A Difficult Decision: Six Years Later, It’s Time to Change

Friends, readers, and accidental internet tourists,

It is with a heavy heart and sober mind, I make the following official and permanent. I will no longer publish articles with the Yahoo network. My six-year body of work will remain available at my old account and I will continue to write and publish mainly here on the old blog.

There were many factors weighed before coming to this conclusion. This in not a decision that was rushed. It started back in May 2010 when Yahoo bought Associated Content (AC). The assimilation of the old AC into the Yahoo network took from then until now and was done in incremental steps. The changes along the way made Yahoo a site that no longer fits my publishing needs. We have grown apart.

Associated Content was a platform where any writer, with anything to say, could publish their work in a supportive environment. Yahoo changed that. They are interested solely in work that aligns with advertisements. It’s a simple case of following the money trail.

My writing was never about ad-alignment. The type of articles I write are either too introspective to find ads to fit them or are humor/satire for which Yahoo has no appreciation. Frankly, AC had no interest in them either, at least not from a monitization aspect, but AC tolerated them and provided a easily accessible platform with good exposure. In my opinion, Yahoo has reverted to site with such tight controls, there is just no sense in my continued use of their platform.

Other changes are just plain annoying. For example, the ability to instantly publish an article for which I was requesting no up-front payment was a bonus with AC. Yahoo is requiring all articles, regardless of payment terms, to go through their “editorial” review process unless you go through some bizarre qualification process of obtaining a certain rank within their contributing masses. I use “editorial” in the loosest sense and with quotation marks because they provide no editorial support. Yahoo content managers simply check the article for viability and give it a pass/fail.

Then there are the technical bugs that remain unaddressed and which make publishing with Yahoo a chore. For example, hyperlinks put in by the author are regularly mangled and even removed by their software before the article reaches the content reviewer. The article is summarily rejected for having dead hyperlinks. It is simply easier to write here, where I know I control the finished product and have more flexibility in the final format. Yahoo still doesn’t support simple HTML code like tables which I find handy on occasion.

I could go on, but I let it be sufficient to say, “We have grown apart.” The spirit of the site that was AC, the spirit which appealed to me, drew me in, and gave me 6 years of satisfying publishing experiences, is gone. The final, symbolic act was the leaving of Luke Beatty, AC’s founder, from Yahoo’s management. Though the changes that make Yahoo no longer a fit for me were already in place, Luke’s resignation was the virtual wax seal on the document of change. The spirit of the old AC site is finally and officially gone and now, so am I.

I am grateful for the opportunities AC, and to some extent Yahoo, afforded me during the last six years. It helped me find my voice as a writer. It helped me make contact with other writers, many I consider my friends to this day. It helped me reach out to a broad audience and interact with readers of all stripes. I will continue to nourish those connections I made. I will just do it outside the confines of Yahoo.

So now begins theBarefoot 2.0 wherein I concentrate on the writing and not the trappings and politics of the site that simply distract from the content’s message. I even have the skeleton of a book in gestation. Here’s to learning when to say when and knowing how to move forward gracefully. My greatest solace is knowing that my readers can still choose to enjoy my writing here or where ever life brings us. We’ll move forward together to hopefully better writing to come.

P.S. The only bitter taste left in my mouth is the forums. I guess because when I found the AC forums, they were little-used. I jumped in with both feet and energized that community. When I started using the forums, multiple people independently contacted me to express their appreciation for my participation, humor, and helpfulness, a trend that continued until my last post, but which is not appreciated by the new owners.

I feel responsible for making the forums the vibrant, fun community it was. Sure, I had my moments of deliberate trollishness, but those were calculated responses to obvious malcontents and trolls. I still take credit for ridding the site of at least two particularly nasty personalities who disrupted the harmony of the community. Under the new regime, I am told that I am the disruptive influence. I’ve seen the same accusation made toward a few others who did nothing than freely contribute their time to mentor new members and answer the many question left moldering by the paid staff. Frankly, that hurts.

I poured my heart and soul into the community forums and there is no clearer sign that it is time to move on than when the place you nurtured tells you your services are no longer required. Being able to read between the lines, I can see that the current staff is too busy trying to keep their jobs among the hundreds of layoffs Yahoo has initiated, that they are unable to actually do their jobs. That is my one and only sour grape. The rest of my time with AC/Yahoo was a positive and productive experience.

Yahoo Contributor Network – Publishing Options

Here are the various rights and payment options you may select when publishing with Yahoo Contributor Network (YCN). This at-a-glance matrix¹ should quickly clarify any questions you may have about publishing times, rights, etc. If you are new to YCN, your first three articles will be reviewed no matter what options you select. The following applies to your forth article and beyond. Note: ALL YCN content that remains on the site is eligible for performance or “per click” payment regardless of rights or other payments you may receive.

Payment→ / Rights↓	Upfront (plus performance) Pay	Performance Payments Only
Exclusive	Publishes after review4 All rights transfer to YCN Distribution is automatic2	This combination is dumb Always ask for upfront w/ Exclusives All rights transfer to YCN Distribution eligibility is automatic2
Non-exclusive	Publishes after review4 You retain rights including re-publishing Distribution eligible2	Publishes w/o review You retain all rights Distribution eligible2
Display Only	Invalid combination YCN does not pay upfront for previously published work	Publishes w/o review You retain all rights Distribution ineligible Can edit anytime Can delete anytime3

¹This matrix does not apply to items submitted under the News template. All news is reviewed regardless of the options you choose.
²Distribution outside the YCN network is the sole discretion of YCN. You will receive a small payment if your work is selected for sale.
³You will lose any pending payments.
⁴Review times (other than news) vary, but should not exceed 2 weeks. News is usually reviewed within 24 hours.

Hopefully, this clarifies the publishing options. You may also review an expanded tutorial of this information in a companion video at YouTube.

Behind The Writing: Constructing Great Web Article Titles

The forth video in my “Behind the Writing” series was released at YouTube today. The topic is “Constructing Great Web Article Titles.”

The title of an article is responsible for 90% of the article’s success. In this video, I offer practical advice on how you can create good titles. One side effect of following this advice that I didn’t highlight in the video is that it keeps you very aware of your article’s topic. By adhering to step one, you will remain focused on your subject matter and be less likely to wander off topic.

Due to time constraints (the video clocks just under 6 minutes), I had to edit the connections to any of my articles. If time had allowed I would have linked this to The 7 Deadly Sins of Writing for the Web. 7 Quick Reasons Why No One Read Your Last Article. This article has been a perennial performer even though it contains my favorite, un-fixable typo.

The video has annotations to highlight the 4 main points. Have a pen handy to take notes.

Here is part 4 of Behind the Writing – A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet.

Behind the Writing: How to Write a Great Title

Bookmark the series play list and check it for updates. I’ll be adding videos to the play list as they are produced, hopefully weekly.

Happy writing!

New YouTube Series: Behind the Writing

I put up the first three videos in a series I have planned called “Behind the Writing.” I discuss where the idea for a particular article came from and things I learned writing.

The first video was a companion piece to the article Five Movies You Can Quote in Everyday Situations which went up yesterday. It typifies the idea generation process.

The second video uses one of my better performers, 33 Annoying Expressions, as an example to lay out three important lessons every on-line writer should know.

The third video uses five articles I wrote in a “Top 10″ format to explain three critical things you must do to create an easily digestible web article.

None of the videos are more than 3 minutes long, so take a few minutes and let me know if these are helpful. As always you can find the entire collection on my YouTube channel. Just look for videos with “Behind the Writing” at the front of the title. My vLogs all start with “vLog” so you can easily find what you need.

Thanks for reading, watching, and most of all, commenting.

EDIT: I’ve created a YouTube Playlist to hold the entire series.

Associated Content Tip of the Day: Web Writing Ground Rules

Here’s today’s web writing tip/article. Web Writing: The Ground Rules that Make a Good Web Article
This is what makes a good web article be it for AC, Mashable, or even C-Net magazine.

Web content has rules. Let’s get right to this. The primary rules of web writing are:

Titles must be search-engine friendly
A well-constructed article title in cyberspace means the difference between 10 people stumbling on it and 10,000 people actively finding it. Good titles include key words and key phrases. They have low competition, but still use common terms that the average information seeker would type into a search engine. Don’t use Oryctolagus cuniculus when you can use “rabbit.”

This and at least five more rules for web articles. These are the rules. There are no exceptions. Give it a read.

Associated Content Officially Announces Daily Page View Updates

We enter a new epoch of the Associated Content page view beta era. Over the last two years, AC has steadily decreased the time between page view updates until it is now happening daily. Technically, it’s been happening daily for a couple of weeks now, but in a move very unlike AC, they waited to make the official announcement until they we’re sure they could pull it off.

Here is the message AC sent out Thursday, 5 March 2009:

Associated Content now updates every Content Producer’s estimated page views on a daily basis. This means you’ll have consistently up-to-date information about how your content is performing. This is something our Community has been requesting for a long time, and we’re thrilled to be able to offer it to you.

Keep in mind that these numbers are only estimations until we’ve had a chance to verify them. We verify all page views at the end of the month before processing Performance Payments, and adjust the numbers when necessary. If you have questions about changes made to your page views, please send a message to admin@associatedcontent.com. And if there is an issue that prevents page views from updating daily, we will resolve it as quickly as possible.

We hope you’ll enjoy receiving daily insight into the popularity of the content you publish on AC!

Now you can watch your article’s progress in near-real time. What will you do with this information? Make a graph? Put it in a spreadsheet? (You’d do that with the PV Report Converter, by the way.) Twitter it?

Honestly, I think it’s a nice feature/service. It shows that AC listened and responded to their CP community. I just don’t obsess over page view counts as much as some, I guess. I like that when I do check, I can be confident that I’m seeing yesterday’s numbers. I don’t have to look around for “date of last update” and do math in my head. That’s cool, but it doesn’t make a difference in what or when I’m paid for those views.

So, whether you’re a compulsive count checker or a slacker like me, we can both enjoy the new daily updates. Now if, after two years of having the page view program, AC could just stop calling it a beta, I’d be even happier.

Associated Content to Start User Verification

As is becoming standard practice on my sites, Associated Content will be offering, nay, insisting that you verify your account via phone or text message. Their blog post, User Verification Launching Next Week, says this will start next week. It also outlines some pretty stiff penalties for those who don’t verify their accounts. The stiffest is losing all your bonus money.

Don’t let this slide folks. Read the entire blog post and beat the rush.

Associated Content Tip of the Day 26 Feb 2000: Promotion Techniques

Carol Bengle Gilbert dropped a great resource today with her Tutorial: Guide to the Basics of Content Promotion. Not only are the contents of the article spot on, the construction of the article is a template for effective web writing. You could read just the first paragraph and walk away with important knowledge.

Content promotion starts with the first strike of the computer key. Write content that facilitates promotion, and it will promote itself. The guide will show you how to make sure your content is doing its own self-promotion as well as introduce you to some helpful content promotion
tools to give your article a boost.

You’ll have to click the link to read the rest of all her great tips. My recommendation is read it, bookmark it, and read it about once a month. This is the kind of advice that never gets old.

AC Back Peddles Like a One-legged Unicyclist

Yesterday, we were in a puzzlement trying to decipher Associated Contents criteria for their “Top 100 Producer’s of 2008″ list. The numbers weren’t adding up with the information we had. Today we have more details. AC says the list is for producers who had the highest page-views for articles published during calendar 2008. Now we have a higher confidence that the list is correct and we can say, “Congratulations,” to the winners.

These new facts also validate yesterday’s theory #3. Those who had #3 in the office pool can collect their winnings under the broken street lamp, the one near the big bushes, in the parking lot after work.

So today’s Footie^® award for “Plate spinning while riding a unicycle” goes to … Associated Content for their ability to explain their criteria after their awards were committed. Congratulations to AC on their Footie^® and congratulations to the recipients of AC’s Top 100 award.

For those who did not make the cut, good luck on the next awards cycle:

Just Kidding

HTML For Dummies: Lists with a Bullet

HTML lists come in several flavors. The two most useful are the ordered list and the unordered list. Both are easy to create with the <OL> and <UL> tags. Both types of lists use the same secondary tag, <LI>, to define the individual bullet points. One of the nice things about the ordered list is that if you need to add a bullet in the middle of the list, the numbers will update automatically because they are not really there until the file is opened in a browser. Here is how you put it all together.

This is my ordered list. The bullets will be numbers. <ol> <li>One is the loneliest number</li> <li>Two can be as lonely as one</li> <li>Three Dog Night was a good band</li> </ol>	This is my ordered list. The bullets will be numbers. One is the loneliest number Two can be as lonely as one Three Dog Night was a good band
This is my unordered list. The bullets will be dots. <ul> <li>In no particular order</li> <li>Here are the points</li> <li>I'd like to make</li> </ul>	This is my unordered list. The bullets will be dots. In no particular order Here are the points I’d like to make

 
 
You can even nest the list. This allows you to make lists within lists and each indent gets a new style of bullet. Two things to remember. The indentations here are only for your readability. The browser doesn’t care about returns and tabs. Also, if you nest your list, be very careful to close your tags correctly. Otherwise, the browser won’t understand what you’re trying to do. Here are two unordered lists inside an ordered list.

<ol> <li>The Simpsons</li> <ul> <li>Homer</li> <li>Marge</li> <li>Bart</li> <li>Lisa</li> <li>Maggie</li> </ul> <li>The Flintstones</li> <ul> <li>Fred</li> <li>Wilma</li> <li>Pebbles</li> </ul> </ol>

The Simpsons Homer Marge Bart Lisa Maggie The Flintstones Fred Wilma Pebbles

 
 
I hope your read the prequel
To truly not be frustrated by lists, you must understand how a site’s style sheet (CSS) can affect how your list is displayed. Take a minute and read “It’s out of control!” for a brief synopsis of style sheets.

A web master may have defined lists in their CSS to display a non-standard bullet. It could be any character. Sometimes it’s the &rsaquo; (›) character or the &rarr; (→) character. It can be any character the CSS says it will be, but the default (no definition) character is what everyone expects, a bullet dot (·).

A word of caution. Submitting lists to other sites is always a crap shoot. What looks good today can look like garbage in six months if the site decides to change their CSS.

For more about lists and to practice building your own lists go to W3School.