One Snarky Chica with Issues

It seems like you cannot go to a blog without seeing a little icon to sign up for Associated Content these days. And if you look through posts on sites like MyLot or writing sites you will see a discussion on if Associated Content really pays or not. There is also talk about Associated Content being a scam and that it hurts professional freelancers. So, is Associated Content a good place to make your self some extra cash? Maybe.

I have tried out Associated Content and have mixed feelings about it.

You barely have to glance at the articles on the main page to know that they will take almost anything, with the more sensational items prominently displayed front and center. The writing skills of most of the articles on the site are quite atrocious. That is not to say that some of them are well written, because there are some high quality articles on the site. Unfortunately those are in the minority. I frequently see everything from numerous spelling errors to flat out wrong facts to poorly constructed sentences. Basically there seems to be no ‘quality control’ department at Associated Content. Instead it seems like they are a bunch of crap writing enablers.

But wait, you say, Associated Content offers a way for unheard voices to be published! And without the wait time of submitting to a magazine and such!

Rubbish, I say.

Yes, the time between submitting an article for payment and having the money show up in your PayPal is quite quick actually. The documentation on the site says an average of about 2 weeks to get your article approved for payment from when you submit it. In actuality it all depends on who your reviewer is. For instance, today I had a few articles get approved that I submitted on the 17th of August. And if I were to approve their insultingly low offers today I would get paid tonight.

I like that I can get paid so quickly by Associated Content for doing something that takes little effort. I say this because I know how much crap they take so I put very little effort into my articles. My average payout is around $6 per 400-word article. However from what I read I am above average as most people get around $3 to $4 per article.

That is pretty much the only thing that I like about Associated Content. The list of things I dislike is a bit longer.

Associated Content offers a page view bonus for articles. This sounds great but not really. I have an article that was published back in May that I personally have clicked on from several different computers. In different states. I did not log into my Associated Content account from these computers. My page views for this article sits firmly at zero. Hrm. Wonder how many other articles have incorrect page view information?

Associated Content sells the articles that are on its site to other places. When you submit an article you can choose to submit as exclusive or non-exclusive. Supposedly the price difference is great according to documentation on the website. In actuality it is $0.03 in my experience. How do I know this? Because two people live in my house and we each have an account. As a test I wrote an article and submitted it as non-exclusive.When I got the money offer I declined it. Then I submitted it as exclusive under the other account. The result? The exclusive article got an offer $0.03 higher. Yes, that’s right, you sell your copyright for $0.03!

Supposedly when you select non-exclusive (which I do) you retain the copyright to the article. This means that when Associated Content sells off articles they cannot sell yours. Or can they? There are several threads in the discussion forums over at Associated Content where people have discovered their articles on random sites that are not Associated Content. Even people that did non-exclusive have seen their articles on other sites. Apparently Associated Content is not responding to these people. The articles are also posted in their entirety, which means no page view bonus.

An example of a place where these articles are showing up is DentalPlans.com. The easiest way to find the articles is to go to the site map, where you will see the heading ‘articles’ with the category ‘Associated Content’ under it. Clicking on that takes you to articles that no one is getting paid for except Associated Content.

They don’t seem to like it when you submit articles as non-exclusive. They will leave you little comments - that you can’t respond to - that say “we would have paid you more if you had submitted as exclusive.” Uh, riiight. Remember, three cents. They also get downright bossy at times. If they decline an article they will practically demand that you re-submit it for no payment so that you can earn the performance bonus. They also expect you to do a lot of work for them. Here is an example of a comment I recently got from them:

You might have noticed your articles have been getting lower bids as of late. While we were really excited about these articles when you first started submitting them (we still are), the page view performance of them are not what we were hoping for and not worth the usual $7 we offered for each at first. We would love to return to that offer amount, but we need you to pump up your PVs! AC offers tons of tutorials on increasing PVs and there are always other CPs offering suggestions and comparing strategies in our forums. If you fully utilize all our resources, we’re confident that your PV performance will start to better reflect the high quality of your content. Thanks and good luck! -

So, my page views ended up going up quite a bit on their own, which I could see. What do you think happened to my payment offers? Well, today I got six offers, with the average being $3.55. Same series of articles mentioned above, yet super low offers. And in the past few weeks I have noticed something else. They would approve around 12 articles all at a decent amount and there would be one in the middle with an offer of $3.01. I suspect they thought I wouldn’t notice the one different one and would accept it. I declined. I can make more an hour at McDonald’s.

It’s really quite frustrating that the reviewers can leave you little snide remarks but you have no way of responding. Today I had an article declined for being identical content already published by me. That is really amazing considering I had never written on that subject before.

You may be thinking - what are you crying about? It’s still money. And I agree, it is still extra money. But it does not change the fact that this company appears to be a bit on the skeevy side of things.

Is Associated Content a scam? If they trick you into giving them free articles that they turn around and sell, yes. (This happened to someone on the AC message board)

Does Associated Content really pay? Yes.

Is Associated Content a good place to make extra money? Yes, if you don’t mind it $3 at a time.

Is Associated Content a good place to build your freelance portfolio? No way. The place is overrun with people that cannot spell masquerading as writers. I don’t even use my real name on the site. In fact, when they contacted me and wanted to make me a content producer of the month I declined because I did not want people knowing it was me writing for the site.

This is merely my personal opinion on Associated Content regarding my experience with them. If you are interested in their service feel free to decide for your self. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for new computers to view that article on that sits at zero page views.