With VCherish.com, get Rs 1,000 per article

MUMBAI, INDIA: If you have the passion for writing whether it is creative pieces or hardcore news reporting and wish to get it publish and want to earn money in return, then VCherish.com — is a perfect place on the Internet which offers an unique paid freelance opportunity to young people, who wish to contribute original content like poems, short stories, articles, news reports, pictures and even videos.

The Mumbai based online media and electronic publishing portal offers a great chance and platform to young people in the 15-45 years of age group across India and abroad to express and contribute their thoughts, ideas, stories and news articles in written form or visuals.

According to VCherish‘s founder and CEO Pushpendra Mehta, the portal’s idea was born in August 2008 but it took a while before it was finally launched in early part of 2010 due to uncertain economic scenario around 2008-09.

“There’s no online media portal for the youth where they get paid freelance opportunity for their creativity and talent,” Mehta says. The site has five major subject categories — Career and Education, Engaging Talks, Truly Different, People Connect and Recommend and each subject have multiple guidelines to help contributors in identifying the areas for submitting the entries.

“About 40,000 unique visitors have registered with the site, since it was rolled out in February this year. It includes young talented freelance contributors, writers and journalists from the US, the UK, Philippines, Italy and other countries, apart from small towns and big cities across India,” he adds.

Interestingly, site generates 10-15 per cent unique visitors’ traffic from non-English readers, while 80-85 percent traffic comes from India. It has a feature of semi —language translation for non-English readers, where the reader can read the content in his or her choice of language.

About the paid freelance opportunity, Mehta says that it has three big advantages for freelance contributors that include contribution’s visibility, earning index, building references and relationship internationally.

“Apart from getting the content published on the site, the contributor is personally benefited as his/her picture along with profile and name is also published. Each contribution that is either a written content, picture or a 3-minute video, gets Rs.1000 cheque,” Mehta explains. He also points out that they offer opportunity to the freelance writers to publish their content in the form of e-books which can be read online or downloaded on mobile devices and smart phones.

Since the site is updated every two months, any contributor can submit at the most 3 entries, which are carefully verified by an in-house 10-12 member editorial team in terms of originality, authenticity and copyrights before the entries are published online.

It has a total staff strength of 40 people which is a mix of in-house staff, freelance and outsourced. A 15-member management team looks after marketing, ads sales and human resource, apart from 12 people edit team, while 9 people work as freelancers and the remaining 4 people are web-designers.

About VCherish’s revenue, the e-book publishing segment brings about 60 percent returns while 40 percent comes from online advertising. “We are very clear about our business model and how it should be made sustainable,” Mehta notes.

Moreover, Mehta concludes by sharing his future plans. “We are also looking at multiple revenue sources for future which include online retailing, education and events; however it will be done in a phased manner. We are expecting around 20-30 percent revenue from each segment.”