Demand Media did away with this position entirely in February, 2012. It no longer exists. 

I should make it clear first that I am not a title editor for Demand — I do duplicate checking and title quality assurance. However, I have a fairly basic understanding of how title editing works since I have to know which titles need editing when I do the title quality work. But since I don’t do this job, please correct me on anything I’ve gotten wrong if you happen to know I did, and I’ll edit accordingly.

What Demand Media Title Editors Do

Title Editors for Demand Media have to make corrections to titles before they can be made into articles. Doing this involves fixing spelling and punctuation errors and also switching up word order or occasionally adding certain words to titles so that they make more sense and are easy to read. Even though this sounds fairly simple, I can see how it could be difficult because sometimes it’s hard to spot errors if they’re pretty minute. Demand also has some specific guidelines pertaining to this job that must be followed, so people who are hired to do it will have to keep those guidelines in mind at all times to ensure they are doing the work correctly.

How Much Title Editors Are Paid

Demand’s title editors receive four cents per title edited. This is a little higher than the two cents per title you get for doing dupe checking or TQA, but you also have to keep in mind that editing titles probably takes a little longer than checking to see if titles are duplicates of each other or making a quick assessment of title quality. So even though the pay is higher, it probably works out to about the same or possibly even less when you figure how much you can earn per hour since the work takes longer to do.

Method of Payment

Title editing payment is made via Paypal twice per week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Cutoff for Tuesday pay is Sunday night, and cutoff for Friday pay is Wednesday night. This is identical to how all other positions within Demand Media are paid (including writing work). The frequency of pay is my favorite part about working for Demand — it is really nice to get the money twice a week! If you don’t have a Paypal account, you cannot be paid. I know a lot of people won’t apply for jobs like this because they don’t have Paypal and don’t want it, but Paypal is very convenient and signing up is a piece of cake. Once Demand sends the money to the account, it can be easily transferred directly over to your bank account (keep in mind it will take a couple of days to show up after you submit the request). You can also sign up for a Paypal debit card and get your money out whenever you need it. It works like an ATM card or you can use it when you go shopping at any store that accepts debit cards.

The Application Process

 

There is no formal application directly on the website for any of the titling positions yet, so this is the only way to do it. In this email, all you have to do is express your interest in the job. You don’t have to attach your resume or anything, just a short note will do. Something like, “Hi, I’m interested in doing some titling work for you. If you have any openings for title editing now or at any point in the future, I would love to be considered. Thank you!” and close the note with your name. This is how I applied for both positions (title duplicate checking and title quality assurance) and I was contacted back both times. If you receive a reply,  you’ll likely be sent an invitation to take the title editing test. The invitation should also include some guidelines to read over. Read the guidelines carefully and you should do just fine. The test isn’t timed or anything like that, so no need to panic or rush through it. Just keep the guidelines open in another tab as you answer the questions and refer to them as needed. After you submit your test, the waiting game begins. Unfortunately, this is the unpredictable part. You might hear something back by the next day, you might hear something back within a month, or you may not hear anything back ever :( I had actually given up on ever hearing anything back on duplicate checking after I applied for that role because I wasn’t contacted until about five months after I had sent my original inquiry in! So don’t lose hope. You’ll probably hear back when you’re least expecting to. If you give up on getting hired for title editing, you could always send another email inquiring about other openings within the titling department. You need to be from the United States to do the titling work for Demand. They will hire people from Canada and the U.K. to do writing, but unfortunately not for titling.

Work Availability

I don’t feel comfortable telling people who do titling for Demand that they can rely on it as a stable source of income because in some titling departments, the titles run out. This seems to be the most problematic with the duplicate checking position, but I assume it could happen with any titling role. I know that with title quality assurance, the work seems to always be there, but I was unsure about this with title editing since I don’t do it. Thankfully, one of my Facebook followers who is new to title editing let me know when I asked that she has so far experienced a continuous flow of work with title editing, so that’s great. However, I still encourage you to have something on the back burner to rely on for money if and when titles do run out or something else happens.

 

Filed under: Miscellaneous