Examiner.com closing down

Got a link to the announcement ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examiner.com <- doesn't mean much but I got it from a contributor who sent me the email she received:

"Dear Examiner:
From the earliest days of Examiner.com, we have strived to provide a platform to connect readers with passionate contributors like you. Through billions of content views served we were able to create something unique together and we continued to support the platform over the years.
Media consumption has transformed dramatically over the years and our content initiatives have shifted with business priorities. To that end, we regret to inform you that Examiner.com has made the difficult decision to shut down operations. The Examiner.com website will close down on or around July 10, 2016.
Effective immediately, Examiner.com will stop taking any new submissions. Please take adequate steps to preserve your work. Examiner.com is not responsible for saving contributions, nor do we guarantee access to the contributor portal. Any payments you have earned pursuant to the Examiners Independent Contractor Agreement and License you entered into with Examiner.com will be paid to you up until the closing of the site and in accordance with our usual payment schedule and the terms of the Examiner.com Payment Policy.
Any questions or concerns should be directed only to [email protected].
For those of you contributing to AXS.com, you will continue to be able to do so and will receive additional information in the coming days. The AXS content program will remain active and unchanged. If you are not currently an AXS contributor but would like to apply to do so, please do so here.
Again, we wish you success and thank you for all your amazing work and effort as an Examiner. It’s been a great ride.
Examiner HQ"

I used to write regularly for them. I would do episode reviews/recaps of shows like Dexter and The Walking Dead. At that time if you knew what you were doing and got your review up at the right time you could land near the top of the first page on Google News for people searching for things like Walking Dead Recap etc. I would get tens of thousands of views a day and was making some pretty good money. Then Google kicked them in the teeth and suddenly it became nearly impossible to get good placements on Google News. The same articles that were generating 30,000+ views were suddenly generating 300 views. Not to mention it became very difficult to get the editors to accept your article for Google news. I stopped writing for them because it wasn't worth working for a couple of hours on something only to make 20 cents from it.

You could tell they were in trouble because they did a full redesign of the site and plastered it with ads including some pretty annoying pop-ups so I think their traffic tanked and then they annoyed the shit out of those who were still coming to the site.

Thanks for the insight! Is there any general interest site like them left; ie a content farm not tied to a specific niche? Friend is pretty devastated cause she used them to get into events and such and host articles.

I have never seen the site the Examiner.com.

It looks a nice site too.

How much click fraud/ad blockers though?

I'm not really sure. There used to be several of them, I can't remember the names now, but I think a lot of them have shut down. I think the problem with many of them is that they had a lot of duplicate content. Once people realize if you wrote about something that was trending it could get a lot of hits pretty soon everyone started writing about those topics and the sites would have 50 articles all about the same subject on them.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

I wonder who will buy it. I would think it has too many legacy links and too much content to just shutter.

That's a good question. I just logged into my account there and their stats say I have more than 250 articles currently published, but last month those articles generated a total of 45 views so, at least the stuff I have on there, is getting no traffic, but there are a ton of back links and I'm sure others are getting more traffic.

They actually changed those stats in the last 24 hours so they don't have any payout at the end. My friend had her stats changed from 9,900 to 40. That's only 10 bucks or so but still.

Philip Anschutz (billionaire) owns the company that owns it, so they may not sell it. It is shuttered for lack of operating revenue probably. But for someone it would be worth buying.