Easter, despite the fuzzy bunnies and colorful eggs, is a season of religious faith or lack thereof for Christians, and this season’s spring equinox has just passed, and for our Pagan friends we have Beltane coming up and Passover for our Jewish friends…. I’m sure there are other faiths and religions I am missing here for the spring season.

Spring is known as a time of reflection, freshening, cleaning and rebirth or resurrection.

Unsent Letters would like to feature the most outstanding religious themed letters the week of April 10th – April 17th.

These letters, if accepted, will receive a flat $10 payment and will be posted on the blog with TWO live links to sites of your choice and will be heavily promoted. Some of these letters can still be considered for publication in future Unsent Letters books as well, and might receive book publication offers, but the primary focus will be for the blog.

From now until April 7th, we are seeking religious Unsent Letters. The letter can be to God, a deity of choice, Jesus, a religious leader, a church, an entire denomination or faith, a pastor, minister, Sunday school teacher, the Bible, to your parents about the faith they raised you in, etc.

Be creative, but there must be a ‘religious’ or ’spiritual’ intent behind the letter. No, the letters don’t have to be ‘positive’ or ‘uplifting’, but if you go ‘negative’, please no ‘hate-speech’. Not all letters will be accepted, so give us your best.

In order to ensure these letters are reviewed in a timely manner, send them the same way you would any Unsent Letter, but change the subject line to:

UNSENT LETTERS SUBMISSIONS – EASTER

For the rest of the guidelines, see this link:

http://ourunsentletters.com/node/3

Hope you’ll submit! Please spread the word!

Love and stuff,
Michy
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Popularity: 1%

Offers are coming a lot faster now than before. YAY! It really does motivate me to keep writing.

My goal was to write the same number of articles for AC for upfront as I did for Helium. I have a few more to go to be sure. Because of the delay in publishing, I have about one more week left of the challenge before I can post the results of the challenge and then compare to Helium.

Then, I just finished emailing with Suite101 about the challenge with them in May. The final results of all three coming the second week of June, thereabouts.

Anyhoo, let’s look at some of what happened on AC today:

Lowest offers was $4.36, which they said was ‘too common’, and then the highest this round was $5.03.

What’s really surprising me is how low the performance bonus is.

It’s not totally fair to compare Helium’s running total to AC’s performance bonus, because Helium does revenue sharing, not page view payments. Some of Helium’s channels pay more than others. I really believed going into this that AC would blow Helium away on the passive part of the income. Part of what is hurting the performance bonus on AC is that the articles aren’t indexing timely.

My friend helped me out again, but checking my published content on the challenge account today, I’ve still got three that aren’t indexed. But that’s better than what it was the other day. Still, that means several of my articles on the challenge account haven’t even been discoverable until just the last few days. That hurts page views for the challenge, I’m afraid.

Still, hour for hour worked versus pay, AC’s upfront payments are still wining out over Helium. However, AC might want to be careful. As Helium continues to improve the payments made to writers upfront, with the higher beginner’s revenue share over AC’s performance bonus, Helium just might end up being a major contender in the big content sites sooner than folks think.

I checked my stats today on Suite101… I’m very excited now to see how things work over there. The three sites have the same final purpose, but how they pay writers varies. AC upfront and performance bonus – Helium is upfront (monthly) and revenue share – and Suite101 which is a straight revenue share by percentages (make more the longer you’re there and the more you write).

I’m still thinking I’ll see the biggest overall from Suite101, with AC being the second and Helium third (but the Marketplace still being good for additional revenue.)

What do you guys think?

Guess we’ll find out more in June on that.

For now, time to get back to work so the challenge is fair and I get the same number of articles up on all three sites!

Love and stuff,
Michy
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Popularity: 3%

Those of you who know me know that I am a commercial nut. When everyone else is leaving the room to go to the bathroom, get a soda, or check their email during the commercials, that’s when I tune in. I love commercials, for some strange reason. I’m drawn to them. I also think I could write much better commercials than most of the ones I see on TV.

So today, I want to talk about two commercials that totally miss the mark with advertisers, and yet, the companies probably don’t have a clue.

The first one is the one where the commercial shows a cat answering the door for a dog and then the dog and the cat start searching around the house and the announcer says, “When your cat needs help to find her litter box, some wonderful has happened.”

I’ll tell you what wonderful is. When your cat needs help finding her litter box, she’ll piss and poop on your carpet. Isn’t that wonderful?

The idea of the commercial is that your cat can’t find her litter box because it isn’t releasing any odor, which is a good thing. I’m all for not releasing odor in my house.

However, if the cat can’t find it, the cat can’t use it!

Litter box commercial: FAIL.

………….

The other one is a commercial from Pizza Hut about their new pasta line. They have a semi-fancy restaurant with a lot of less than semi-fancy people who were most likely grabbed on the street and asked if they’d like a free meal in a nice restaurant that night (though obviously not dressed for it) and then, they are served pasta.

While they are eating, the chef comes out with an announcer and the announcer asks if everyone is enjoying their pasta. When everyone murmurs yes, he says, “Well, we have a surprise for you…” or something like that and then the chef announces, “I didn’t cook the meal. Pizza Hut cooked the meal.”

Then everyone gasps and is shocked that Pizza Hut could cook such a good meal.

Does Pizza Hut not realize that they are insinuating that their food is so bad that nobody could possibly believe that their pasta could be any good?

Commercial for Pasta: FAIL

And there’s my two commercial rants for the day. Trust me, there’s more in my head to come.

Love and stuff,
Michy

Popularity: 1%

I’m truly impressed with the recent turn around times, and just like I predicted, the faster AC is approving me the more likely I am to write more. It’s very motivating to see offers coming in so quickly. I put two articles up last night and both were reviewed today. That’s atypical. I’d like for that to be the norm!

Maybe they are working on making it the norm? It’s good for us and good for them, because I feel certain that other people feel the same way about it, that they write more when offers are faster in coming.

That said, I got a couple offers yesterday and a few today. Lowest was $4.27 and the highest was $5.11.

My page view average is up to 71 now, so even with new articles being published, I’m slowing climbing. That’s a plus.

That’s really all for today though – I’m off to get some of my own personal fiction writing done now. I’ve got a fiction deadline on my novel! I’ll update more after the weekend!

Love and stuff,
Michy
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Popularity: 1%

Well, got my lowest offer on my challenge account today… $3.98. It does get discouraging when offers start getting that low. If an article takes me 20-30 minutes to write, I’m not even breaking 8 bucks per hour at that rate. I’m used to making more than that. I don’t think I’ve worked for 8 bucks per hour since I was in college. We won’t mention how long ago.

Still, 8 bucks per hour is not bad for someone just starting out, and it is a long-term goal thing. The idea is that the offers will grow and the page views will grow, and the performance bonus will eventually fill in the gaps. My real account is proof positive of that.

However, I should have prefaced my whining with the fact that I knew the article I got that offer on was saturated on the internet and on AC.

Unfortunately, after the weekend, going in and checking articles today, I’ve discovered that there are three new ones that haven’t indexed. They really aren’t hard to tell, because they have very low page views compared to the others. Right now, my average is sitting at about 70 page views per article. I’m thinking that’s not so bad, since my oldest article is only three weeks old and my newest is two days old, and considering that five of them still aren’t indexed yet.

Because I’m working under the radar, I can’t promote those missing indexed articles, so I really have no way to get them indexed. Shrug. I’ll fix them once I reveal who I am on the challenge account and then I’ll get them indexed and let those sit until I check back for the stats on them in June when I write up the comparison of the big three sites: Helium, Suite101, and of course, Associated Content.

So far, AC is still smoking Helium on dollar per hour worked. Interestingly enough, Helium is smoking AC on the page view revenue, but AC’s upfront payments are more than making up for it.

Will AC’s upfront payments make up for the page view revenue on Suite101? I’m actually curious about that now. I’m enjoying the challenge in one respect. In another respect, it’s becoming a little discouraging when I think how much money I could have made if I’d done this on my own account. The challenge will be ending soon, and I will have to let this account go… hey, that’s gonna hurt!

It’ll be worth it though. I’ve enjoyed the comparison.

So far, AC’s biggest detriments are the long wait times for offers and the site glitches. They REALLY need to fix the site glitches. In the entire challenge for Helium, I ran into only one glitch and that was not really a glitch. It was a scheduled site maintenance early one morning for about two hours. It was when most people in the US probably were asleep.

AC needs to fix the glitches, for sure. It does seem, however, that the articles I put up in the last batch got reviewed faster than they had been. Only a three day wait for this last batch.

Anyway, just wanted to blow off steam about things not indexing again. I know my average would be over 100 if they were indexing. I guess for a three week old account as far as posting articles, I’ll live with the 70 average.

That’s it for tonight. More to come soon!

Love and stuff,
Michy
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Popularity: 2%

I was surprised today that all of the pending articles I had submitted on the challenge account were given offers! Wow! The offers appear to have gone down a little bit. I won’t list them all individually, but they average $4.53 for all of them.

The highest one was offered $5.16 and the lowest was the lowest yet at $4.11. It received the stock comment that it wasn’t unique enough and was too similar to other things on AC. None of the others received a comment from the CM.

In an ironic twist, the article that has received the highest offer was the same one that was rejected prior for not citing sources. I think I told you guys I had changed it a little to state it was personal experience? That article is now my highest offer.

It just goes to show, AC really does want that ‘personal experience’ along with solid information.

So I did a little figuring with the new offers now, and I’m up to over $7.00 per hour for the hourly wage now. I’m very pleased with that. It will continue to go up from there, I’m hoping.

While it’s not going to make me rich any time soon, over $7.00 per hour is more than the national minimum wage and I’d rather make 7 bucks per hour writing at home with my feet put up than making less than that while flipping burgers.

Wouldn’t you?

Also, that’s nearly $5 per hour higher than where I was with the Helium challenge at this point.

A few other CPs have found the account, not sure whether they know it’s me or not, but they are leaving nice comments and have welcomed me to AC. I don’t feel like I’m writing in a vacuum so much anymore. If this were my ‘real’ new account, I would probably be feeling pretty stoked about people starting to find me and leave me good comments.

All said and done, I’m pleased. Only one complaint today… AC made offers on all my submitted articles! Now I guess I have to write a bunch more!

I think that’s important for AC to consider though… now that my queue is empty, I’m all ready to write more! If they would make their offers faster and keep up with them without a wait time, or a long wait time, I think more people would submit more often. Having an empty queue is a good incentive to write more!

So I guess that’s what I’ll go do!

Love and stuff,
Michy
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Popularity: 3%

If you are having problems with articles indexing or staying indexed on AC, they are tracking the issue so they can determine what the problem is. Laura contacted me about this when I gave her a detailed description of what was happening.

They still don’t know what is happening or why, but at least they now are acknowledging that it is happening. They were saying it was a Google issue, but I did let Laura know that it was happening on Live Search and Yahoo! Search too, so it can’t be just Google.

Here’s what she said to me:

“We’d like to keep a log of specific incidents where people notice indexing discrepancies, so that we can analyze all of the details and look for patterns in what is indexing and how long it takes. Yours that you sent already are noted and I know that you said you’ve discussed this in the Forum before, if you notice other people making the same complaint will you let them know that the best move is to send a detailed report to Admin (including the publish date, if the article indexed or not, when it disappeared if it did) so that we can be sure to know exactly what is happening and when?”

So when you find an article not indexing within about 1-2 days of publication, go ahead and send them an email. Do it clearly with exact details. Start the subject with something like: Google Indexing Problem Information

And then in the email, give them all the following:

Your Profile Page link

Link to the article that hasn’t indexed (use the .html ending link)

Date the article was published.

If the article indexed and then disappeared, include the date when you noticed it was indexed and when you noticed it disappeared. If you notice it comes back, let them know when/if it does, and look at the blog I posted here and see if it indexed the right was (with description) or the wrong way (with code).

This way, the tech guys can see if they can catch a pattern or what it is that’s happening and determine what the cause might be.

Hope this helps everyone.

See today’s update on the Associated Content Month-Long Challenge!

Love and stuff,
Michy

Popularity: 1%

I have a message for you guys about the indexing issues. AC_Laura emailed me yesterday and they are acknowledging there is something up, but they are saying at this point it appears to be a Google issue. I know it’s not likely that’s the case, but I’ll get to that after my update. Stayed tuned till the end, ’cause I have information from AC on what to do if you’re having indexing woes.

First, let’s talk about the offers I got yesterday. I won’t say how many I got, because they’ll likely all publish at once, and though a few of you have likely found my challenge account by now, most of you reading have not. It doesn’t skew the numbers for a few of you to have found me, but it does if I post the link to the account, so I’ll still keep that off the blog for now.

Let’s look at an overview of yesterday’s articles.

The maximum offer yesterday was $5.05. The lowest offer, with the stock excuse that it was a lower than usual offer because the content was too common on the internet, received $4.48. That’s my lowest offer yet. Out of the ones approved yesterday, I agree with AC… that particular article was the most ‘common’.

You’ll probably remember I said that there was one article they rejected for it not having sources? Well, I resubmitted it two days ago, still nothing on it, but the one that was offered at the same time as that one did finally publish yesterday. Guess we’ll wait a little while longer on that one.

Right now, I’m sitting at $3.08 per hour. However, I have 9 articles sitting in wait, and a few that published yesterday with no page views. Assuming those not yet offered on get 4.50 (which is fair consider all my offers but one have been over that), then that puts me at $5.30 per hour.

It’s not minimum wage yet… but I’m betting it’s going to be a lot higher once I’m finished.

At any rate, it is nearly 3 bucks per hour spent higher than Helium was at this point. Interestingly enough, Helium by this time was paying me a lot more in page views than AC is, but the difference of nearly 2 bucks per article in upfronts more than makes up for that.

Lots more to put up today – I’m shooting for submitting 15 new articles today. Yeah, crazy, I know. I have three finished that I need to proof, and then I’ll put up 12 more. I think I can do it!

Now, on to the indexing issue.

Laura contacted me about this. They still don’t know what is happening or why, but at least they now are acknowledging that it is happening. They were saying it was a Google issue, but I did let Laura know that it was happening on Live Search and Yahoo! Search too, so it can’t be just Google.

Here’s what she said to me:

“We’d like to keep a log of specific incidents where people notice indexing discrepancies, so that we can analyze all of the details and look for patterns in what is indexing and how long it takes. Yours that you sent already are noted and I know that you said you’ve discussed this in the Forum before, if you notice other people making the same complaint will you let them know that the best move is to send a detailed report to Admin (including the publish date, if the article indexed or not, when it disappeared if it did) so that we can be sure to know exactly what is happening and when?”

So when you find an article not indexing within about 1-2 days of publication, go ahead and send them an email. Do it clearly with exact details. Start the subject with something like: Google Indexing Problem Information

And then in the email, give them all the following:

Your Profile Page link

Link to the article that hasn’t indexed (use the .html ending link)

Date the article was published.

If the article indexed and then disappeared, include the date when you noticed it was indexed and when you noticed it disappeared. If you notice it comes back, let them know when/if it does, and look at the blog I posted here and see if it indexed the right was (with description) or the wrong way (with code).

This way, the tech guys can see if they can catch a pattern or what it is that’s happening and determine what the cause might be.

Hope this helps everyone.

Any questions?

Love and stuff,
Michy

PS: Some folks have asked how long the challenge is going to go on, and because of the delay in the first articles publishing, to be fair to the challenge, it will end on April 7th.
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Popularity: 2%

Last night, my dog ate a magnet. It was a little round magnet, not that big, but he picked it up with his mouth, and I went to get it from him, and when I did, it was gone.

I told Ryan what happened and he said, “That’s okay. He might have swallowed a Matchbox Car yesterday, so the magnet will just stick to that and they’ll come out together.”

Pleasant thought.

You ever wonder what might happen to your hair if you used a curl enhancing shampoo with a sleek straightening conditioner? Would your hair develop a ’split’ personality, or would it have a nervous breakdown?

Speaking of nervous breakdowns….

What was I talking about? I came in here wanting to talk about something and now I can’t remember what.

I think I’m hungry.

I probably should go get something to eat. I don’t have a clue what’s in the house to eat though, especially since we’re fresh out of magnets.

Love and stuff,
Michy

Popularity: 2%

I can’t do this anymore, wait for you
There are dreams we’ve both ignored
I need them to come true
There are promises we made, I’ve kept
The fact you didn’t is your regret

I can’t do this anymore, cry for you
You don’t deserve my tears now
There’s no recourse left to prove
For what it was you took from me
When you ran, I can’t be free

I can’t do this anymore, be your friend
Believe me, I have tried so hard
To mend the broken pieces
Of this painful, shattered heart
But you’re the reason I fell apart

I can’t do this anymore, pretend
Acting as though I’m not dying
When we know how it will end
Believing inside that love is true
But acting like I don’t love you
I just can’t do this anymore…

Popularity: 1%