That depends on a few things.

First, let’s examine what an average article will earn for you.

Average Article – Upfront Payment $3-7

If you submit a decent text article, you can expect to have it approved for up front payment. Associated Content claims that the range of offers is $3 to $20. Typically, people see offers from $3-7.

A great article might push closer to $10, but chances are you’ll average about $5 up front per article. Not a whole lot of money, but you need to consider it in the context of how much work you put in.

Let’s say you’re a fast writer. You pump out an article in about a half hour – pretty reasonable scenario. If you two articles in that hour, you’ll earn about $10/hour. Not a bad wage for working from home, at your own computer, at your own pace.

Exclusive Articles Will Net You About $1 Extra Per Submission

One other thing to remember in here is the difference between exclusive and non-exclusive pieces. Some content producers claim they don’t see a difference. I’ve experimented with each, and it seems to me that I lose about $1 per article if it’s non-exclusive.

My non-exclusive articles average about $3 to $4, while my exclusive ones average about $4 to $5. As a rule, then, I submit everything as exclusive – unless I think it’s a great article and I’ll want to publish it somewhere else in the future.

Don’t Forget the Performance Payment – $1.50 per 1000 page views.

Of course, that’s only half the story. You also need to factor in the performance payment – $1.50 for every 1000 page views.

For some authors and articles, this can be pretty close to nil. A lot of my articles are on education and teaching – not a very popular topic. As a result, those articles see less than 100 page views per month.

Other articles I’ve written, though, were fairly popular. I wrote a series of articles on World of Warcraft – each of which got a couple hundred page views a month. Those are going to make a bit more money – maybe $0.50 per month each.

Doesn’t sound like a lot, I know. But what happens when you’ve got fifty articles in your portfolio, and every one makes you $0.50 a month? That’s $25.00 a month… without doing any work. The beauty of the performance payment is that it typically continues to grow – as you submit more content.

Some other content producers have had tremendous luck with the performance payment. The highest grossing article got about $700 in one month. There are plenty of others that have grossed in the hundreds of dollars (across all their articles) in a month.

Increasing Page Views Means Increasing Revenue – More Money!

You can increase the potential of this performance payment, and make more money, with a few tips.

• Carve out a niche for yourself. Find a topic that is popular and that people will read about. For me it was World of Warcraft. For you, it’ll be something else.
• Remember that search engines are your friends. Your article should be geared toward a keyword or set of keywords that people will be searching for.
• Publicize. If you’re active in social networking and bookmarking sites – like del.icio.us and stumbleupon – they’re great tools for increasing your visibility.

What’s the bottom line?

Associated Content won’t make you rich. It will, if you work hard, make you some extra cash.

If you can find a popular niche and write articles that net enough readers to earn a substantial performance payment, you’ll be golden. Set a goal for yourself – like 5 articles a week – and stick to it.

You’ll guarantee yourself a small amount of extra income, and as you’re portfolio grows your revenue sharing will too. All told, it’s plenty possible to make a few hundred bucks a month on Associated Content.

So what are you waiting for? Start writing on Associated Content. Or check out the last page of this guide – Final Thoughts, Pros and Cons of Associated Content.