The End is Near

Wow, this is pretty crazy. Its only been 50 days since I started this and now I'm just $60 away from the goal. I really didn't expect to get that much money that quickly. Of course, when I started I was figuring I'd be doing surveys for money and writing for Associated Content to raise it all.

Of course, since then I discovered that there are far better, more fund and much more efficient ways of making money online. I suppose I've been lax in talking about them, since that is half the stated purpose of this blog. I spent nearly all of my posts talking about video games, because I figured that what people found the most interesting.

So, to explain it very simply, I've got a few sites set up that have some articles about different topics. Kind of like blogs, but not updated nearly so often, if at all. I make sure to write something I think is interesting to the person who found the site and I also make sure that the articles I write have something of value in them. What I don't want is for someone to find my site and think it is there just for selling something, because I hate that when it happens to me. If I'm searching for information and a site claims to have that information, I'm not amused if they'll only give me the info after I pay them.

That having been said, the sites are most certainly set up to sell something. But more in a "Hey, I hope that article helped you out, and if it did then you might want to check out this book, too." kind of way. Like I said, I make sure to address the reason the reader came to my site in the first place.

I've never really been the type to click on a lot of ads or buy things online. I'm more of an instant gratification guy. But it turns out, lots of people do click ads, and a lot of those people buy stuff after they click. So by following the concept of writing informative articles and then directing people to products they're already interested in, you can make pretty decent cash. So far it doesn't look like I'll be retiring on this, but it has paid for more than half of a PS3 in less than a month's time, so that's not too shabby.

Payment from Associated Content

As promised, here's a screenshot of my payment from Associated Content. Hey, it isn't a ton of money, but at least it is something. And really, the work was pretty minimal since I already knew plenty about the subject. And again, if you want to check out my Content Producer page, please feel free.

Here's the payment picture. Click it for a larger version.

Associated Content

My second stop on the way to the PS3 was Associated Content. (Full disclosure: That's a referral link. After extensive searching on the AC web site, it appears their referral program has been discontinued, but I'll leave the link in case they decide to bring it back.)

Associated Content is a large community of writers that pays for articles. The articles can be on any topic of your choice, but it has to be at least 400 words long. However, just because you submitted an article doesn't necessarily mean they're going to pay you for it. They do require proper spelling and grammar. The pay ranges from $3-20 per article, though I've heard they also have a special $50 bonus for certain Content Producers (what AC calls their writers) if the article is especially good.

My first (and so far only) published article on Associated Content got a whopping $4.03. Obviously this isn't an outstanding offer, but I was pleased for my first attempt. After reading the forums, I found that the offers tend to go up if you get a lot of page views and/or subscribers.

That leads me to the Associated Content Performance Bonus. You get $0.0015 cents per page view, payable once the total reaches $1.50. That's 1000 page views for those of you suffering from arithmophobia.

Everyone and their mother has ideas for increasing page views over at Associated Content, but the most common topic is keywords. Basically, when you're planning your article you want to try and think about what someone would search on Google to get to your article. Then, you need to word the headline to include that phrase as well as include as often as possible in the article. Actually, as often as possible is a bit too much. What you want, is a keyword density of between 2%-5%.

This means that you want that word or phrase to show up about 20 times per 400 words article at most. It seems to me that can lead to some awkwardly written articles, but I suppose practice makes perfect.

The other key is to write about both things that get searched for a lot and things that there aren't a lot of articles on Associated Content about. I would also suggest articles that aren't either too narrow or too broad in scope. Something about insects of the world would be too general, while an article on the Mexican Staring Frog of southern Sri Lanka probably wouldn't get a lot of searches, either. Also you should aim for articles that won't get dated too quickly. For example, an article on this week's Senate debate will be interested for about a week (if you're lucky), an article on immigration will be relevant for quite a while.

I also need to mention that I've read exclusive stories get higher offers than non-exclusive. The difference is that with exclusive you're giving the copyright to Associated Content. My story was submitted as exclusive because I have no plan to ever do anything with it ever again.

But enough of that, I know you didn't come here looking for a course on how to write for Associated Content. You want to know about making money. Obviously the first step is writing and submitting the story. Approval can take up to two weeks, though for the one story I've submitted thus far, I got an offer the next day. Once that's done, they send you the money via PayPal. The payments are sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, I'm expecting my payment tomorrow, hopefully. Once it goes up, I'll post a picture of it here.

Finally, if anyone just can't get enough of my writing here, you can check out my Content Producer page.