ContentGather caught my eye as they appear to be directly challenging the long-tenured Constant Content's business model. Constant Content is one of the few content writing platforms I work through, but I'm always open to new possibilities (especially those that don't ask a 35% whack of every sale price).
Like Constant Content, it's primarily an "on spec" marketplace. You write about whatever you like, put it up for sale, and some weeks (or months) later someone comes along and adds it to their shopping cart. While this system might seem like an unreliable revenue stream for a writer, I've actually found it to be pretty lucrative, at least once you have a good understanding of the business end of the web content world.
A quick look at ContentGather's terms and marketplace very quickly make it apparent this isn't a viable option for professional writers, however.
The biggest difference between Constant Content and ContentGather is that ContentGather does not let you name your own price. Instead, they have the usual infantile content mill "star system" that you have to work your way up through, and your current "star level" determines the maximum rate you can ask for your work.
The FAQ reveals that the range of pay is 1 to 10 cents per word. 8-10 cents is at the very lowest end of acceptable for professional work, and 1 cent is completely unacceptable unless you just learned English yesterday. That's before the 20% whack they take on each sale, so really, your upper limit here appears to be eight cents per word.
Cruising the marketplace, I see that the bulk of posted work is being offered at 0.3 to 0.5 cents per word. Those rates are only going to attract the bottom feeders of the content world. These people are nothing but a headache and there is absolutely no future with them. They are out actively looking for people to exploit. You are not "working your way up" to anything but more 3 cent per word work (and eventual burnout / emotional breakdown) with this sort of thing.
The one mildly interesting aspect of their terms is their "advance payment" program. At the second of the five tiers (the "silver" level), writers become eligible for an advance of a percentage of their spec sale price. It's 5% at the second tier, ranging up to 15% at the top tier. There is a cap of how many articles are eligible for advances, however - 20 for the lowest tier ranging up to 50 for the highest. It's an interesting idea, but I would guess it also guarantees that writers will never be able to name their own price for articles here ... also seems like it could get messy when you hit the cap and have old articles selling / new ones becoming eligible.
I'm also left with some questions about the preview process, and protection of your intellectual property. Without signing up for a buyer account, it would appear customers can only read a summary paragraph of your work, nothing from the piece itself. So what reason do they have to purchase? If they do see preview text at some point, how much of the article do they see, and how is it protected from scraping? The only thing the FAQ clearly states in this area is that you are guaranteed payment when an article sells as part of the buyer's contractual agreement ... that's great, but what happens if they issue a chargeback after purchase or use a fraudulent / stolen PayPal account to buy it, as some of the penny-ante "black hat" scumbags have been known to do? Does ContentGather guarantee your payment even in the event of fraud? (I know Constant Content does, as I actually had this happen to me once before).
FINAL VERDICT: NOT WORTH IT
In the end, to paraphrase the man with the excellent beard, "the pay is too damn low!" This is only suitable for raw rookies at absolute best, and with a current library of only about a few hundred articles, I'd be concerned it's going to go the way of Swarm Content at any time if I had stuff hosted there. As long as I can name my own price at Constant Content (and make more than the higher tiers here, and without having to navigate some capricious "star system" to boot) that's where my spec work is going. I'm sure other professionals will feel the same way, which means clients will find the site populated with relatively low-quality content, which means an endless feedback loop of the sort of bargain-basement clients you don't want to deal with.
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