DISCLAIMER: I am not an AC employee. I just submit the occasional article.You can earn money with Associated Content if you are
- a U.S. resident (residents abroad should contact AC directly before signing up). This applies to up-front payment for articles. Everyone qualifies for the monthly performance payments.
- 18 years of age or older (minors may contribute, but are not eligible for payment)
- able to write English language articles with decent grammar and punctuation
How much can you earn?
AC generally pays between $3 and $20 per article if the article is accepted. They may reject the submission for a variety of reasons. These are not the official reasons, but you’ll get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t from this list.
- AC doesn’t pay for poetry, prose, or memoirs.
- AC doesn’t normally pay for humor or Op-Ed articles.
- AC may reject your article if the topic has been “done to death”.
- AC may reject your article if the spelling and grammar is egregiously poor.
- AC may reject your article if it is elsewhere on the web (traffic competition and plagiarism are the concern here)
- AC likes “evergreen*” articles especially product reviews and local events.
*evergreen: long-term appeal; a subject that will be useful for several months/years.
What topics does AC accept?
An extremely wide variety. Everything from product reviews to travel logs. Not everything will receive a bid, but AC welcomes free submissions. You can even earn money on the freebies under their “page view bonus” program. AC will pay a rate of $0.0015 per page view ($1.50 per 1,000) of your article. The money is paid monthly when you accrue a $1.50 balance. If you don’t reach the minimum payout, your balance rolls over to the next month.
How do I join and is it safe and/or legitimate?
AC is a real company based in Denver, Colorado. They’ve been in business for more than 3 years and deal openly and honestly with their Content Producer community. “Content Producer” or CP is how AC refers to their contributing authors. AC is legit and well capitalized. In August of 2007, AC received another $10 million in capital investment. They’ll be around a while.
Before you fill out the form you should know there is a separate line in the form if you want a pen name to display as your article by-line.
If you expect to be paid, set up a PayPal account. PayPal has several options, the most basic of which is a free account. How you withdraw your money from PayPal is between you and PayPal. They offer a debit card or direct transfer to your back account. Read the PayPal help section for details.
If the email address you gave PayPal is the same as the email address you use to sign up with AC so much the better. If the addresses are different be sure to provide your PayPal email address in the appropriate place on the AC form.
You’re all signed up and you’ve submitted your first article. Now what?
Relax. It’s going to take 1 to 2 weeks to get your first offer/rejection. If it comes sooner don’t expect it to always be that fast. Associated Content is run by humans and they can only work so fast. Even articles for non-upfront payment consideration must be reviewed for the newly joined. After you have three articles reviewed and published, your freebies will go live without review.
You got an offer. Great! Here’s what you do.
Between your submission and your offer get familiar with your AC “Content” section in your Account management area. That is where your offer will be extended. AC used to send emails, but the email system is a little spotty.
If AC extended an offer you will see a drop-down menu to the right of your article on your “Content” page. The first choice is “Accept Offer.” If that’s what you want to do just click the button. The status of the article will change to “processing.”
The next thing you need to do is “Confirm.” There will be two buttons at the top of your “Content > Payment Information and Confirmation” page. One reads “Turn Auto-Confirm Payments On” and the other “Confirm All Payments.” What you are confirming is that your PayPal email address is correct in your profile. Once you confirm you should receive payment in 1-3 days. If you “Turn Auto-Confirm Payments On” you can skip the confirmation step in the future. Here’s a video that explains it.
Other resources.
 How to Use the Associated Content Publishing Template
Learn what to expect when publishing an article on Associated Content. Get answers to commonly asked questions. Know what to expect before you struggle to learn it the hard way. Read more »
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March 16, 2007 at 10:45 pm
This is very helpful information for the newbie Randy, of which I am so pleased to say that I am now not one!! LOL I feel like a seasoned vet now even though I only joined AC at the end of February. I’ve learned so much and am now getting more page views and have 3 articles for pay either published or in the process of being published.
This is a great site and your info here (as are your posts on the forums) is very helpful. Thank you for doing this.
Sherry
March 17, 2007 at 3:26 am
Another wonderful resource! Thanks Randy. :)
March 17, 2007 at 3:45 pm
This is a great tutorial and should be a must read for anyone new to AC.Great Job!
March 17, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Good info, I’ll send people who ask me about AC here!
March 17, 2007 at 4:32 pm
“Is AC backed up? My article hasn’t been reviewed…” Oh, wait, you address that!
Very thorough. Just need a way to get the horses to drink ;)
March 17, 2007 at 4:34 pm
“If you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door, but advertising helps.” — Bro. Dave Gardner :)
March 18, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Nice site Randy. Very informative and easy to manuver.
March 19, 2007 at 12:35 am
Very helpful, as always. Good job!
March 20, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Now I like it when one CP sends readers to another CP who does good stuff! I will definitely be sending people to your content page because there so much useful material there. Thanks again!
March 28, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Thank you. Easy to follow and understand. Especially, found the information on evergreen and on free submissions helpful.
April 20, 2007 at 4:00 am
I went through the guidelines out here and understood what is the stuff I have to get in to before posting an article.
Thanks a lot to put such a rich guidelines!
I will post my articles after reading this again, because I am not US based; I am from India!
August 5, 2007 at 3:07 am
[...] AC Getting Started [...]
October 29, 2007 at 4:15 am
Hello, very nice site, keep up good job!
Admin good, very good.
November 4, 2007 at 8:49 am
Hello, very nice site, keep up good job!
Admin good, very good.
December 27, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Well Done Randy,
Seen you on the forums (always a joke with you isn’t it, We all need the humor especially the whiner posts) Checked your Blog a few times, finally came across this article.
Here’s a question, What is the application process to be added to your illustrious BlogRoll?
BTW,I had no idea Jiffy was so influential.
December 28, 2007 at 10:02 pm
With respect the non-US citizens - this isn’t obvious when signing up, especially since there is a field for you to select other countries. Fortunately I wasn’t drawn here to get paid, I wanted to get published. Getting paid for writing would be a nice bonus but it seems I’m not eligible for that anyway - it should just be spelt out on the sign up page. People tend to explore afterwards, once they’ve become members.
January 21, 2008 at 9:44 am
[...] It did not take too long… Before you go to AC check here at wordpress for thebarefoot, everything you need to know is there. (I am still going through [...]
March 24, 2008 at 11:17 pm
What I want to know is, say I have 1000 total views. Will I get $1.50 every month from now on, or is the $1.50 only a one-time thing?
Thanks in advance for clarifying.
March 25, 2008 at 9:23 am
Allie, you get paid for new views only. Every month, the number of views for just that month are tallied and paid. For example, if you got 1,000 views of article A and 1,000 views of article B in March, you are paid $3.00 in April. If in April article A is viewed 500 times and B is viewed 500 times, you get paid $1.50 in May.
April 22, 2008 at 5:03 pm
This is the first time that I have visited your ( I will call it an AC blog). It is very helpful. Every member of AC should visit it before they even begin. I visit the forum but, usually only complain ahaha. I do communicate with many writers on here though. There are some fantastic individuals that write here. Keep up the good work.
May 12, 2008 at 11:42 am
This is the first time I have submitted content, I updated my account but, the only payment option it gave me was display
and payment at $0.00,does everyone start that way or can you change it.
May 12, 2008 at 12:40 pm
LaKeisha: That depends on how you answered the first question, “Have you previously published this content elsewhere?” If you answered “Yes,” those are the only options. If you answer “No” there will be other options available like “upfront payment consideration.”
June 11, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Thanks for the info. Really helpful. Great site.
June 20, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Thanks, I’m very new here and this was a big help.