The other day I came across something truly disturbing in the way of online writing. I stumbled on the website Senserely.

It was kind of like a train wreck – it was horrifying, but I had to keep looking around just to see if it could get any worse.

The website, like other online websites, works on a basic premise: you write an article, they host the article, you split the ad revenues. The topic of the site is supposed to be AdSense and similar items.

On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a horrible idea. Helium, Associated Content, and other sites have been working fine. But none have looked quite as disgusting as Senserely.

The layout of the site is horrible. It’s completely bogged down with ads – with three large square blocks and three rows of text ads before any content appears. The color scheme doesn’t mesh well, and the content is near un-findable under the mountain of ads.

The site is also incredibly slow to load. The site is built on top of a table based layout, with markup that doesn’t come close to passing validation. Between the poor design and the load of javascript advertisements, it takes quite some time for the page to load and for me to be able to scroll around.

Go check it out for a minute. You’ll get a good laugh out of it. I couldn’t even bring myself to sign up and get a referral id – I’d feel a little bit dirty about actually referring someone to this site and recommending that you sign up.

Bottom line – check it out for a laugh, and then run far far away. You can get similar functionality – with a better layout and better search engine placement – through Associated Content and Xomba.

I didn’t actually write an article until September of this year. For some reason, I never got around to it. I was quite pleased when they offered me an upfront payment of $10 for my first article.

Since then, I’ve written another 30 articles and published them at Associated Content. I’ve gotten a better idea of what to expect, payment wise. The initial $10 seems to be a high payment to entice you to write more… and it definitely worked.

Like I wrote in this page about how much you can earn at AC, I came to expect an average of about $4-5 per article. For a while I experimented with non-exclusive articles and I saw that average drop to about $3-4 per article.

Since September, I’ve published 31 articles at Associated Content. A handful of those were not for up front payment. A few of them were already published on another blog, and I felt uncomfortable asking for upfront payment (although at this point I think I should have). A couple others I used to promote my own website – so I figured it wasn’t right to ask for payment for those, either.

So, between the 25 or so articles that I published up front and the performance payments for the past few months, I’ve earned about $120.00. I also have not had any of my articles that I submitted for up front payment rejected.

Is this typical? I’d say it’s typical of what you can do without doing a lot of work. I didn’t attempt to publicize my work – so I didn’t reap a lot from the performance payment. I also didn’t experiment much to find a niche that was more popular than education. I found it very easy to write those 25 articles and earn over $100 – and I think anyone can do a similar thing.

I also wasn’t writing as fast as I could have. I just started a new job teaching in September, so my free time for writing was drastically cut back. When I sat down and wrote a few articles at a time, it was easy to make $20 – other times I’d just publish one article in a week for $4.

A lot of money? No. But it got me a little spending cash, and I really didn’t put a lot of time into it. This is, however, proof that the money is there – and they pay consistently. The amount that you make is based on how much you’re willing to work and how much time you’ve got to spare.

So if you haven’t signed up already… head over to Associated Content and write an article or two. There’s some spending cash waiting for you.

The traditional publishing market is easily dominated by publishing houses, and getting published can be more about luck or connections than writing ability. Few people have the resources to support themselves while they try to break into the mainstream – so many people have to give up their dreams.

With the Internet, everyone can write as they have the time, publish what they feel is of good quality, and profit from there work.

The trick is knowing where to go to publish, and where you can actually make some money.

One good place to start is Associated Content. It focuses on non-fiction, but you can take a stab at fictional works as well. As long as you keep writing, they’ll keep paying you – not enough to make you rich, but enough to help you pay the bills and spend some extra cash.

Check out the Associated Content guide, broken up into four parts.

• Associated Content – What Is It?
• Associated Content – How Does It Work?
• Associated Content – How Much Can I Earn?
• Associated Content – Final Thoughts, Pros and Cons

Is it for everyone? Perhaps not. It’s got some great features, but it certainly has it’s drawbacks.

Start With the Pros – Great Things about AC

Up Front Payment. This is probably the greatest thing about Associated Content. I can write an article that I know will not garnish thousands of page views – and still get $4 for it. Even if your article is relatively popular and gets $0.50 a month in revenue sharing (~333 visitors), you’d have to wait 8 months to get the same payment.

History of Quick Payment. Easily the second best thing is that AC pays quickly and reliably. If you are paid up front for an article, you’ll receive payment via Paypal within two or three days. Performance payments come out on a monthly basis – all you need is $1.50 for the payment to be released. This is a far cry from other places that require you to earn a lot of money before they initiate payment, and then take 30-60 days to actually get the money to you. If I keep writing, I can expect to see my $20-40 show up in my Paypal account every week.

Accept a Range of Topics. At first, I thought AC would only accept articles that are proven to bring in the search engine traffic. Turns out they’ll publish just about anything. They’ve published a lot of my education articles and some musings on sports – none of which brought in a lot of traffic. But I still got paid for it. Sometimes I actually feel a little guilty.

What Are the Drawbacks?

No Categories. One of the keys to making some real dough on AC is to promote your content. While Associated Content makes an RSS feed that you can spread around, it includes all of your articles. Some days I may want to write about sports, others education, and others web design. It would make the RSS feed much more useful if I could organize my articles into categories and promote them that way.

Poor Forums, Community. I was pretty disappointed with the forum community at AC. It’s clearly inferior to Helium, in my opinion. The forum layout is poor, there’s little participation by the AC staff, and there’s isn’t that much productive discussion of writing and generating income. There are a few nice people out there, but I wouldn’t consider it a great overall community.

Inconsistent Page View Updates. Although AC is very consistent in getting payments out, they’re pretty crummy with updating your page view information. For a while, it was done about once a month. Now it seems to have moved up to once a week or so. Without constant updates, it can be difficult to measure how well your content is doing – and whether or not you’re going to meet your income goals. Daily (or immediate) page view updates are a key, missing feature.

Should You Join Associated Content?

There are certainly some drawbacks to the AC method, and there are just as many great features. Should you join? Definitely.

If you like to write and you’re looking to make a buck, there’s really no reason not to join. If you don’t like the process, you can find something else to do – but it’s worth your while to submit a few articles and see how it goes.

I submitted one article just to test out the water, and I was pleasantly surprised when they offered me payment for it. It’s a great feeling, and it never goes away – even those $4 offers make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

So join up, write an article, and see how it goes. You can always head somewhere else next week, but you’ll never know what you could have done on AC if you never try.

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.

It’s a pretty simple system. You submit your content through an online form – complete with WYSIWYG text editor and document templates. Then you choose whether you want it to be reviewed for upfront payment or published immediately – which means you’ll only earn money with the revenue sharing system (“performance payments” at Associated Content).

How to Submit? Type it Up and Hit the Button.

The submission process is pretty painless. When you log in and click on “Submit Content,” you’ll see a list of different article types. You could select a General Article – which gives you a basic form to fill out, an opportunity to add resource links, and a section to add pictures – or you could choose a special template for news, product reviews, or other articles.

You can also submit other kinds of media besides written articles. Associated Content accepts submissions of video, music, and slideshow content. Some people have carved out a nice niche for themselves submitting short video tutorials and product reviews.

Once you’re content is done, you’ve got a few choices to make.

Anything you submit to Associated Content can be exclusive or non-exclusive. If you make it “exclusive,” you give up the copyright to your work – meaning you can’t publish it elsewhere. If you choose to submit it as a non-exclusive piece, you retain all rights to the work – but any upfront payment may be slightly lower.

To Be Reviewed for Upfront Payment, or No? Generally Choose Yes.

You also need to choose whether or not to have your work reviewed for upfront payment.

Every article that’s posted on Associated Content is eligible for the performance payment – a type of revenue sharing where you earn $1.50 per 1,000 eligible page views. If you submit an article or piece of content and select “Performance Payment Only,” then it will become immediately available – no review process at all.

You could also choose to submit your work for upfront payment – which is one of the best features of Associated Content. In this case, it goes into a queue for a content manager to review.

The review process typically takes a few days – although I’ve had articles approved in just a few hours. If the Content Manager thinks your content is good – i.e. that it will attract visitors – you’ll get an offer sent to you. If not, it gets rejected and you can either revise it and resubmit it, or submit it for performance payment only.

For the most part, you should also submit things for upfront payment – you’d be surprised at what they accept and it’s always nice to get a few extra bucks for your writing.

Skip the Review Process If You Can Capitalize on a Hot Trend

The only time you might want to shy away from that is if you think it’d be better to get the article up right away than waiting two or three days. Maybe you’re trying to game the Google trends.

That’s about all there is to it. Write, submit, and wait. Of course you earn more money if more people read your work – so you can choose to spend time publicizing your articles as well.

Head on over to Associated Content and start writing, or read the next part of this guide – How Much Money Can I Make?

At Associated Content, you can.

Great Place to Start Freelance Writing

What is Associated Content? It’s kind of like a home for wayward and beginning freelance writers.

Anyone – with a bit of writing talent and experience – can come in, publish their work, and make a few bucks. No query letters to write, few rejections to worry about. In some cases, instant gratification.

What’s not to like?

They accept a wide variety of work. Informative articles, how-to guides, and product reviews are among the most popular – but local news, fiction, and blog-like musings are also acceptable.

Get Upfront Payment for Your Work – Unlike Other Sites

One of the greatest things about AC is that you can actually get up front payment for your writing. There are plenty of places where you can publish and get a share of the ad revenue, but there are few places where it’s easy to get something published and actually get a paycheck upfront.

I signed up for Associated Content a while ago – September 2007 – and I’ve been submitting work there on and off since then. As long as I’m willing to do some work for it, AC supplies me with some extra spending cash.

Some of the more devoted content producers have earned a pretty good part time wage with their writing. AC is no get-rich-quick scheme, but for the hard worker it is a great opportunity and a good place to start carving out an income niche on the Internet.

Extra Time = Extra Money, If You Spend it Writing

It’s perfect for fledgling freelance writers, college students, stay at home parents, or anybody else that has a good deal of time spent outside the office. All it takes is an hour or less to bang out an article, submit it, and earn some cash.

So if you’re looking for a place to post your writings, head on over to Associated Content and write an article. Or, go on to the next part of this guide – Associated Content, How It Works.