by Alexandra Heep

Created on: May 14, 2008   Last Updated: September 14, 2009

I found out about Associated Content in the summer of 2007. The site has changed since then. I gather from other writers who have been with that site longer that it was better in its initial stages, before I came upon it (such as higher upfront payments).

The pros and cons about Associated Content kind of blend together, so it's hard to define them. This means what one person sees as a pro can be seen as a con by another writer.

For example, Associated Content prefers articles that are sensational or current, even controversial in nature. Even though other articles can be accepted, if you check their front page, those are the types of articles you will mostly find. For someone who loves to write this way, Associated Content would be an easy website to make money with.

Speaking of money, the average purchase price for articles has declined - from about $ 5.00 nine months ago to about $ 3.00 and change. I have heard from other writers that Associated Content used to pay $ 30.00 - $ 50.00 per article. I wish I would have known about this site then! There is a pay per view feature, but I have not made more than 12 cents or so with one article using the page-view earning feature.

If you submit an article for upfront payment review, it usually takes three to five days before Associated Content will make an offer. The pro is that you can accept the offer or refuse, the con is that even if you re-write the article there really is no checklist you can follow what would bring a better offer. You may think that if you write a nice quality article the payment would be higher, but this is not so.

While the system is vague on what they base their monetary offers on, many articles have been accepted with obvious spelling and grammatical errors. Even though the guidelines state that the articles should be free of such errors, I have never had one rejected for those reasons, even though I would find a typo or other error after publication. I have also read many articles on that site with obvious errors.

Once published, you could not change an article, even to fix a typo. This has recently changed with a new submission process. You can now choose if you want to be able to access your article in the future to make changes. However, I have not yet tested this function, as I have not submitted to this site recently.

Another con with this site is that even though they will let you publish an article elsewhere, they will usually decline with the reason that the other website would be in too much competition. I have heard other writers mention that in the initial stages it did not matter what other sites the article was already published on. Associated Content definitely will not make you a monetary offer if the article already exists on Helium, but they will give you a choice to publish it for page views only.

While you can submit poetry and creative writing pieces to this site, they will not pay upfront for them, yet they can resell them to other sites without sharing their profit. I think this is definitely a con, no matter which way you look at it.

All in all, Associated Content I think would have been nice to write for before 2007 and is probably a good site for the beginner. Also, if you are desperate and need to make a few extra dollars relatively quickly, they are good for that (assuming you are based in the USA, use Paypal, and are over 18). But as far as I am concerned they are rapidly declining as far as being appealing to serious writers.

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