Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Missing the Point: Associated Content Changed

Lyn Lomasi is one of Associated Content's superstar writers...a position she's earned by writing well on many topics, entirely unrelated to her political alignment (which just happened to coincide with what my Yahoo wallpaper suggests must be Yahoo's). Nevertheless, this article completely misses the point:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5540490/why_am_i_not_making_money_at_yahoo.html?cat=7

When AC was an independent start-up publisher, this advice was relevant. Decent payments were offered for marketable content.

When Yahoo bought out AC, nothing happened for several months...until Google unveiled the "Panda" software that was intended to bump AC articles down the list of search results. Immediately several AC writers began to wail that their page views were down by as much as 60%. I wrote some articles on obscure topics of high local interest, and my page views remained constant, averaging 400 and spiking up to 900 views per day. Nevertheless, my AC page-view payments were capped. The computer would show that I'd earned, e.g., $19.92, and I'd receive $15.00...three months in a row.

Also, I received requests to write specific articles...sometimes related to articles I'd written for AC years ago that were still being read...for specific payment amounts. Somehow about a half-dozen of these business contracts got lost in AC's software. And another article that had been specifically requested was stalled, sent back with bizarre and irrelevant machine-generated messages, and finally posted without the promised payment of $12.50.

AC was an excellent e-publisher, but as of today I believe it's a scam.

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