What’s It Like Writing for Associated Content?

This is the first in a series to help you get an idea of what it’s like to write on different sites. Today, we’re looking at Associated Content (AC), a company recently bought out by Yahoo!

Associated Content Review

What is Associated Content?

Associated Content is a revenue sharing site for writers, video makers, slideshow makers and podcasters. They offer small upfront payments and ad revenue for page views for each of these types of content. Being a write, I can only tell you what it’s like to write on the site. If you have ever worked with AC on videos, slideshows or podcasts, let us know what you think of the site.

Does Content Have to be Unique?

While AC encourages you to write unique work for them, you can submit pieces that are also published elsewhere, allowing you to develop more than one income stream for the same piece of writing. Not every revenue share site allows this.

Most Web writers avoid duplicate content because it gets rated lower or not shown at all by search engines, but as long as someone is reading a piece of content that belongs to you, do you really care? I don’t. I have not noticed a big difference in different versions of articles at sites compared against the same exact article in three locations. That’s a great idea for an experiment though!

How do I Make Money with Associated Content?

You should also know that Associated Content increases your performance payment level as your “clout” increases. Your clout is determined by both the number of articles you publish and the traffic your articles generates. Once you reach a clout level of 7, you begin receiving a rate bonus of 5 cents, which improves incrementally up to a clout level of 10, which gives you 50 cent bonus. I’m at 6 right now. I hope Yahoo! doesn’t go changing things right before I hit my bonus!

Is AC Easy to Use?

The old version of AC was a little trying to navigate, but the new one is a clean, mean, Web machine. Associated Content puts up posts called “Calls for Content.” These are a listing of articles they are looking for that match the profile you have submitted for writing topics. There are rarely any topics of interest that actually pay upfront. But if the site is looking for a title, it’s because they believe it will do well generating revenue, and you get a share in that if you write the title.

How Much Does the Associated Content Pay?

When Calls for Content are paid, it’s about $3.50 up front for the article (after they approve it). The payment is issued immediately to your PayPal account. Your article will then generate passive income for you on the site. I sometimes find wait times for approval are too long, as much as ten days. Most sites can approval articles in three to seven days.

Performance payments are issued at the beginning of the month once your balance reaches above $1.50 (5,000 page views). After one month, my 22 articles generated about 500 page views and earned 80 cents, so the payment appears to be better than the published numbers suggest.

Some articles received no views at all, an odd event, since all of my articles on other sites were viewed at least once. Other articles received no views at all for weeks, then suddenly became popular.

Including upfront payments, my total was about $7, with another $12 in upfront payments pending. I can here your expletives at reading only $7 per month. But extrapolate that results to 1,000 articles. Now you have $350 per month, plus your higher clout should bring you another $80 or so. Good for extra money but not a career. But the nice thing about passive payments is that once the work is done the money keeps rolling in. I haven’t added an article to AC in almost a year and my clout has risen anyway. My 44 articles have been viewed 15,538 times. I’ve made $91.51 altogether. Just be sure you write about topics that will always be relevant. Like a good suit, a well-written article is timeless.