Is BrightHub.com Closing Up Shop?

It's becoming more and more difficult for anyone wishing to begin or continue a freelance writing career lately. eHow has greatly reduced their opportunities and now Bright Hub has essentially fired all of their current writers. I received the following email recently and I wanted to give a head's up to my fellow writers. Good luck to you all!

Dear Susan:

Bright Hub has focused on providing value to our readers, our writers, and our advertisers since 2007. We have made adjustments along the way to remain competitive in a fast-changing environment, and currently, over 5 million visitors a month engage with the Bright Hub site. None of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our writing and editing community.

The last few months have been particularly challenging. Like many companies we are facing the reality of a changed economy, while simultaneously working to increase visitors in a post-Panda world. This combination of market forces has required us to make some hard decisions about our business model moving forward, including the elimination of some internal staff positions as well as our ‘Shared Success’ writer program.

Therefore, our current writer and editor roles have ended, effective immediately, and your last payment for revenue-sharing will be on December 15. Any updates or editing of previously created content will be handled by internal staff. And, if we should ever need to delete one of your articles, we will return the article and copyright to you via email, utilizing our current article notification system.

Does this mean we are closing our virtual doors? No. Bright Hub will continue to focus on our core content areas of Business, Technology and Education, and will be contracting on an ad hoc basis with a small group of writers and editors, who will work closely with our in-house editorial team.

Fees for both writing assignments and editing work will be based on the length and depth of content coverage needed. In addition, content strategy consultants will be utilized in key areas. These will be professionals with their thumb directly on the pulse of the industries we cover. These strategists will work with our editorial team to ensure we are providing a rich reader-experience for our many website visitors.

If you would like to be considered for future contract work, please send a note to support@brighthub.com. This is also the email you should direct any questions or concerns to about the changes we have outlined here. Internally, Bright Hub is losing two key staff members, Kelly Walborn and Krista Cramer. They were valuable members of our Bright Hub team and we wish them well in their new career opportunities. In addition, both Kim Lloyd and Neil Henry are transitioning out of their current roles, but still remain at Bright Hub working on internal projects until sometime in January. Tracy Sabattis will be assuming leadership of the editorial community, with support from Josh McWilliam and Carly Smith.

We understand that for many of you, the time will have come to part ways. Some of you have been with Bright Hub for a long time, and we are crushed to say goodbye to beloved members of the team, both internal and external. We are grateful and reflective of the success we had together. We thank you for all of your hard work, your commitment and your patience as we journeyed together throughout these tumultuous times, and wish you much future success.

Sincerely,

William Phelan
CEO
Bright Hub, Inc.