Associated Content’s Holiday Publishing Sweepstakes

A little bonus from Associated Content. You get a chance at a little extra stuffing in your stocking. It definitely sounds better than playing dradle with your cousin or eating corn.

Here’s part of the official announcement with all the blah-blah frilly stripped out.

We’ll be giving away six iPod Nanos to Content Producers throughout December. Publishing a piece of content for Upfront Payment automatically enters your name in the sweepstakes, and we’ll be drawing two new winners each week starting on December 16. If you’ve already published for Upfront Payment in December, you’re already entered. No purchase necessary. Full contest rules available here.

I love how AC used the old “here link” trick to avoid their own inter-linker chomping the URL.

So happy writing and happy holiday, what ever that holiday is.

Associated Content’s 2008 People’s Media Awards Now Accepting Nominations

It’s that time of year again. AC has been taking nominations via a forum thread for the 2008 prizes for about a week now. Here’s the official announcement:

Associated Content is once again hosting its annual awards program that recognizes the achievements of exceptional Content Producers on AC. This year’s awards include one cash prize of $2,000 for the “Content Producer of the Year” and three cash prizes of $500 each for the best articles of the year. AC is also shelling out prizes for “Videographer of the Year” ($500), “News Provider of the Year” ($500), “Audiocaster of the Year” ($500) and three bonuses for Top Performing Content ($100 each). AC will be collecting nominations throughout December, and the winners will be announced in January 2009.

Just a few thoughts about this years awards.

1. Display-only articles don’t qualify for Article of the Year. I guess AC thinks the author will win and then might remove the article. If you think you have an award-worthy article, you’d better convert it to a Non-exclusive article.

2. Since videos and audios are not eligible for up-front payment, it’s nice to see these categories rewarded in some way. Fortunately for those in the running the competition is low. AC videos have a notorious history of not playing correctly so not many people bother. Likewise, audios take forever to publish and most don’t have the patience.

3. The News Provider category is yet another attempt at bolstering AC as a news site. I’ll catch flack for saying it, but AC is not and never will be a news site. It just doesn’t have the credibility. Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of talented writers submitting to the AC news channel. I’m not down-playing the writing. It’s just that real, first-hand reporting is rare at AC and, oxymoronically, often rejected as unsubstantiatable. This creates the vicious circle that AC claims they don’t want, namely, regurgitated wire stories. Even more confusing is the fact that AC often publicly congratulates news contributors who submit exactly that. If I ever see a real, first-hand report published via the AC news channel, I’ll let you know, but don’t stand in the rain waiting.

4. As usual, the nomination thread is quickly becoming cluttered with thank-yous from those nominated. It would be great if the nominees saved their acceptance speeches for after the awards. Just a pipe dream, I know, but it would make it easier to follow the nominations.

5. CP of the Year? That’s a tough call. I already chimed in with Carol Bengle Gilbert. I only know Carol from her AC writings, but felt here consistent quality and varied topics make her the prime candidate. She’s a little light on community involvement, which I consider to be part of the over-all package, but she fits the AC model of a great, consistent writer.

If you’re an AC CP and logged in, just visit the Awards Forum to see all the nomination threads.
Good luck to everyone.

Change for America: A Few Things I’d like to See Barack Obama Change

Ah! Morning in America. Why do I feel like I need coffee and lots of it for the next 4 years? The American voter has spoken. “We want change!” is the cry. OK, change this. Make the Federal government more efficient. Cut the fat and excise the bloat.

There is a great piece of artwork called Death & Taxes. It’s a real eye-opener possibly better than your triple-shot, extra-foam, cappuccino. After taking a look, I decided there are a few things that need changing.

Do get health insurance and the tobacco corporations out of each others pockets. Why don’t health insurance companies pay for smoking cessation drugs/programs. I’ve never been able to figure this one out. Smoking costs health insurance companies millions of dollars every year, but they won’t pay for preventative medicine. What kind of pictures are in the vault at Altria headquarters? Some really raunchy stuff from the Humana Xmas party, I assume.

Do away with the Department of Education. Cut my taxes that go to support the DoEd so I can happily pay them to my local schools. No child left behind. Are you kidding me? Washington mandates this junk and doesn’t send near enough money to pay for it. Let the locals handle their own. Besides, I know a kid or two that needs to be left behind or at least dropped off at the vo-tech.

Read the rest. It’s the best. »

Just a few thoughts on change.

Associated Content Clout Finally Means Something…More Money

For the uninitiated, Associated Content (AC) has this thing called “Clout.” It’s a 1-to-10 scale based on a combination of page views and number of articles published. Until now, it was just a shiny bead that people got excited about when it increased. It really didn’t give you anything. But that was then and this is now.

AC announced today, starting with the next monthly bonus payout (scheduled for 9 July 2008), content producers with a clout of 7 and higher will receive an additional bonus. The actual message from AC was light on details. They didn’t say specifically how much more or if there would be different tiers of bonuses for each clout level 7 through 10 or if it would be the same for all 7+ producers. All it said was “you’ll see a boost in your next Performance Payment.”

EDIT: Well, someone finally spelled it out. This is how the PV bonus breaks down:

Clout 1-6	$1.50
Clout 7	$1.55
Clout 8	$1.60
Clout 9	$1.75
Clout 10	$2.00

Finally clout means something other than a shiny bead on the dashboard! Here’s the official AC page explaining this.

Also pinned to the announcement was some pending changes to the report AC provides for page views and payments. Which means I’ll have to change the old converter tool which lets you change the report text into a csv file for your spreadsheet.

edit/update 25 June 2008

Associated Content Begins Distribution Payments

With no announcement or warning, Associated Content started compensating their contributors for articles distributed via their web site partnership arrangements. We don’t have any official word so the following is early-observation conjecture.

Background
First, you have to know when submitting an article to AC, the author has several choices, one of which is “Distribution: Would you like to make this content eligible for distribution with approved AC partners?” This selection is only available under a couple of conditions:

1. The article must NOT be previously published.
2. If submitted as “Exclusive,” it is automatically eligible for Distribution consideration.
3. If submitted as “Non-Exclusive,” you have a choice in Distribution consideration.

Keep in mind, even non-exclusive submission are going to experience a publishing delay as a content manager must review them.

Distribution Payments
AC has been trying for a long time to figure out a decent way to compensate their contributors for articles sold to other sites. Since it is virtually impossible to track the amount of traffic these articles receive on the partner sites, it looks like AC has fallen back on a simple one-time payment for such articles. Reportedly, it is a $2.00 flat payment. At least, that is what the early returns are showing.

At this point, we don’t know if the payments may vary by partner or if AC is marching forward on some sort of traffic-based compensation from the partners. There has been no official announcement from AC about this new policy. Were all just guessing and hoping. The good news is, AC seems dedicated to finding new ways to fairly compensate their authors.

Associated Content’s $5000 Contest Coming 3 June 2008

Could you use $5000?

That’s what AC is offering. One day and one day only, June 3^rd, AC will be holding the ultimate Call 4 Content. Once the topic is announced, authors will have from 9am until midnight (Eastern Time) to compose and submit their article. The prize is $5000.

Crack your knuckles, adjust your ergonomic chair and dust off your keyboard (compressed air recommended) because there can be only one. Details as they unfold.

Edit:
The official contest rules.

No Check for You: the IRS Will Make Sure Your Rebate is Spent Right

Category: Your Tax Dollars at Work.

It has been said the second most frightening words in the English language are, “Hi. I’m from the government.” When this is followed by, “…and I’m here to help you,” you should run. Run as fast as you can with that load in your pants. In that vain, the IRS has decided it knows best how you should spend their…er…your money.

The IRS wants to make sure those “economic stimulus” checks do their intended job of being dumped back into the economy. To prevent high-risk citizens from just paying off their credit cards instead of buying washing machine, the IRS has started sending goods instead of money. Who is “high-risk” will be determined solely by the IRS.

I heard this story on the drive home from work on Market Place. I admit, I’m a NPR junkie. It’s great programming and just a little naughty. I don’t donate to NPR, but still sneak a listen as often as possible. Just a little danger to spice up my life. It’s like ordering the Club Sandwich. I’m not a member of the club, but the waiter never asks for ID and I put one over on him every time.

Here is a link to the printed story on the Market Place web site.

Here is a direct link to the audio version of the story. Much more interesting if you have the bandwidth. Be sure to listen all the way to the end for information on how you can help stop this silliness.

Associate Content Tip of the Day 17 Mar 2008: Dealing with Plagiarism

Here is Associated Content’s official policy on pursuing plagiarism:

Here’s some clarification that we hope will help any CP who finds their content has been posted/published/reprinted/etc. on a third-party site that isn’t a partner site of AC’s:FACT: If we grant reprint permission for a piece of content to ANY other site, AC will always notify the CP.

For EXCLUSIVE content:
Associated Content is the copyright owner of all exclusive content. While a CP may be the original author, Associated Content is the only entity that can act legally on behalf of the content in question. If you find an exclusive article on an inappropriate site, please contact AC’s Designated Agent at designated_agent@associatedcontent.com. Include the link to the offending website, as well as a link to your content on AC. Only Associated Content has the legal right to send an effective DMCA takedown notice to an offending company/website. We handle these types of cases multiple times every week, so the Designated Agent will be your best step. Any DMCA complaint that you send to a third-party will be defective, as you are no longer the copyright owner.

For NON-EXCLUSIVE content:
Unfortunately, because the content in question was licensed to AC on a non-exclusive basis, we have no way of knowing whether the offending site published the content before or after it was published on AC. Accordingly, we will not necessarily take any action against the site. (At our discretion, AC may send a Cease and Desist order, but we are not required to.) However, since you [the CP] retained the rights to the content, you are free to enforce your rights against the inappropriate third-party for copyright infringement. Depending on where you find your content reprinted, there should always be a contact or link that every company supplies for copyright infringement complaints that looks similar to our “Copyright Infringement?” link at the bottom of each page.

What I get from this is if you submitted your article as an AC exclusive, AC owns the rights and will pursue the matter for you. You only need to report it to their Designated Agent and they’ll take if from there. If you submitted the article as non-exclusive, you still own the rights and AC is under no obligation to help you. You should take action to rectify the situation.

Doing this yourself can be difficult especially if the thief is a blogger. My recent experience is pretty typical when a blogger steals your article. With no other way to contact them, I was reduced to leaving comments on their blog. After receiving no response for a couple of days, I resorted to reporting them to their host. The host, which happened to be WordPress, took swift action to suspend the blog.

It is important to note, I used all the magic DMCA words when I contacted WordPress. If you are going to pursue copyright infringement on your own, you will need to be very specific with URLs, publishing dates, and use the right language. Under the law, if you follow the DMCA legalese, the responsible party must follow up.

Because of my recent saga, I found a great resource, Plagiarism Today. It has lots of information on how to deal with plagiarists. There is also a very helpful Stock Letter section. Simply fill in the blanks and you have an officially worded DMCA cease and desist letter.

The really hard part about enforcing your copyright is finding out that you’ve been plagiarized. You could pay for a service like Copyscape if that is worth your money, but there is a cheesy free way to follow your work. Set up a Google alert for a key phrase or two from your article. This will notify you if the phrase shows up elsewhere on the web.

The goal is to find wholesale plagiarism. Finding just a except falls under the fair use rules. Don’t freak out if you find one paragraph which cites you as the source or links back to your original article. That’s a good thing. However, if you do find a paragraph or two which someone incorporated into their own work and they didn’t cite you, that is plagiarism.

Good Luck and happy hunting.

Associated Content Promotes MySpace Spamming: They Didn’t Think This Through

Category: Associated Content Boneheaded Idea

UPDATED:  Please see the comments for AC response to this post.

Part of the AC Newsletter for 13 March 2008 was some less-than-helpful tips for promoting your article using MySpace.

Make friends with a friend adder bot. This tool collects a list of MySpace users and then sends out requests for you.

This is an incredibly bad idea.

1. It’s against MySpaces TOS. If caught, you’ll have your account deleted.
2. It’s spam. The adding friends part isn’t, but when you start blasting out bulletins, you’ll get blocked.
3. It’s going to give you and Associated Content a black eye.

My jaw hit the floor after the implications of these suggestions sank in. Please do not take AC up on this. Earn your MySpace friends and you will build a long-term, loyal reader base. Scoop and spam random strangers will get you dropped from all circles.

Just one more thing. This was in the AC Newsletter, too:

Make your MySpace page work for you by using colors, fonts and pictures to showcase your content or use the AC-themed layout.

You MySpacers need to open your eyes. I’m starting to think they are closed because you don’t see how butt-ugly your pages are. Tone it down. Stop with the flashing crap. You’re giving people seizures. Pick colors you can see. Stop putting lavender text on a pink background.

Bone up on some basic web concepts such as correct color combination and white space. Spend a few minutes at Web Pages That Suck. It’s a site that teaches you decent design concepts by showing you what other sites have done poorly. Don’t be surprised if you run into a few examples drawn from MySpace.

Good luck and don’t spam.

Associate Content Tip of the Day 27 Feb 2008: 6 Common Internet Writing Mistakes

Nannette Richford put together Six Common Internet Writing Mistakes. These are not the usual cast of characters. You’ll find some real food for thought in this article. Think of it as web writing 201.

5. Do you have the mistaken notion that crafting well-written and insightful content is all that is needed to attract readers? It isn’t. You need to do your homework and find a way to draw readers to your content. “If you build it, they will come.” Only works in the movies. In real life, you need to build a pathway for them to follow. Think of search engines as a path leading to your content. Even the work of literary geniuses will never be read if there is no pathway to their work.

This and 5 more great tips await. >> Read More >>