I am doing the back and forth dance with Suite101. Thus far, I’ve been a CW (contributing writer) on the site since December of 2007 and I am pleased with the money I’ve made and the topics I’ve written about. When I published my 50th article, I received an additional 10% on that and all other articles afterwards which is a nice little bonus. And every month I am making more money! So now I have 82 (!!) published articles on Suite and I’ve been considering whether I want to stick with being a CW or move up to a FW.

As far as monetary perks, FWs get 20% after they hit their 100th article. As far as work load, they have more strict deadlines: 1 article in their topic and 1 blog post in their topic per week. While CWs only have to have 10 articles every 3 months.

So why would I want to be a FW? It’s not the money. It’s the prestige. I want to be able to be seen as an expert in my area. This will look for future opportunities. However, I don’t truly know if I can come up with enough content in my desired area on a weekly basis. The topic I would want to be a FW for does not have a typically high page view so the money would probably go down. While I can still write about any other topic of my choosing, I feel that I might be so worn out from my FW requirements that all the other things I enjoy writing about may fall to the waist side.

I spoke to my editor about my desire to be promoted to a FW position about a week ago and she encouraged me to get some new articles up in my category (and all the sub-categories) and then we can take it from there. Problem is, I am having second thoughts about going anywhere with this. For all intents and purposes, I am happy right where I am.