Associated Content is a Waste of Time – You Will Never Make A lot of Money With Associate Content

Is it possible to earn money with Associated Content?  Well…this rant is about the reason why you will probably make little money on Associated Content and why writing for this website is a huge waste of time.  I’ve been using the month of December to determine which website is the best to write for in order to earn a few extra bucks for free lance writing.  So far I’ve tried Associated Content, Text Broker, Brighthub (in progress) and Content Authority.  The reason why I chose these sites are because all of these sites pay for upfront payments.  Upfront payments are great because it provides the writer with instant gratification.  Upfront payments also means there is no waiting for payment and you will know exactly how much money you are earning.

Associated Content is basically a waste of my time and is probably the worst way to make upfront payments.  The premises of this site is that they will pay writers to write on an array of subjects.  One good reason to write for Associated Content is that they will basically pay writers to write about ANYTHING. If you go to their website, you will see that writers are publishing subjects about “The Top 3 Pho Restaurants in Seattle” or the “Best Lemongrass in Saigon Vietnam”.  If you want to write about ANYTHING, you will get paid for it.  This is the only good reason for writing for Associated Content.

Now the bad part…Associated Content’s upfront payments SUCK.  They are so low that writers are basically writing for peanuts.  For example, I submitted an article and only received $2.20, which resulted in a per word payment of $.005.  That’s right, a measly half a cent for each word written.

This low payment resulted in me obsessing on how to increase my upfront payment for the Associated Content website.  There are a ton of shitty reviews on ways to make money on Associated Content and all the articles about how to earn more money on Associated Content is re-hashed content.

If  you’ve read one article about earning more money on AC, then you’ve read them all.  Basically, all these article state are the following:

1. Write about topics that you know about

2. Write about topics that are profitable

3. Write about topics that are not overly saturated

4. Work on “SEO”

5. Promote articles with social media websites (i.e. Myspace, Twitter, Facebook)

6. Increase pageviews with said social media websites

I admit that I am extremely lazy and will try to perform a task with as little effort as possible.  So I decided to perform an experiment and see how much I could make for upfront payments through various methods.  Basically, my hypothesis was that pageviews were the MOST IMPORTANT element of AC and that a large amount of pageviews would equal a larger amount for upfront payments.  Some contributors stated that they were making from $4-$10 per articles for writing stuff about “Cellular Cancer” or “Beethoven’s 5th Symphony”.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out how these articles are PROFITABLE for Associated Content.  However, this is what contributors are asserting that they are getting paid so it must be pageviews.

I’ve learned to perform keyword research in order to determine profitable keywords in Google and assumed that AC would do the same since they generate a hefty portion of their revenue from Google Adsense Ads.  So I performed keyword  research and wrote on a subject that pays $40 per click in Google Adwords (publishers will receive around 20% of what the Adword advertiser pays).  The article was around 400 words and was about Selling Structured Settlements.  What did I receive for the article?  A whopping $2.32!  I wrote another article on the Samurai Noodle House (A ramen shop in Seattle) and that paid about the same amount!  So far I’ve written 27 articles and all of them have been published and have been paid an average of $2.20 per article.  This means I’m averaging a crappy $.005 cents per word or something like that.

On top of this, Associated Content wants the contributors to promote their articles in order to get performance payments.  Performance payments are payments that are based on the amount of page views to each of the contributors articles.  For every 1,000 page impressions, AC will pay the user $1.50.  Also, pageviews will determine the amount of “clout” that a contributor has and the more clout (scale goes from 1-10), the more that one will be paid for pageviews.

So basically, contributors will only be paid $2-$3 range until they increase their pageviews.  However, increasing pageviews requires one to gain fans, use the forums, kiss ass on other contributor’s articles and promote articles on social media websites.  So an easy up-front payment turns into a full-blown Internet Marketing  job…which is a HUGE waste of time.

Remember, if I want to work on making money from page views, then I will work on my OWN sites thank you very much!

I just want an honest upfront payment! and Associated Content’s upfront payments are DEFINITELY low and not worth your time.

Want to get paid at least $.01 per word?  Try Textbroker or Content Authority!!!!

Here’s here for my profile