Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I earn a commission at no expense to you. Affiliate links are marked with the asterisks (*)
Review disclaimer: This review is based on my own experience at TV Shows Ace. Everything stated is true based on experience at the site.
If you’re looking for somewhere to write, you may come across TV Shows Ace. Here’s my review after writing content for this website.
I try not to write wholly negative reviews when it comes to writing sites. There’s usually something that keeps people at sites, right? However, sometimes, those things that keep people at a site aren’t always positive things. It’s often a case of need rather than want, and I do think that this is something a lot of site owners rely on to keep writers around.
What is TV Shows Ace?
TV Shows Ace is a site that is all about reality TV and gossip. If you have a passion for 90 Day Fiance, Sister Wives, and other similar reality shows, this site could come up on your list as a place to write content.
It’s a news site. When you take a post, you have two hours to get it in. If you need more time, you’ll need to chat to your editor. There is a writer chat for all individuals where you can share pitches, put out title suggestions if there wasn’t one with the links to news that you can grab, and talk about other needs.
Payments are once a week on a Monday. Writers need to keep track of the amount they write and then provide that number plus any bonuses gained during the week by Monday morning at the latest. I was paid $14 per article, and I will say that it was nowhere near enough for the amount of work that was required.
Writers* don’t just write the content. They need to source an image, find two social posts/extra images to put in the post, and grab internal and external links. The only part that I really had a problem with was grabbing the social posts/images. Sometimes there was nothing to use, but they had to be done.
A micromanaging client who thinks she’s your boss
A lot of my clients will tell me the content they need at the start of the month and then leave me be. If there’s something that comes up, they know they can email me and I’ll get back to them within 24 hours.
When it comes to entertainment journalism, there can be a shorter time frame. I’m used to writing content up that day or for the next day, depending on the angle taken. So, taking content and writing within two hours wasn’t a problem. I’d just set times to work on this particular site and see what I could do within that time frame I had.
However, from the second I started writing, I realized how much of a micromanager the client was. I work in a certain way. It’s good for my productivity. I’ll write and then I’ll go back to add in any formatting while I’m proofreading. Well, this client would track what I was doing while I was doing it and then interrupt mid-work to “remind” me of things that I just hadn’t gotten around to doing yet because I was writing and not formatting.
She made it clear that she is very “hands-on” because she’s had issues with writers in the past. Being hands-on has proven successful for her. Instead, for me, the whole experience felt like she was breathing down my neck. It caused more stress than it needed to, and immediately made me dislike writing anything at the site. One “mistake” (which wasn’t really a mistake as you hadn’t submitted it yet) was pulled up immediately. Give me strength!
On top of that, it was clear this client believed she was everyone’s boss. A client-freelancer relationship is one on an equal footing, but this client didn’t believe that. She would talk down to me every time she felt I had done something wrong.
For example, there was a time with an image that I thought was a good one. The topic of the article was about how an outfit caused uproar among fans, and when I saw it, I couldn’t figure out why and had to read an article to find out. Having that image pop up on social media or in a Google search would have had me reading the article to find out why it was such a problem. Oh no, this client changed the image to something that didn’t even connect to the original outfit to “not give anything away,” and then proceeded to talk down to me about how I got it wrong.
It was this belittling of people that made me decide to quit. I made it clear that it was her way of speaking to people that was the final straw. To her, I had a terrible attitude toward my “boss,” which again, solidified this feeling that she viewed herself as a boss and not a client. There is a huge difference! If I was an employee, I’d expect benefits!
On top of that was the lack of apology when she made a mistake. At one point, yes, I did something wrong. An editor missed it, but I was the one to get the full blame and belittling treatment. I was told there was this problem with “a ton” of articles, and when I asked for links, she made it clear that she hadn’t actually gone through them all. It was only two in the end, and there was no apology for overexaggerating the situation. I get being annoyed, but you apologize when you realize that you’ve made a mistake.
It was bad enough that if she messaged, she expected a response back immediately. I purposely only checked notifications by pulling down my notification bar on my phone so that it wouldn’t come up as “read,” so I wouldn’t have to deal with something right away. Just because I’ve read something doesn’t mean I have time to respond.
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Threats of moving paydays at TV Shows Ace
One of the things that I despised was the way this client would threaten to move paydays just because she wasn’t getting what she wanted from freelancers. Again, she completely forgot that she had freelancers writing at her site. We get to set our own schedules.
She’d demand that more people write at weekends or on an evening. She’d keep saying how she was fed up of her and a few others being the only ones around to write on holidays, forgetting that’s what you get when you hire freelancers.
What was her way of dealing with that and incentivizing people to write at weekend? Pay more for the unsociable hours? Oh no! She would threaten to move “back” to a bi-weekly pay schedule instead of a weekly one. It’s not a professional way to work. Once a pay date or pattern is set, that should be the system to create a good rapport with writers.
Loss of byline when leaving
Something that annoyed me the most was the loss of my byline after I left. The owner of TV Shows Ace was so annoyed by the entire situation that she decided to move all of my articles under a different name. It was like I was never a writer there.
This is unprofessional and I am considering looking into following up about this to be paid a ghostwriting rate. I don’t mind slightly lower rates for writing when I have a byline. I can use that content as samples for other work. When ghostwriting, I charge more because I don’t have that byline. That’s the way it is for freelance writers.
I have had to spend some time going back through a few links to remove them as they are dead links and look unprofessional for me. That’s more time out of my day for something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Removing the content from my byline is actually a breach of contract. It was this action that led to me deciding to finally write this review of writing at TV Shows Ace.
TV Shows Ace is a place for writers to avoid
In the end, I wouldn’t recommend TV Shows Ace as a place for writers* to go to. It is the most toxic website I have ever written at. If it was run well, it could have potentially turned into a great side gig. It just doesn’t work with a micromanager at the helm.
However, the owner needs to remember that people are freelancers and not employees. Freelancers work on their own schedule. That’s the whole point of becoming freelancers! If she wants people working set hours, hire them as employees for those set hours.
There are still many places out there hiring writers. There are also other great ways to make money online. Don’t settle for toxic opportunities out of fear.
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Have you written at TV Shows Ace? Share your experience in the comments below.
