Secrets to Success on Associated Content
by Michelle L Devon (Michy)

As of the time of this writing, I have been an Associated Content – Content Producer for a few weeks short of one year.

In my time here, I’ve had my ups and down, good days and bad, but no matter what’s happened, there is just something about Associated Content that keeps me coming back, week after week, to network, write, earn some extra cash, and cut loose and bring back the joy to writing for myself, instead of writing for everyone else.

I’ve had some lowball offers and some fantastic ones (my offers have ranged from $3 to $50 per article). I’ve had some articles barely get 100 page views while others have been featured in the showcase, and many are well on their way to 10,000 page views, with one having already crossed that 10K hurdle.

I’m not an expert, and I’m likely not even close to having the page views some people on this site have managed, but I do consistently well on AC, and continue to increase my income as well as my readership every month.

Coming up on my one year anniversary, I decided to take a break from writing my usual content and take a look at some statistics from my own writing over the past year, and then share with you the conclusions that I have drawn from the last year worth of Associated Content experience.

Let’s start with some of my personal stats as of the last page view update.

210 Articles Total, 173 Submitted for payment, 37 Submitted for free (excluding 56 poetry and prose free submissions)

Between initial payments and the performance bonus, if I continue at the rate I am currently (average page views and average initial payments), by the end of one year of performance bonuses, I will have increased my average payment per article approximately $7.00 per article.

Assuming my page views continue to increase with my promotional efforts, that could be even more, making my average payment per article both upfront and performance based would be between $12-15 or more per article by the end of one year (and will continue growing a little every month the PB is in effect.)

Here are the categories I’ve divided my content into, in order of best average PAGE VIEW performance – the first number is how many articles I have in that category; the second number is how many average page views that category has given:

Sports – 1 / 2141
Opinion/Editorial – 13 / 1861
Legal – 5 / 1571
Lifestyle – 29 / 1507
Holiday – 3 / 1471
News – 26 / 1305
Arts & Entertainment – 10 / 915
Health & Wellness – 54 / 751
Society – 1 / 748
Writing* – 31 / 672
Business – 10 / 649
Technology – 11 / 631
Humor – 10 / 335
Local, non-news – 1 / 243
Travel – 2 / 186
Home Improvement – 1 / 158
(*This category is not one AC has – I call it my ‘writing’ category – a few of these were under technology, a few went under A&E, and a few went under education, but since so many of us do write ‘writing’ articles or AC writing articles and promoting articles on AC type of content, I separated this into my own category of ‘writing’.)

Now, here are the categories I’ve divided my content into, in order of INITIAL PAYMENT – the first number is the number of articles in that category:

Holiday – 3 / $8.67
Lifestyle – 29 / $8.33
Local, non-news – 1 / $8.00
Business – 10 / $7.18
Technology – 11 / $7.08
Home Improvement – 1 / $7.00
Health & Wellness – 54 / $6.72
Legal – 5 / $6.80
Travel – 2 / $5.50
Society – 1 / $5.00
News – 26 / $4.04
Writing – 31 / $4.00
Arts & Entertainment – 10 / $3.94
Opinion/Editorial – 13 / $1.97
Sports – 1 / $0.00
Humor – 10 / $0.00

Analysis:

I don’t have enough information to draw any statistically accurate conclusions, because I don’t write in all categories AC offers, and some of the categories I did write in don’t have enough articles to draw statistically accurate conclusions.

For example, my sports article did very well page view wise without any promotion, but it was submitted for free, three days before the super bowl and was about the super bowl, as well as being a ‘Showcase’ article – so I have no idea how it would have performed if it wasn’t featured or how much I would have made on it if submitted for payment.

Writing articles were spread out over several different categories, and therefore, I can’t accurately assess them, since I don’t know in what categories AC ended up putting them.

But after almost a year on this site, these are the conclusions I have drawn that may help new or even seasoned Content Producers make the most of their time here on Associated Content.

Conclusion #1:

Poetry and Humor don’t pay upfront, and they don’t perform well comparatively. These types of articles, unless you already have a really big fan base or think you can draw a really big fan base, are likely to knock down your overall average for both page views and initial offers. I personally will not submit poetry to AC again, because a freelance writer should know their market, and AC is not a poetry market.

However, I may still submit a humor article now and again, but I will ensure my humor articles can also provide some relevant information, so they can be placed in a category besides humor and possibly receive an initial payment, or at least earn more page views.

Conclusion #2:

Opinion/Editorials are a shoe-in for page views if they are well written and non-ranting. I have one that is ranting, and its page views are low, but the rest are doing pretty good.

The problem with Op/Ed, as I see it, is that AC rarely pays anything for them upfront, or if they do, it’s rather low, and the page views, while they look great, aren’t enough to cover the loss of initial payment vs. page views.

Now, I’m not saying don’t write Op/Ed pieces. They have a purpose and help draw a readership, and if page views are important to you to help increase your average page views, Op/Eds that are well written will definitely give you a better page view average, but they are going to lower your overall average payment.

My Op/Ed recommendation? Save your Op/Ed pieces for things you feel very passionate about that you don’t mind writing about even if you don’t see a penny, and then write them in a compelling manner.

Conclusion #3:

Content Special Offers are special offers Associated Content provides that allow content producers to write an article on a specific topic and receive a guaranteed minimum payment that is usually a bit higher than what they normally would receive for the same type of content.

CSOs will help raise your overall average initial payment if you take advantage of them. I have only written four CSOs the entire time I’ve been here, but clearly, the categories I did them in have a higher than normal average payment.

Discussing this with other Content Producers who have written CSOs, I’ve found CSOs probably align well with advertising, which is why AC pays a bit more for them, but I don’t see a significant increase in page views for doing a CSO – just an increase in initial payment averages. Your mileage may vary, but this has been my experience with CSOs.

Conclusion #4:

Well written and well promoted news that is properly indexed by Google in their News channel consistently performs in the several thousand page view range for me, and I have heard other CPs tell me that News that is properly indexed continues to perform above average for them too.

The challenges I see with News are threefold: 1) you have to write very timely topics, 2) you need to get page views in quickly after publishing to index in the Google news channel, and you need to index HIGH in the Google news channel, and 3) you are limited to a maximum payment – so if it doesn’t perform well, AC’s maximum for News isn’t all that much.

Yet, some of my News articles have hit over 2,000 page views in less than 3 day’s time – and still get trickles of page views and comments even several months after publishing.

If you are going to write News articles, write good ones – timely, interesting topics, good titles – and promote the heck out of them IMMEDIATELY upon publication.

Conclusion #5:

Holiday articles perform well if submitted timely enough. My Christmas Holiday gift guides have done quite well with ZERO promotion from me. A friend of mine is a CP on this site, and he’s written Halloween articles that are by far his best performers that came out October 1 and October 6. Another CP here has comment that her best performer is a Halloween costume article. Another friend of mine write an Romance and Intimacy article right before Valentine’s Day that is her best performer.

Holiday articles that are about standard, mainstream, popular holidays seem to do well if you have good keyword density, snappy and informative titles, and get them out about four weeks prior to the holiday in question. These should also perform well again around that holiday every year, especially if you promote them again every time the holiday rolls around.

Conclusion #6:

At first, I was really surprised how well the Legal category performed as far as page views are concerned, especially considering I’ve done nothing to promote the articles in that category.

Being the closet geek I am, I sat out to find out why they had performed so well with no help from me. I realized soon enough why that is—the legal information arena is a virtually untapped writing niche!

There are tons of websites about finding an attorney, legal aide counsel, sales and solicitation sites for legal services, but there are very few quality legal information articles out there. Of course, one reason for this is because laws vary from state to state and even city and county. However, there are many general topics in the legal field you can write about at the ‘federal level’ and then simply use a disclaimer: “Federal law says XXX, but your local or state laws may be more stringent. Be sure to check your state or local laws for any changes to this information.” Or something like that.

The Legal category might very well be a veritable treasure trove of an untapped market that people ARE searching for! Also, since Business articles seem to perform decently, if you can mix some Legal and Business together into one article, and promote it well, you might just have a winner.

Conclusion #7:

Arts & Entertainment performs well on page views, but is awfully low on initial offers most of the time. This is likely due to the fact that it doesn’t align well with advertising. If you happen to touch on a very timely, charged topic, you can probably get a good initial offer, but if not, chances are your initial offers in this category will be low.

However, unlike Op/Ed pieces that the performance bonus does not make up the difference in the lost initial offer, my experience with Arts & Entertainment pieces is that the performance bonus will likely make up for the difference, and since they help increase your average page views per article, I think that writing quality, long-lasting, and highly searched for A&E pieces is likely worth the trouble.

Conclusion #8:

Lifestyle articles perform well and perform well consistently, with slightly higher than average initial offers, especially if they are evergreen Lifestyle articles. Under the lifestyle category heading, the Dating & Relationships sub-category seems to perform the best both in initial offers and in page views, and Parenting doesn’t do half bad either, but overall, the other sub-categories in Lifestyle perform well for me too. The one thing I notice about Lifestyle articles is that I see a quick influx of several hundred page views, then a steady stream of page views every month thereafter.

Conclusion #10:

Health & Wellness is a broad category, with many sub-categories that some perform well and some do not. Diseases & Conditions do acceptably well if promoted properly. Drugs & Medication don’t perform quite as well, but Beauty seems to do well consistently. You won’t see a large influx of page views upfront with the Beauty sub-category, but every one of my Beauty articles are receiving a steady stream of page views every week. Beauty articles also tend to align well with advertising, which may account for the slightly higher than average initial offers in this sub-category too.

Of course, there are many categories on Associated Content that I’ve never written for, such as Politics, Seniors, Automotive and Recreation, among others. These and a few others I cannot speak to, because I haven’t had experience with them.

***

As I said earlier, these are by no means statistically accurate conclusions, but rather, conclusions I’ve drawn based on my past year here with Associated Content. Again, your desire to earn, your writing and promoting ability, your understanding of keywords and search engine optimization and the time and effort you put into your time with Associated Content will all make a difference in how your writing on this site performs.

Final Conclusion:

You’ll need to click HERE to read the FINAL CONCLUSION about writing for Associated Content!

And CLICK HERE to join Associated Content and start making money for yourself – you don’t have to be an experienced writer to join – anyone with a passion to write or share an opinion can join. If you can write a blog that people like to read, you can write for AC!

As always, Keep Writing!

Love and stuff,
Michy

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