Writing for Associated Content

I haven't updated this blog very frequently lately but this is mainly due to my children being on holidays. I have less time to myself as I haven't had to get up too early (Ok this is my own fault, but I also deserve a holiday!) and I have been spending more time with them; however, I am still working on my Squidoo lenses.

My latest lens is called Writing for Associated Content; I created it to help promote my Associated Content articles but it also includes excellent articles giving tips on increasing pageviews by other Associated Content producers.

The lens is not completely finished yet as there are lots more useful articles I want to include but it is worth taking a look, especially if you are familiar with the Associated Content website. If you like Writing for Associated Content, don't forget to bookmark it as I will be updating it as I find more helpful tips to help you promote your articles.

My New Associated Content Articles

Associated Content is a website where you can publish articles, poems, short stories, even audio or video for money. They pay via Paypal; if you live in the U.S. you can get an advance fee for the content you submit and if you don't, there is always the performance fee, which is the payment structure I am entitled to, as a European member.

I thought I would give you a quick update on how I am doing with Associated Content. I joined the website last October and so far I have 40 articles on the site; they have paid me $15.92 in total and I am expecting another payment for the page views my articles received during the month of June, which should be roughly $3.00.

I know this is not much, but the good thing about writing for Associated Content is that you keep being rewarded even for content that has been published before the current month, as long as there are people who read them. So even if one of my articles doesn't do too good on the month it's being published, I can always get paid for it if gets successful a few months or even a year later.

Here are the last articles I published on Associated Content:
Betfair Gambling: Is it Worth It?;
The Disgusting Habits that May Save Our Lives;
How to Make Money with Free Article Directories;
Safe Online Dating for Women.

And here is an article that should help your articles get more pageviews if you are a member of Associated Content or if you are interested in becoming one:
Use Blogging Tools to Get Traffic to Your Articles.

If you like my writing, please subscribe to my Associated Content.

A New Way to Increase your Articles' Pageviews

This morning while I was browsing the Associated Content website, I came across an article that took me by surprise as it showed me a totally new way to increase articles' pageviews.

As you may already know, Associated Content is a website that pays you for publishing your own written articles. If you live in the U.S., you can apply for upfront payment, which means that you get paid a fee for each published article that is accepted for upfront payment, but if you live in Europe (like I do), you are stuck with the performance payments, which means that you must bring traffic to your articles to get paid (at the moment the website pays $1.50 per 1000 page views). The members who can avail of upfront payment also get a bonus payment depending on their pageviews.

This is why it is very important to get as many visitors as possible to your articles and the Associated Content website is a great resource of reference articles for people looking to increase their articles' pageviews.

As many social bookmarking websites have been increasing in popularity for Associated Content producers who have been using them to increase their articles's pageviews, some are slowly closing their doors to new content from Associated Content, sometimes treating it as spam.

I have been looking into free autoresponders a while ago to try and earn a bit of money from affiliate marketing but never before had I thought of creating a newsletter and emailing my articles to subscribers!

If you are a member of a website like Associated Content where the number of pageviews matters, I suggest you read How to Promote Your Content and Increase AC Page Views in an Email Newsletter; it may seem a bit daunting at 5 pages long but believe me, it is worth reading if you are looking for a new way to increase pageviews for your web content.

My Affiliate Marketing Articles

Just a quick note to let you know about my new articles about affiliate marketing that I have published yesterday on Associated Content. Here are the links:

How to Earn Money with Affiliate Marketing,
Be More Successful: Better Your Affiliate Marketing Skills,
Explode Your Clickbank Commissions.

I need to bookmark these on several social bookmarking network and from next week I will start submitting them to some article directories, along with Write Clickbank Product Reviews that Will Sell; my author's resource box will include a link to my blog and How to Increase your Clickbank Commissions and I hope this will bring me more visitors and maybe even some referrals for my Clickbank portal!

Lots of work to do, lots of money to earn!

My Evil Money-Making Plan: the Outcome

Last December, I wrote This Is How I Will Make Money In 2008, mentioning that I was going to write some clickbank product reviews containing my affiliate link on Associated Content.

For those of you not too familiar with Clickbank, or if you are just curious to read it, you can read Write Clickbank Product Reviews that Will Sell, my latest Associated Content article.

As I already mentioned, the inclusion of affiliate links in articles is against Associated Content's rules, and, as expected, they caught up with me: last Saturday, one of the administrators sent me an email to inform me that they had removed the articles containing my clickbank hoplinks from their website.

I did not write this post to whine about Associated Content, as I admit I knowingly wrote the articles in question. I should count myself lucky that I have not been banned from submitting articles on their website and I will write articles that comply to their rules from now on.

I just thought I would mention that for the time my first article was on the Associated Content website (about 4 weeks), it received 248 page views and 4 of these converted into sales, allowing me to earn $58.48 in commission from Clickbank.

There are some article submission websites that allow affiliate links in the body of your articles, but submitting those will reduce the chances of having your articles downloaded by webmasters and republished on someone else's blog or website. Nobody wants an article that contains someone else's affiliate links on their website!

I think that the best option is to write your review of a clickbank product containing your affiliate link in your own website or blog, and then submit an article about the same product without the affiliate links. If you include your blog or website's address in your author box, your article will get more chances of being chosen by webmasters and viewed by their readers as well as by those who happen to read it on the article directory's website. As publishers are obliged to include your author box when uploading an article, the original review containing the affiliate links that you wrote on your own website will get exposed to more people, and as you already know, the more people that will read your review, the more chances you will have to earn some clickbank commission!

Thumbs up for Clickbank

Last night I checked my Clickbank account and my eyes almost popped out of my face when I saw that my earnings for the first two weeks of January amount to $58.48! I was very excited as this is the biggest amount ever earned by yours truly since starting this blog.

It looks like my evil money-making scheme is working after all. My pay-out level is set at $100 so I have a bit of work to do until I get a real cheque in my bank account (I am secretly hoping that the value of the dollar will increase again before I cash all my cheques).

So far I wrote 2 articles on Associated Content containing my clickbank hoplink but my earnings are only for one product. For 248 page views, 4 of products were sold; frankly, I don’t think this was my best ever written article but I guess the topic was a popular one since it is one of my most viewed articles.

My second article is not really a review, I am more or less making fun of 2 products so I don’t know it will sell very well but I just could not praise "The Woman Men Adore...and Never Want To Leave" and "How to Become an Alpha Male" and live with myself afterwards! You never know, advertising works in strange ways sometimes. Well, even if it doesn’t sell, I will have had great fun writing it so it was worthwhile doing!

When you start selling products with Clickbank, make sure you keep selling until you reach payout level because I know that an account in credit that stays inactive for 90 days will start incurring fees; some people call that a scam, I call it "read all the terms and conditions".

Updated on 25/01/08
My 2 articles on Associated Content containing Clickbank affiliate links have been removed today, so I advise you against using any affiliate links in your Associated Content articles.

What Do Associated Content and Blogging Have in Common

I think that writing articles on Associated Content has a lot in common with blogging; here are a few similarities between Associated Content and a blog, which I have developped in my last article: Use Blogging Tools to Get Traffic to Your Articles.

The most important thing you need to do, whether you are a blogger or you want to earn some money from your articles, is getting as much traffic as you can, otherwise, it doesn’t matter if you are the best writer in the world (although it can help a little bit), you will not earn any money online.

Social Bookmarking:
You can submit each of your articles to social bookmarking websites such as Digg or StumbleUpon, just as you can submit your blog posts, provided you do not spam those websites.

Forums:
Associated Content has its own forum; bloggers can find different forums all over the internet. Using forums in order to increase traffic is a bit tricky, as most forums’ administrators hate spam and will not allow you to put links in your posts; however, if you participate often in forums and have interesting things to say, other forum members will get to recognize you and may want to contact you: most forums allow you to display your blog’s address or your Associated Content’s member page in your profile, there is usually also a facility that allows members to send each other personal messages without exchanging email addresses, for privacy and security reasons.

Commenting:
Leaving comments on other members of Associated Content’s articles will help you get a few visitors to your own articles, just as commenting on other people's blogs should get some traffic to your blog.

The main similarity between writing articles online and blogging is that you must get traffic if you want to earn money from them. Of course, there are also differences: if you have a passion and can come up with something different to say about it every day, blogging is the way to go but if you’d rather write about a lot of various topics, then writing articles on a website like Associated Content is an excellent way to earn money online.

Here Is Another Way To Make Money With Clickbank

In my last post, I talked about making money writing reviews about Clickbank products on Associated Content; I received a comment saying that Associated Content does not really like people submitting articles containing affiliate links and this is true, so in case anybody is trying the same, please don't overdo it: it could get you in trouble with Associated Content; but don't worry, there is another way:

You can set up a new blog or even use your current one, and write reviews on several Clickbank products. Of course, you need to write interesting posts also in this blog and choose products that are related to your blog's topic or else, any visitors will quickly get bored and leave; nobody would ever watch TV if it was only showing advertisements (not sane people anyway!).

There is also a website you can join if you are interested in making money writing reviews for Clickbank products: it is called ReviewsArena but I don't think it is a very good idea, unless you are the website owner, I explained the reason why in this article.

I will not do this myself because I find it difficult enough to keep this blog going and write articles and promote them, I also have a life (well, kind of!) and I don't want to suffer from burn-out.

This Is How I Will Make Money In 2008

At least I hope! Well, it is the time of the year where we are all full of good intentions, so here is one of them: make some actual real money online in 2008!

1- I will promote this blog more actively and earn a minimum $1000 from
Adsense. I will start using Social Bookmarking to promote my best blog posts and in order for this to work, I will need to Bookmark also other people's posts, because I don't want to be seen as a spammer. I am getting 250 free business cards and 100 free postcards printed at the time, courtesy of Vista Print with my blog details on them. I will put up some ads in shops advertising my blog (I think I have a good phrase in mind, which I don't want to reveal here, you might steal it from me!)

2- I also want to earn $1000 from Associated Content but that means, at $1.50 per 1000 pageviews, that I need to get 666 667 pageviews, which is 12820 pageviews per week; as I write on average 1 to 2 articles per week max which so far got at the most 200 pageviews (I started in October so these are not really realistic figures), I need to come up with the article of the century, or else write over 1000 articles and reviews, and I don't think I can come up with 20 articles a day! This is where no. 3 comes into action.

3- If I can't make $1000 from Associated Content, maybe Clickbank can help. I can write reviews on Associated Content. Better even, I can write some reviews about Clickbank products on Associated Content and promote them like mad! With my Clickbank hoplink here and there, if I do this once a week for a different product everytime, I should be getting some kind of commission from Clickbank!

2008 might not be the year when I will get rich, but I will make damn sure that I make enough money online to finance next Christmas, and if I don't make money from Adsense, Associated Content or Clickbank, there are still my PiggyPoints!


P.S. Before you go get drunk over the Christmas holidays, read 10 Healthy Hangover Cures! (I know, shameless promotion, but this is my blog, and I can do whatever I like with it!)


Updated on 25/01/08
I have just been informed by Associated Content that they have removed the 2 articles containing my clickbank affiliate links so I advise you against using the above advice. However, this still allowed me to earn €58.48!

Choosing An Article Submission Website

I was starting to write a quick review of Helium and Associated Content on this blog but I realized after 600 words that maybe I should submit it as an article.

If you want to write articles to promote a blog or website, my advice is to submit them to as many free article directories as possible. Here is the list I used for my website:

Article Alley
Go Articles
Article Buzz
Article Cube
Article World
Blog Telecast
Isnare
Ezine Articles
Amazines
Article City
Free Articles Zone
Article Marketer

If you just want to write random articles and get paid, you can read my review of Helium and Associated Content here:
Choosing An Article Submission Website

Weathly Fatigue Syndrome, Or How Money Can Make You Sick

Did you know that having too much money can make you sick? Unfortunately I am feeling very well (and broke too!).

Last week I heard about anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure, so after overcoming my reaction (gobsmacked!) I just did some research and wrote an article about it.

If you would like to read it, here is the link: Spare a Thought for the Rich. If you would like to make me sick, you can use my PayPal "Donate" button!