Well, much like Triond this is where I got my feet wet in the world of online article writing, except this time it was a bit more professional, and I had to step my writing up just a little bit or my works would not get accepted. My reasons for leaving Associated Content were twofold, and neither of the reasons would bar me from going back one day, I just want to focus my attention on other exploits.
What is Associated Content?
Associated content is much the same as Triond is (If you don't know what Triond is,
check out this article). It is an article writing, revenue sharing website that pays you to publish articles so that it can run advertisements on your articles.
The main difference between Associated Content and Triond is that Associated Content does what is know as Upfront Payments, as in they'll pay you right away, even before your article starts earning ad revenue.
Another thing that is different about Associated Content is that AC does not pay you for ad revenue, per se, they'll pay you for ever 1000 visitors that you get to your article. In other words, they'll pay you for hypothetical ad revenue.
Why Did I Leave?
I liked AC for a while, mostly because I didn't know about any other revenue sharing sites out there. I thought it was a pretty novel idea at the time and I was just sort of playing around with it. Eventually though I realized that there were some things about AC that kind of irked me, and discouraged me from continuing to post articles with them.
Saturated Article Market
First of all the article market on AC is completely saturated, there are so many articles on practically any topic that you could think of. AC's reviewers will reject articles when there are too many like articles already in circulation, this forces article writers to get more and more specific in their writing to a point where the articles are highly specialized, and hardly relevant. AC needs to become a little more lenient on their article submission standards if they expect to have people continuing to contribute to their website.
Low Payout
The payout on AC was abysmally low. Granted, it would be a lot better if you could post as many articles as you wanted (supposing that they were of decent quality) because you get paid upfront for your efforts. However, coupled with the fact that AC restricts the number of articles on a topic this severely limits the potential amount of money that you can earn on AC. Put simply, unless your articles are being gifted with huge amounts of traffic, you're not going to be making much on AC.
Now, the fact that traffic is a leading factor in how much money you make is true on any revenue sharing website. Again though, coupled with the fact that AC rejects a good amount of articles, and the fact that you need either a huge amount of traffic or hundreds of articles, AC is just not the greatest website for writers. That is, unless, you're already established as an AC writer and you have access to tons of good article niches and you're already making a decent amount on AC.
Looking Back
Ok, so looking back on AC I can say that I have a huge amount of respect for the AC community and the writers who persevere through the strict article guidelines of AC. That being said I'd like to add a little bit of a disclaimer: This is just my personal experience, this in no way, shape, or form projects what your or anybody else's experience is going to be like. I encourage everyone to at least take a look at AC and see if what you see appeals to you. Chances are you are not going to have the same experience that I did, and given how long it's been since I actually wrote for AC I would have to say that some things have probably changed.
Good luck and fruitful writing.
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