with Outlook).

Once you’ve chosen a feed reader subscribe to the Public Requests Feed (http://www.constant-content.com/feeds/publicRequests.xml) and the most recent requests will be delivered to you as they are made available.

We’re slowly working some changes into the site.  And there has been a day of reckoning for some people’s licenses unfortunately.  On the author profile page there has always been a listing of how many usage, unique and full rights licenses you have sold and today some of those numbers changed.

There had been a few complaints about the licenses number increasing without the amount of earned money increasing.  After a little bit of investigation we found that items that were not paid for were being counted as licenses.  This situation happens where the customer puts something in their cart and heads to PayPal or 2Checkout to pay and then decides to abandon their purchase.  Under the old system these were counted as licenses but the writer’s earned amount wasn’t updated.  Very confusing.

We’ve updated this so that only licenses where the payment goes through will be counted and shown on the writers profile page.  But as a consequence the number of licenses you have sold may decrease a small amount.  These are customers who nearly bought; fish that got away.

There are some other changes that you may (or may not) notice.  The top authors page has been updated, so that the stats are correct. Little bugs here and there are slowly disappearing.  All in preparation for the site redesign that we have in the works.  If you have some suggestions for the redesigned system, please let us know.

The blog and the forum have been upgraded. If you have any comments or suggestions about current / new features please let us know here.

Thanks.

Constant Content Team

Many of you have noticed that some of your submitted photographs are showing up as “sold,” even though they are still under review! This seems to be the case with most of the photo images in the “recently sold” image list. I’m sure this matter will be looked into once the weekend is over. Thanks for your patience.

The Constant-Content blog is here! In lieu of a newsletter, which can be cumbersome and not terribly user-friendly for such a diverse audience (new writers, established writers, the curious, and hopefully, customers as well), we’ve chosen this format to share with you news, thoughts from the editors, tips and tricks, and important highlights of the site.

Not only is the blog a slick addition to Constant-Content, it will allow us to reach those of you who don’t regularly visit the forum. The forum contains great information, but the posts can be daunting to wade through. However, we ask that you still post questions in the forum or email support using the “contact us” form on the site. This will guarantee that your problem gets addressed or that your questions get answered in a timely fashion.