Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Goodbye Yahoo! Voices

In just over one week from now, on July 31, Yahoo! Voices will cease to be.

After several years and several name changes Yahoo! in its own infinite wisdom is withdrawing, unplugging, killing a portal for writers.

It was a nice service, while it lasted. I used to receive several tens of dollars per year from this pay per impression service, where authors could either sell their work directly for an upfront fee or take a performance option on views.

I am sad to be losing this income stream. Who wouldn't. It paid me for my Starbucks coffee for a month or two. So maybe the real loser might be Starbucks, maybe that is a bit drastic.

Why did Yahoo! Close Voices?

Well they cite a need to provide quality. But Yahoo! has been struggling lately with advertising revenues falling, sharing those impression payments with thousands of writers is an obvious drain on cash.
 
Yahoo! will of course continue to publish selected content already  published on the site. But they will keep the revenue thus generated. Nice of them.
 
Always bear in mind that you are at the mercy of such corporate decisions and when you create a piece of work. Keep most content for yourself. Create a website, for your own work. The future now lies with self published content I think not with large volume sites like Yahoo! or even HubPages or Squidoo.
 
We'll see what happens next.