I’ve been kicked off of Today.com

Update April 18-22: Many Today.com Exiles have set up blogrolls listing the former Today-ers, along with links to their new blogs.

You can see who is on the blogrolls here: Just Flitting, 30 Something and Searching, Books and Movies, TV News and Reviews, Self Reliance, Bookishgal, All About Bipolar, Nonfiction Book Review, Hospitalera’s blog, Alzheimer’s Disease Caregiver and the Today.com Exiles group blog.

If you have an Exile blogroll, and you’re not listed above, please let me know, and I’ll add you.

————————————
I received this letter — it’s a form letter that other people have been receiving as well:

Subject: Close Account

We understand that you are unhappy blogging with Today.com. As such we will be closing out your account for you. Your blog earnings to date will be sent to you in the next pay cycle.

We want to thank you for trying out Today.com and are sorry the program has not lived up to your expectations. We certainly wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Today.com Support

If you were a reader of my Today.com blog — Lostfan.today.com — please change your bookmarks from there to here — and thank you so much for following me around cyberspace!

If you are a fellow Today.com writer, please get in touch, if you feel like it. Now that I have nothing left to lose (except for my last payment, which I’m not sure I will see anyway), I have no more hesitations about speaking publicly. So you can leave a comment below, or if you prefer, email me at eeekablog (at) gmail (dot) com.

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172 responses to “I’ve been kicked off of Today.com

  1. Onceandfuturefarmer

    I’m locked out too…from the forums and the blog control panel. I didn’t even get an e-mail, and have no idea what’s going on. I’ve e-mailed support@, as directed on the redirect page…no response, of course.

    I’m glad you have another blog to move your focus to. That was a dirty move on their part. I have to say, I had a sneaking suspicion that something like this was going to go down, but I’m surprised that they’ve handled it in such an unbusiness-like manner. Seriously—WHY would they think they could treat, of all people, *bloggers* in such a shabby fashion and not have it spread all over the net?

    Looks like a bunch of people have been locked out with no warning and no recourse. I guess I don’t know how I feel about the whole thing personally, but some of those blogs were really good blogs…it just makes no sense.

    • Oh wow, you too? I’m wondering how many people got wiped?

      I’ve never been treated so disrespectfully at a job–and believe me, I’ve had some low points. This was just crazy.

      • Hay Val….have you backed up your Today.com blog posts yet? Might be worth losing a little sleep to do it, if you want to keep them. You can always rewrite them and post them on another blog. Do you have another blog? Personally, I’m not putting the OR2SR url into *anything* ever again…I’ll take that traffic myself, thank you, over at my newer self reliance blog.

        🙁

        Fortunately I know how to go and strip out any code that runs any of the widgets and such without being logged in. I guess I really can’t count this as a huge loss, knowing what’s been going on over there. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. 😛

      • Hey Farmer,

        I saved all of my Shrine blog posts, but I’ve yet to do the TV one–I really ought to have saved them all in the first place. Gah. At least all of the photos are on my hard drive so I haven’t lost those. I even managed to delete all the ones I took personally before they blocked me out of the system completely.

        You’ll have to explain to me what an OR2SR url is!

        I unfortunately don’t have another blog yet. I’ve got to figure out what I want to do this weekend, and where to set up shop. It’s pretty daunting. I hadn’t planned on having to do this. Gah.

      • Sorry—Our Right to Self Reliance was the blog I worked on at Today.com and in text I often short-hand it to OR2SR.

        You can’t take it personally; there is a sick corporate culture over there and it has nothing to do with you, or any other blogger there. There’s also nothing any bloggers there can do about it—witness what happens to those who even notice it. Any company that treats their employees or contractors like rented mules eventually goes down, though, and you just watch…think about the recent chronology, the changes made and the comments by staff in the forums.

        Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick….. :-/

        Not to sound like a broken record, but do take a look at Choseit.com as an option for a place to blog. I do tend to root for the underdog, the little guy… but I’m here to tell you that after dealing with Today.com Choseit.com has been really refreshing!

        • Did you ever play the Death Pool game, where everyone picks a celebrity, and whoever’s celebrity dies first wins? It’s fun, in a macabre kind of way. Maybe we should do a variation of that and take bets on the date of Today.com’s demise …. 😉

          Farmer, why do you like Choseit.com better than other free sites such as blogspot or wordpress.com?

          I’m committed, for various reasons, to keeping this blog on its own domain, but I might want to do a different blog on a free blogging site, at some point. I always figured I’d just use blogspot, which I’ve used before, but I haven’t heard of Choseit. Is it different and/or better?

          • I haven’t…I don’t follow celebrities much; we haven’t even had the television on except to watch a DVD for months. 🙂 It sounds like The Tontine, by Thomas B. Constain. Yup—morbidly fascinating, LOL!

            Choseit.com is free, too. I must mention that the Today.com blog was the first time I ventured into the blogosphere…and it’s different than building web pages, it is. I may need a little more hand-holding than seasoned bloggers. I did look at blogger and blogspot, and wordpress.com….was like going to WalMart. 🙁 Choseit.com is a lot more like going to your local small town garden nursery or hardware store, the one that’s been there forever…run by dedicated people who know their stuff and delight in their industry. Tyrone recently added a forum—I believe it’s open to the public—to build community. The place is still small enough that there are not a lot of techy type problems, and Tyrone or Pavan are Johnny-on-the-spot whenever anyone has a question or a request…unlike some support forums that I could mention. 😛 I do feel like I’m part of a community over there, and I never did at Today.com, really…sorry, but it’s true. After I got a nasty gram from Nicole about my “forum tone” threatening to suspend my forum access for seven days or more, I pretty much quit posting there (but kept reading). No one noticed. Kind of like living in the city. :-/

            For instance—when I found Odiogo, I asked on the Choseit.com forum if there would be any issues using it…within maybe an hour, Tyrone responded that if there was, he’d just have to upgrade his servers. Can you image a response like that from Today.com staff about anything? Tyrone’s goal is to make the site work for the bloggers. See why I found it so refreshing after Today.com? 😛 You want a particular theme? Ask Tyrone to install it…boop! there it is. 🙂 Can’t get something to work from your dashboard? Ask Tyrone….he’ll explain, and if you still can’t get it to do what you want, he’ll make it go then tell you what he did. That sort of attention and support for a project, joint or single, gets my loyalty. I had expected Today.com to have my loyalty, really I did; when they proved themselves to only be focused on the almighty buck and to have the “there’s more where that came from” attitude about their bloggers….well, there’s nothing there to hook loyalty to.

            Dude—Tyrone was recently hospitalized with a horrible case of tonsillitis; he got someone to bring him his laptop and any time he was coherent, he was tweaking the site. He likes what he does. Makes a HUGE difference!

            BTW—I got the e-mail. :-/ Bastard filled bastards with bastard sauce. >:-(

          • They seem to be kicking off people in waves. I wonder if any more emails will be going out.

            Sorry to hear about the “nasty gram.” I know of one other person who was suspended from the board for posting a critical, but totally polite, message. That was several months ago, and I was shocked when I heard about it. That was pretty much the beginning of the end for me.

            I did take a closer look at Choseit, and it’s interesting — they use WordPress themes *and* they let you put ads on them, which no other free WordPress site, that I’m aware of, does.

            But I wonder how the owner is going to make any money. Is he going to eventually put his ads on your blogs??

            The community aspect sounds attractive. There are a lot of things I like about self-hosting, but on the other hand, I have to be my own tech support department now, and you can see that some things are wonky on this blog, and probably will remain wonky for a long time, until when and if I ever figure out how to fix them. 😉

            Anyway, good luck with your new blog.

          • I’ve no reason to believe that he will be placing ads on the blogs hosted at Choseit.com. He recently put up a poll that loads when you log in, looking for suggestions and gauging reaction to possible changes in the service. There’s also a feedback/suggestions forum section, and if anyone can make a suggestion there that works for everyone involved, I have every reason to believe that he’d check it out thoroughly and likely implement it. That ‘community’ thing… 🙂 There is some deal that involves adsense and profit sharing there, but I haven’t looked into it. And I don’t believe Tyrone’s looking to make Choseit.com his primary source of income (though he probably wouldn’t say no, LOL!) so there is considerably less gnashing of teeth over the whole thing.

            Yeah, the opportunity to monetize your blog is one of the things that attracted me. The forum to support to do that is an extra plus. 🙂

        • I signed up at choseit.com with a niche / subject that should go well with it, will start to work on it when back from Switzerland end of next week. SY

          • Farmer, if it makes you feel better, I did wonder where you had gone on the forums, because I hadn’t seen you for a bit. But I was very sporadic myself (I would get on and post lots when I have time, and then not post again for two weeks) and so I just thought that perhaps we had just passed each other, KWIM? So don’t think that NO ONE missed you on there, ’cause I did. 🙂

    • Hi, Farmer! They locked me out first, and then sent the email later, so yours might still be coming.

      I agree with everything you wrote.

      I’m pretty sure word *will* spread out very quickly throughout the net.

      I think what is going on is that they are trying to replace those of us who have come to rely on the terms that we agreed to, with other bloggers who have lower expectations. They have this ad currently running on the Job Board at ProBlogger net:

      Today.com, one of the fastest growing blog communities on the web, is looking for new bloggers of any skill level. Whether you’re a novice blogger, or have been at it for a while, this job is for you. You get paid per impression (we pay the highest CPM in the industry) for writing about any topic that interests you!

      We also just recently added a “products” feature that allows you to sell products that you write about and gain a commission when you do so! This is yet another great way to earn full-time money while doing part-time work. In addition to this, we also run a program where you can make money by selling your available ad space. And don’t forget, if you refer someone else to Today.com, you will get a bonus for this as well!

      http://jobs.problogger.net/view/2133

      The new recruits are being put on notice from the start that they are expected to sell things on commission, and that they will get paid only for traffic, not for the posts themselves. Also, because the ad says they want people of “any skill level,” I think it will mostly attract people who either are, or think they are, unskilled and inexperienced, and who are likely to be thrilled to receive any money for their writing at all, no matter how little it may be.

      Plus there’s the false hope being dangled before them of being able to earn “full-time money while doing part-time work,” which may keep people motivated to work hard, at least for a while, until they figure out it’s a crock. Then maybe it will be time to get rid of them, and bring in the next fresh batch of recruits — if the company hasn’t gone out of business entirely by then.

      • Hi, guys! I wonder if there would be any affect if whacked bloggers contacted Darrin about what’s been going on? I think he tries to run a clean show over there, and it looks like Today.com …uh…doesn’t fit in.

        I’m wondering how many people saw the post I made in the thread about traffic from an ad on a porn site, posted in general maybe a few weeks ago…msterri maybe? Anyway, the thread got “pruned” possibly right after I pointed out that if you type http://www.blogscam.com into your address bar it brings up the Today.com page. Doing a little digging in who.is, let alone Alexa.com was really educational, too. 😛

        I’m blogging over at choseit.com now, and love my admin. I’ll quit worrying about trying to get it right at Today.com now, and focus on my newer blog—as I should have some time ago.

        Sigh. I hope we can get the word out that Today.com apparently has no regard for the people that create all the content on their site. That all rights contract really sucks!

        Hey—Flit is compiling a list of “Today.com rejects”, LOL! Did you see they nailed Hospitalera, too? 🙁 I’m worried about Hava, has anyone heard? Did she have another blog?

      • I have send Darren a @twitter regarding today.com problems, not sure if he will notice it. SY

  2. That’s a good idea, to contact Darren at ProBlogger.

    The post about the ad on the porn site was mine. I actually half-expected them to delete the thread, so I did save most of the info I had posted. And I remember your blogscam comment! That was funny.

    I’m glad you found a better place to blog!

    Has Flit posted anything publicly? I did see Hospitalera’s post. Haven’t heard anything about Hava, sorry. Did she get kicked out too? She really loved the site.

      • I’m thinking sending Darren links to the blog posts might be the way to go. Would be interesting to see if he puts up a post about business ethics in the blogosphere.

        Choseit.com is a small blog hosting site, but Tyrone is a love; he listens to his bloggers and works with them, too. I highly recommend it!

        *smacks forehead* Duh! msterri/Ms Terri….I feel silly now. I had to laugh when Dave posted in that thread with “keep your day job” ROTFLMAO!!! Oh, the irony!

        I can’t recall what here Today.com blog was, but I remember seeing My Mutterances in someone’s forum sig…she put up DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH TODAY.COM a few hours ago.

        I have kind of a morbid fascination with this whole thing, LOL! I must admit, I wish I could just read the forum, see if anyone is asking questions—or daring to. I don’t know that Hava got nailed, too; I couldn’t believe she’d been demoted. Maybe I’ll let Today.com have just a little more traffic, and go over to nonfictionlovers and see if she has a link to another blog or a contact page. Hey—the contact pages won’t work anymore either, will they? :-/

      • Wait, where did he say “Keep your day job”?? Was that in the big 8 page post? I saved the first 8 pages, but I got locked out before I could get to any later posts.

        I’d love to see bloggers on the big sites discussing business ethics and pointing to Today as a bad example. This place is just unbelievable.

      • The thing about “keeping your day job” was in the p*rn-ad thread. I dug up a whole list of sites that the parent company owned — and I was, admitedly, being a bit smug, and I made a crack about how I should be a detective — and that’s what Dave was responding to when he said that I “shouldn’t quit my day job,” meaning I wasn’t as good a detective as I thought I was.

        Except, I probably was. 😉 Dave went on to say that Today.com and Amosely.com (which I think is the parent company) were separate businesses, and had nothing to do with each other. When I asked why, then, was Today.com advertising on one of Amosely’s porn sites if the companies had nothing to do with each other, the whole thread was deleted.

        You know, now that I write it out like this, I can see why I might have gotten “fired.” Heh.

        But, Val, for the life of me I can’t imagine why you got the axe. You are one of the most tactful people I know.

        By the way, if you look at the “Reject List” on flit’s blog, and click through on the names, there are some great-looking blogs there! I think going Indie has been a step up for everyone.

      • Oh yeah, I remember the “keep your day job” thing now! I thought that was really a-holish of him at the time, and I was thinking the same thing, that actually you really HAD found the truth but they didn’t want anyone to know.

        I think I might have gotten booted after that small disagreement with dreadpiraterose. She said this stuff wasn’t about us personally. I said that I knew it wasn’t personal, because Today doesn’t care about us personally. They don’t care if we leave, because they’ve got people lined up behind us waiting to be the marketing gurus they’re looking for.

        That may have done it. Thank you so much for saying I’m tactful…hee. Most of the time I try to be, but there’s only so much I can take!

        I’ll check out the reject list!

    • I sent Hava a message through Today…not sure if she’ll get it. I’ll let you know if I hear anything!

      Oh wow. I just realized I have her email address. I’ll try that if I don’t hear from her soon.

  3. Here’s another unhappy person…wonder what their Today.com blog was?

    AVOID TODAY.COM posted on Citizen Against Lies.

  4. Umm…did you see the post in Updates when you still had access to the forums wherein voiletteb stated that negative posts in the forum “posted to inflame the Today.com blogging community out of spite” will be removed and the person who posted them will have their account deactivated forfeiting any unpaid earnings?

    That just occurred to me… If you didn’t see it, let me know; I can send you the text if you need it.

  5. As some of you know, they kicked my backside too. My blog was prague.today I used http://www.httrack.com/ to copy all my publicly viewable content on my hard disc, perhaps it is useful to others here as it does it pretty automatically after you have set it to work, you don’t have to copy and paste your content manualy 😉 It took me <20min to safe my blog to hard drive 😉

    Idea: Shall we get together and support each other with creating a ‘kicked form today.com blogroll’ on each of our blogs? Perhaps we could even found a facebook group, lol. I am doing at the moment a bit of ‘negative seo’ for my old prague blog. They might have my content, but they don’t have me anymore *insert evil grin*
    Hope to stay in contact, SY

    • GREAT resource, thanks! I’ll be using HTTrack to back up all my blog posts there. I’d also be interested in how you are going about that bit of “negative SEO”.

      I’ve put up a post on The How and Why of Self Reliance for folks to continue to build backlinks with. Note the invite for guest bloggers! 🙂
      Today.com Expat

  6. update: Sorry, skimmed ost through the comments previously. I will set up a page for rejected today.com bloggers, each blogger gets a little text (keyword optimized) and a dofollow link to their new blog/ site or wherever they want to have it. I will also digg/ stumble/ reddit/ twitter any reports I come across so that the word goes out that today.com is not a good company to do business with. You might want to do the same 😉 SY

  7. I’m beginning to think that when I was booted suddenly on April 5, I was the first of what has turned out to be a massacre.

    Go to Flit’s blog (http://flitting.org/?p=146#comments) where it looks like she may be setting up some kind of loose association where we can all share our stories and maybe help each other in our new locations.

    And I’m setting up a page to list the exiles as well, so we can cross-pollinate. If you want to be on it, please comment in this post at my new Bookishgal location.

    By the way — any posts for which you were only being paid for traffic, and weren’t on the pay-per-post system? THEY DON’T OWN THOSE POSTS. They didn’t pay for the posts, but only paid for the traffic.

    So go copy them, and repost them.

    • You can also rewrite your blog posts that they did pay for…there’s a great program called WordFlood that helps with that. There is an older version you can dowload for free (I use it!) or you can buy an updated version.

      I’m off to comment on your Today Exiles post. 🙂 Feel free to comment on the page I put up on my blog, too. 🙂

    • Phyl, are *positive*? Because if that is unequivocally the case, it would seem that an official letter of some sort would be in order, not dissimilar from one sent to any other content thief. I wouldn’t mind having a mitt full of posts I didn’t have to rewrite…but I did think that the terms stated that you gave up any rights to anything you had uploaded to their servers and hit the “publish” button on. I think I had copy/pasted the terms when I first joined, I’ll have to see if I can find where I ‘filed’ them.

      That was another thing about signing up; it’s always an eyebrow-raiser when you can read what you’re agreeing to until you’ve contracted to abide by it. PBTPBTPBTPBT!!! 😛

  8. Done! http://hospitalera.com/kicked-from-todaycom/ I will not add anybody without permission, so please check and add your name and blog/ site etc if you want.
    Sorry to take the comments here a bit over, please do the same on my blog 😉 SY

  9. Oh, and last I heard, Hava was still planning to stay there. As was Mike from the “Science Fun” blog, who had only started recently, and really wanted to give it a try.

    I don’t know what their reactions have been to the most recent changes in policy and the wave of blog exterminations.

  10. Nope, Phyl, I got you beat. I was March 27th.

    I’m doing like Flit and making a separate blogroll of those exiled from Today, so if your not on my list, let me know.

    ~Kelly
    30somethingandsearching.blogspot.com

    • I didn’t find me on your list, and I’d like to be there. 🙂

      I’m not on Flit’s list, either, tho I left her a couple of comments yesterday. Is it the lack of a blogger i.d. or something? Any idea? If someone knows how to contact her and give her a shout-out for me, I’d appreciate it.

    • Well gosh, Kelly, I wanted to be the pioneer. But you appear to be the senior exile. 🙂

      Anyway, that’s what I think I’m going to call my Page: Today.com Exiles.

      I was thinking of calling it “Victims of the Today.com Pogrom,” but that’s a tad…long. Heehee!

  11. Hi Hospitalera, Phyl, and Kelly! Great to see you all here!

    Hospitalera, thanks so much for the link to the blog-copying service! I’m going to try it.

    Thanks to everyone who is setting up Ex-Todayers blogrolls. I’ll update this post to put in links to the blogrolls and the places to sign up for them.

    P.S. I was trying to think of a name to use as a kind of shorthand to refer to all of us who were kicked out of Today.

    “The Today Diaspora”?
    “Today Exiles”?
    “The Tomorrow Group: Life After Today”?
    “Today Escapees”?
    “Post-Purge Posters”?
    Or, what I used above, “Ex-Todayers?”

    What do you think? Any other ideas?

  12. I called my own blogroll Today Exiles, so I like that. Ex-Todayers would include those who left by choice, so I guess it depends on if we want to include all those who left because Today is losing their mind and because they realized things were getting bad, or just those that were booted.

    ~Kelly
    30somethingandsearching.blogspot.com

  13. “I can’t recall what here Today.com blog was, but I remember seeing My Mutterances in someone’s forum sig…she put up DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH TODAY.COM a few hours ago.”

    That would be me. I wrote the Being Thrifty and Route 66 blogs at Today.com.

    I’m also doing a blogroll, so please drop by my blog at http://mymutterances.blogspot.com and leave a comment if you want to be included.

    I’m also starting a Route 66 blog on my own, which will be at http://azroute66.blogspot.com. I just secured the site, but don’t have anything up there yet. Once I get it going, I will include a blogroll page there as well.

  14. Hi Beth, and welcome! I’ll add your link to the list (on the top of this post) of people who are setting up blogrolls.

  15. I’ve set up a blogroll too. It seems to have grown quite a bit on the last hour!

    Kelly
    http://30somethingandsearching.blogspot.com

  16. @All
    Thanks to everybody that left a comment on http://hospitalera.com/kicked-from-todaycom/ it is late now here in Europe, but will work tomorrow on it to get a nice blurb for everybody written up. SY

  17. I’m also an ex-Today blogger. I didn’t get kicked out – I quit – though I probably would have been if I hadn’t quit, because I had also dared to complain on the forum, which seems to be one of the seven deadly sins.

    My husband had been after me to set up my blog on his domain anyway – he was convinced Today was a shady operation. Turns out he was right.

    Anyway, I’ve moved here:
    http://booksandmovies.colvilleblogger.com

    I’ll add you to my Today Exiles blogroll.

  18. I was wondering something. Remember the survey that they were running on the forums a little while ago that asked people how they felt about selling advertising? I answered that I thought it wasn’t my job, as a blogger in a network, to sell ads.

    Now I’m wondering if that could be a reason that I got the axe.

    I think we’re all assuming that the reason people were axed was because of comments made this week, right after our pay was cut. And I think that’s probaby what it was. But I’m just wondering if it could have been something else, or maybe something in addition — if they could have been so sneaky as to put up a survey, solicit honest answers, and then kick people out based on the answers that they gave.

    Did anyone else here take that survey and answer that they didn’t want to sell ads? (I’m trying to see if there is a pattern, or if it was just me who answered the survey and said “No, I don’t want to do it.”)

    • I did fill out the survey – and answered the same way as you did. I signed up to blog – not sell advertising or affiliate products. Not sure if that had anything to do with pay per post being cut, though – but wouldn’t surprise me.

    • You know, I honestly didn’t choose that answer because I was afraid Today would be marking that down somewhere. I did tell them I had no experience in sales, and that they should make those stupid product icons more appealing to draw people in. A picture of who knows what with just a “Buy now!” button on it doesn’t tell people anything about what they’re buying or who they’re buying it from! Anyway, I was trying to be helpful. Silly me.

    • Yep, me too, I don’t remember what exactly I answered but I surely denied being willing/able to sell ads. SY

    • I don’t recall specifically; it’s likely, as I have the same attitude as Carrie K. I think I was pretty clear throughout that “poll” about that attitude, LOL! If I recall correctly, in the comments section my comment was something like ‘since this poll was entirely about the advertising program, where is the poll about (whatever misleading title they had put on the poll)?’

      They’d already dumped me to PPM *shrug* and silly me, I thought they were really seeking input on how things were working for the people who provide all the content that drives that site. I also hadn’t been doing daily posts, but I had been doing SEO work and my UVs were climbing steadily. Guess that didn’t actually mean anything. Surprise!

      Guys…did you notice anyone that has been there before May of last year? I can’t come up with any. I’m wondering if they do a progrom every few months or something.

      • I put on the poll that I didn’t know anything about advertising and that I didn’t plan on advertising anything either. I already did my Amazon links (something I didn’t get paid for!) in each of my posts, so I just couldn’t see doing anything else. I am not a toaster salesman, LOL! (I absolutely LOVED that line, btw!!!!!)

        Anyway, when I was talking to Violette, it sounded as if they went straight down the line on which blog makes money and which blog does not. If your blog did not, you were cut to just PPM. Before, they had always said that if you did Amazon links in your posts, that they took that into consideration when setting your pay per post, which is apparently why I was making $2.50 a post plus PPM. Now, it doesn’t seem to matter – if your blog doesn’t make money (no matter the traffic level – you can have tons of traffic and still make no money for Today!) then your pay gets cut.

        The really difficult part is, we bloggers had no idea we weren’t making Today money. I had no clue anyway. I had lots of great traffic (I haven’t been out of the top 100 blogs since December, and out of the top 60 blogs for a good couple of months) which almost all of it came from Google, plus I had all of my Amazon links in there. I thought my blog was profitable. *shrug* Then one day, whack! The ax. It would have been nice if they would have had some sort of preliminary warning period, PLUS some suggestions on how to become more profitable (other than to sell toasters. :-P)

        As for anyone before May, the only person I know of is Violette – she’s been there since March, so over a year now. May is when Today really started pushing the hiring part of their site – they went on a hiring spree that they really haven’t ever gotten off of. I’ve been worried for a while that this sort of growth was not sustainable. How could Today afford to pay so many bloggers $5 a post when the majority of the posts are (to put it nicely) CRAP?!

        Then it became $1 a post was the hiring wage, plus PPM, but still, multiply that out over a thousand bloggers with 30 posts each – that is a HUGE chunk of money. Who has that deep of pockets to pay that out month after month?

        So then it became just PPM when you got hired, and that’s when I knew that we had just hit a new low with Today.

        If you think about it, their business model makes some sense – you hire a bunch of people, pay them a buck a post, they eventually quit because the pay just isn’t worth it, and then Today gets to continue to receive the AdSense for those sites for the rest of eternity. Google doesn’t stop sending people to your site just because you haven’t posted on it for a month. So they have got to have thousands of sites that haven’t been posted on for ages, but which they are making money off of with AdSense. Not a bad plan, from their standpoint. No wonder they’ve always pushed hiring new people.

        As for the deleting of people who are speaking out against Today, that is new. Stephanie, Phyl, and Flit? Is that the three? Anyway, they got cut first, and then it was just a wave of people after that. As far as I know, they didn’t do that before (and it’s possible I just never heard from the bloggers who had it done to them, so I’m not swearing to that one.) But they certainly weren’t doing it on a large scale. *sigh*

        Homework is calling my name. Hugs!

        Hava

        • You know what this seemed like to me? One gigantic pyramid scheme. And we all know how well those work.

        • Seems to me that if the only way to make money on Today.com is by selling toasters they need a drastic overhaul of their advertising.

          But then again, to play straight wouldn’t work worth a damn, since if I happened to be someone that wanted and could sell toasters through my blog, why the heck would I do it there and let them keep most of the money when I could just as easily do it on my own blog and keep all of the money rather than a pittance.

  19. And here I am. 🙂 I am writing to tell you guys that I have just officially left Today. I wasn’t sure if the Today admins had somehow found this thread and were watching to see who posted on it, so I asked Val to post what she did above, about sticking it out with Today. I just needed a few more hours to switch everything over. 😉 So thanks to Val for helping me gain some more time!

    My new website is http://www.nonfictionbookreview.com/ (or just click on my name above) but at the moment, I have (pretty much) nothing up. I did put up a theme that basically says I’m under construction and if you want to get an update on when I actually go live, enter your email address or sign up for my RSS feed. That way, I could start directing people towards my site without really having anything put together. :-} I am going to school and working two other jobs, so time is tight right now.

    My post on the Today forums was very, very nice; I didn’t even try to put in my URL for my new site but instead just put in my email addy. I figure that anyone who is really interested will email me and ask me for my new site address, and leaving that out of the post will give Today less of a reason to lock or delete the thread. They already deleted the 8 page thread that Val started, which is when I knew for absolute certain that I couldn’t go back. I am tired of defending something I don’t believe in. Do you guys ever get that way? Loyalty says that I need to defend the company that pays me, but my mind says that what they’re doing is undefendable. So I quit and save myself the headache of trying to reason my way out of that mess. 😉

    I did want to say that I really appreciated reading this thread earlier today. I literally had tears welling up in my eyes as I read it. Isn’t that stupid? But it just made me feel good to know that someone out in this great big blogging world cared enough about me to ask about me and want to know that I’m okay.

    I’m very excited about getting my new site up and going. I should have been doing homework all day today, but instead all I wanted to do was search for new blog themes! LOL! Starting a new blog is always such a fun adventure. And now that I know so much more about SEO than I did when I set up my Today blog, I am hoping that I will be able to do even better with this blog.

    Speaking of, I have to admit to something: I changed the name of my blog back from Nonfiction Book Reviews (which is what I titled my blog when I was trying to climb the Google ranks for that phrase) to Nonfiction Lover, which is what I originally called it. I figure that there’s no point in competing with myself for rankings on a search results page, right?

    I have a headache and it’s late, so I’m heading to bed. I will be back tomorrow to find all of the ex-Today blogrolls put together so far and update my new blogroll with those addresses.

    Hugs to you all!!!!

    Hava

    • Hi, Hava! Welcome to the Thread of Exiles ;). I’m so glad you’re doing well and embarking on a new adventure.

    • {{{HAVA}}}!!!

      I am so, so glad that you were able to leave in an orderly fashion. I am so, so, SO! glad that you are clear of that toxic melt down over there! They do not deserve someone like you. Loyalty like yours is not common and it’s obvious that they couldn’t even identify it…which was a major red flag for me.

      I’m looking forward to reading your new blog! You’ll do fine, you’ll see. Oh, I’m going to sleep better than I thought. Thank you so much for posting here!
      🙂
      🙂
      🙂
      !!!

    • I saw your message in the forum and was very impressed with your diplomacy 🙂

      have added your link to Flitting through Canadian Fiction

  20. Pingback: The How and Why of Self Reliance » Today.com Expat

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