AOL Seed & Break Studios Showing No Assignments: Are They Dead?

By Brian Matthews, Demand Studios Review Writer

Posted On 8/19/11

We’ve written about AOL Seed and Break Studios before; cautiously recommending Break Studios as a Demand Studios alternative - even though they only pay $8 an article the word count is less and the guidelines less stringent - and warning against AOL Seed altogether.

Now it looks as if both may be on the way out, if they’re not dead already.

Word came down to us that Break Studios had no assignments showing in their content pool. Since none of us had bothered with Break Studios recently so this was news to us.

When we logged into Break Studios to check it out we discovered that the rumors were true. There were no assignments to be found in any category.

Then when checking our Google Analytics, we noticed a number of people came to our site today searching for things like “AOL Seed no assignments” and wondered if perhaps AOL Seed was also closing.

After logging into AOL Seed we found out that it was likewise showing zero assignments.

The curious thing is that both Break Studios and AOL Seed are still advertising that they are looking for writers on their respective homepages. Once logged in, we discovered that neither one has issued a statement about the lack of work.

This will surely not come as pleasant news to Demand Studios writers already struggling through a title drought.

It’s times like these that it is worth repeating that you should diversify as much as possible. The more clients you have, the better. It’s also best to have clients from different walks of life, so to speak.

Writing for print publications, online publications, small business owners, local publications and perhaps setting up your own blogs or websites means that your financial fate is spread out across many fields and is therefore much less likely to come crashing down with the latest Google algorithm change or local economic disaster.

Not that you have to check every one of those boxes in order to be successful. The point is just to continue looking for more work and never settle just because a client seems to be working out well at the present time.

So, we recommend writers get themselves a copy of Writer’s Market - the 2012 Writer’s Market is due out in early September and is available for preorder, as is the deluxe version - and perhaps a copy of The Writer’s Digest Guide to Query Letters and start lining up some more clients. The best part is, the clients you can find through searching and querying writing markets will often be of higher quality and pay better than Break Studios, AOL Seed or even Demand Media.

In the meantime, stay tuned for our upcoming article on weaning yourself off Demand Media Studios, as well as our upcoming article on how to survive the Demand Studios Writer Development Program.

And don’t forget to connect with us on Twitter and Facebook while you’re at it, or subscribe to our new RSS feed to stay on top of all the latest news.

UPDATE ON 9/7/11: Break Studios has issued a statement to their freelance writers, updating them on the situation. Read our "Break Studios Update" article for more information.

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