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.

Yahoo! Buys Associated Content

Yahoo! bought Associated Content. These are my thoughts on what it means for the average Associated Content member (content producer).

Link to video at Youtube.

Good luck to us all and may God have mercy on our souls. According to Yahoo itself, they plan to close the AC web site after the 3rd quarter.

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!

Not Liking What I’m Seeing At Associated Content

Associated Content (AC) has gone through some major changes and problems lately. I’m not getting a good vibe from it either. As ya’ll know, I’ve been publishing with AC for about three years. I’ve stuck with them through the bad and the good. I’ve always been honest when I express my feelings about Associated Content. I praise them for what they do right and call their mistakes what they are.

Lately, AC has created several glitches. Some they have corrected. Some have been corrected, but subsequently reappeared. Some they refuse to acknowledge. As always the communications, both internally and externally, appear lacking. The most serious problem right now,one AC refuses to admit is a problem, is the de-indexing of AC articles.

The problem started in late 2008. AC writers (note, I refuse to buy into AC’s new, dehumanizing terminology and call their members “sources”) began noticing that Google would index articles as it always did, but then de-index them. The articles would show up about a week later with a much lower placement. To add insult to injury, the newly index article would have its abstract jumble with HTML code. Many articles did not get indexed by Google at all. I noticed this when the weekly Google alerts I had set up, stopped coming. When they did trickle in, the links were only to blogs and other sites that mentioned my articles, never the AC article.

The forum was awash in complaints about the problem, but they Associated Content staff seldom reads their own forum. The one guy who did participate in the forum, the one guy who kept members informed of problems and the status of the solutions, was let go from AC today along with the AC staffer who ran AC’s blog.

I’m not a conspiracy nut. I like to think there are simple, logical reasons for happenings in this universe, but the time line of events all point to one conclusion…AC has lost its mojo. The two things AC had going were its built-in audience and a special relationship with Google. That relationship has been debated and speculated numerous times, but the debate is moot. The love affair between AC and Google is over.

Here’s a brief time line that led me to this conclusion.

• Late 2008, the de-indexing of AC articles starts.
• December 2008, some AC members think the problem is a change to the article’s link because AC adds a “?cat=#” to all articles.
• January-ish 2009, AC members start comparing notes and posting examples.
• February-ish 2009, AC ignores the forum chatter completely.
• Late February 2009 AC begins deleting articles due to “questionable content and poor grammar/spelling.” This unannounced rule change, though probably for the best, was an attempt to get back in the good graces of Google.
• March-ish 2009, AC says they’re looking into it.
• April-ish 2009, AC says there is no problem with articles being indexed. AC says it’s working like always and they don’t control what Google does anyway.
• May 2009, despite dozens of forum posts and hundreds of emails with examples of the problem, AC continues to say, “There is no problem.”
• May 2009, after getting a new CEO and $6M in investment funds, AC fires some of the people who have been the best communication link for their writing members.

Conclusions:

• AC lost it’s Google mojo.
• AC doesn’t want to admit they no longer have a special relationship with Google
• AC has new management and is trying to clear out the old guard
• Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

Given the facts, I don’t think any of this is a random collection of events. AC is changing. AC is hiding something. AC isn’t looking so well these days. Google has devalued the AC domain so severely, it now just ignores articles posted there. If the average surfer can’t located an AC article with a search, traffic will be reduced significantly. No traffic? No per-click payments. AC’s biggest draw disappears. It’s really no wonder AC doesn’t want to admit this is a problem.  If Google is going to ignore the AC domain, there is really no incentive to put up with the other glitches and formatting limitations.  I can have more formatting options and complete control over my writing here on my blog and still get ignored by Google.  If the pay is the same, why bother jumping through AC’s hoops?

That’s my take on the situation.  It’s not one I jumped to without some serious thought. It’s one that fits the facts.

P.S. Sam we’re going to miss you, but I think you may have gotten off the AC ship at just the right time. I’m sure there are many AC members who will be following you. AC is becoming more trouble than it’s worth.

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 Now Culling Article Heard

Associated Content has started removing articles. You read that correctly. They are removing articles without so much as a “by your leave.” The AC forum is lighting up with panic posts. In this blogger’s opinion, the indignation is real and righteous. AC isn’t giving the contributors any specific reason for the removal, but they have outlined some general rationale.

AC added this section to their FAQ:

Why was my content removed from the site?
Associated Content reserves the right to remove any content, before or after publication, which does not adhere to the Submission Guidelines or Terms of Use. Common reasons for content removal include:
1. Inclusion of affiliate links
2. Overtly promotional content or links
3. Sexually explicit or inappropriate content
4. Plagiarism
5. Images that do not follow our guidelines
6. Quality problems (poor grammar, spelling or does not meet the minimum word-length requirement – poetry excluded)
7. Formatting problems (content not broken into paragraphs; over-use of bullets, underlining, bold, italics; inclusion of byline or title within the content)

AC Admin also add this note in an out-of-the-way forum post:

If you think something was removed in error (i.e. it doesn’t violate any part of the Submission Guidelines or Terms of Use), send an email to community@associatedcontent.com and make sure you include the approximate title of the article that was taken down.

Though AC is well within their rights, they are going about this in all the wrong ways. Here’s where it is all falling apart.

No Warning
The removals are catching contributors completely off guard. AC isn’t alerting the contributor any way, shape or form. The authors are just discovering the missing articles by sheer luck. The removed articles are denoted on the contributor’s content report by a different color, but that’s it. No email. No intra-site message. No reason given. The article just disappears like a fart in the wind.

Bad PR
As AC Admin posted, the author has the option of emailing community@associatedcontent.com and asking for the removal reason, but that takes time. While waiting for an answer, the frustrated and enraged author will most likely post something like “AC removed my article and they suck big donkey balls.” The blogosphere is fueled by pissed-off people and AC is going to see some really bad PR from this.

Oops!
AC has already returned some articles which the accidentally removed, but the view count did not return with them. In these cases, the views will be restored to their original count when the next update happens. That can be up to 5 or 6 days in the future. In the meantime, more blogging will take place as the author worries if they will get their accrued numbers back. Worst case scenario, they rant-blog about how AC stole their money.

This Kool-Aid Tastes Funny
As with most things AC, not all the staff is drinking from the same Kool-Aid pitcher. The staff removing these articles is using a loose set of rules interpreted by their individual mood. Some removals have been for blatant violations while others seem to be the victim of a mid-afternoon, low blood sugar level. One AC staffer was totally unaware that article removal and a few other issues were even occurring. It still amazes me how few staffers read their own forums.

What You Can Do

1. Check your Content Tab. Removed articles are highlight.
2. Don’t panic. If your content didn’t break the rules (above), email community@ and ask them why it was removed.
3. Be honest. If you know your article broke the rules, don’t be an rant-ass.

What AC Can Do
A better job. I tried to tell them removing articles without giving the author a reason was a bad idea. It’s clogging their forum with dozens of cloned panic threads. It’s clogging their inbox with pissy panic emails. It’s eventually going to lead to serious PR problems.

1. Get your removal squad on the same sheet of music.
2. Send an email and/or intra-site message with the reason for removal.
3. Be pre-sponsive and not responsive. Don’t act like jack-booted thugs.

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.

HTML For Dummies: De-Mystifying Line Breaks

To human eyes it all runs together, but to a browser, it’s very distinct

Let’s talk about line breaks and spacing. Most writing sites try to do some sort of text parsing when you submit an article. Their software scans your submission and tries to do some minimal formatting. The most common thing these sites do is look for double returns (you pressed “Enter” twice) and convert those into paragraph breaks. In HTML a paragraph is enclosed in the <p> tag.

You type:

          ... blah, blah, end of paragraph one

          start of paragraph two, blee, blee ...

After parsing the text, if the site translated into strict HTML, it looks like:

     <p>... blah, blah, end of paragraph one</p><p>start of paragraph two, blee, blee ...</p>

Notice that your double return was translated into </p><p> with corresponding open and close tags.

Not all sites will create strict HTML. Some will take advantage of the browser’s built-in correction capabilities. Proper HTML is “<p>text text text</p>”. However, if you just use <p> and never close it, most browsers will fill-in the closing </p> when they encounter another open-paragraph tag (<p>).

At AC, you can see what they did to your article if it’s still in the submission queue or if it’s a display-only submission, by putting it back in edit mode and looking at step two of the submission template. Here’s what my last article looked like when AC got done with it. I’ve added the bold to emphasize all the HTML tags. AC added the <p> and I supplied all the rest.

The best thing about Inauguration Day 2009 is … I went to work. The traffic lights all functioned. The other drivers were courteous. There were no blazing tire fires on the sides of the road. No barricades. Besides work matters, people in the office discussed their holiday weekend and their favorite television shows. And that’s how it should be.<p>The best part about Inauguration Day is seeing a parade of High School bands instead of tanks in the streets of Washington, D.C. It does the soul good to know the people standing on the sidewalks are waving flags and not throwing Molotov cocktails. The best thing about Inauguration Day is it was a peaceful transition of power.<p>Now, I don’t want to detract from those who made the pilgrimage to D.C. to participate in the festivities. Attending the event is a perfectly acceptable choice. Some feel it was a historic event. Some just happened to be near by. Others have been unable to orgasm in the intervening months since election night and needed some release. Who am I to judge? That’s the great thing about Inauguration Day. We can all celebrate in our own, peaceful way.<p>Even now, in the twenty-first century, dictatorships and despots still rule much of our globe. Just yesterday, Taliban <strike>wackjobs</strike> fundamentalist bombed five schools in Pakistan¹ because they think educating girls is a <strike>sin</strike> crime. A peaceful transition of government is almost something rare. One that is mandated by the will of the populous through their uninhibited vote, is something rarer still.<p>Whether you relished Obama’s inauguration speech or took snide pot-shots at it, is unimportant. That you had the freedom to do either or neither is. I had the freedom to work in peace and safety. I didn’t have to take up arms. I didn’t have to hide my family in the basement. I didn’t have to stare down tanks and shoot guerrillas. My most difficult decision was where to have lunch because all the restaurants were open. I chose a burger at my desk so I could listen to the speech on my computer. Then I went back to my daily routine, safe in the knowledge that bombs would not fall on the building. Not because of the speech, but because of our Constitution, every citizen who defends it, and those who participate in the process.<p>Some of the world hates the United States of America, but most of the world just envies the fact that we can sleep in peace tonight. When you climb into bed tonight, think about those poor Canadian children in war-torn Qu&eacute;bec² who are going to bed hungry and frightened. The best part about Inauguration Day 2009 is … this isn’t Canada.<p>¹<a href=”http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD95Q9ULG0″>School bombings in Pakistan, AP</a><br>²Qu&eacute;bec is not really war-torn, it just looks that way to those snobs in Ontario.

It’s very difficult for a human to read that continuous block, but a browser has no trouble seeing all the tags and spacing the text accordingly. You can see the final output & format of the article on the AC site. Notice how the <p> tags tell your browser to display a blank line between the paragraphs? That’s the magic of HTML. If you ever need to edit an article, putting it back with the tags intact will save you a lot of heartburn.

Deconstruction
A concrete example is always worth a thousands words. You have the HTML of the article above and the final results at AC to compare. We’ve discuss here what the <p> tag is doing. Let’s take a look at the other tags. Most of these tags were presented in the first five articles of this series.

Here I used the <strike> tag to make it look like there are leftover edits in the article:
<strike>wackjobs</strike> = wackjobs
<strike>sin</strike> = sin

Here is a footnote that leads to the AP article about the school bombings:
schools in Pakistan¹ = schools in Pakistan¹

Here is the actual footnote at the end of the article:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD95Q9ULG0″>School bombings in Pakistan, AP</a> = School bombings in Pakistan, AP

Here is a combination of the French é character and 2^nd footnote:
Qu&eacute;bec² = Québec²

And this last one allowed me to control the single spacing between the footnotes:
</a><br><sup> =
Well it doesn’t equal anything by itself, but the <br> caused the browser to make a one line return so the superscript for 2 starts on a new line.

How to use this knowledge to your advantage
If you are frustrated with your submission being split by uncontrollable page breaks, you can use your new-found knowledge to keep your sub-headings and follow-on paragraph together. Most sites only break pages when a paragraph changes. A <br> is seen as part of the paragraph. If you use a <br> at the end of your sub-heading, and continue straight away with your text, the site won’t separate them.

Find and replace
This brings me back to a point I made in this installment. Invest in a decent HTML and/or text editor. It is so easy to mark-up your text with a decent piece of software. It’s also just as easy to unmark the same text. A global find & replace from tags to text or the reverse will change your unreadable HTML into something legible. Another trick is to save your HTML document and open it in your browser (File > Open File). You can then see exactly how it will look on the web. Without a decent find & replace function, I would have spent much more time writing today’s article. I was able to grab the HTML of the AC article, paste it here, and do a global replacement on the < and > characters to their equivalent escape characters so you could read the HTML and not have it translated by your browser.

My momma didn’t raise no fool.

More resources @ W3schools

HTML For Dummies: It’s Out Of Control!

Let’s remember that this series of “HTML for Dummies…” is in the context of submitting articles to other sites. This is not about creating your own web site where you have total control. When you submit articles to writing sites like Associated Content, you have to play by their rules and some things are just our of your hands. How your article is presented is the big one. I’m not talking about all the dressings around the article like advertisements and links. I mean the little things like choice of font, type size, and indents. Those are controlled by the sites overriding Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).

What is a CSS?
A cascading style sheet is a special block of code that contains the definitions for specific attributes of a web page. Huh? I see you’re nonplussed by that definition. OK. What does that mean to you? It means some things are just out of your hands.

Good web masters want their sites to have a consistent look and feel. The best way to do this is with a CSS. There they can define to exacting detail what everything should look like. If they want all the article titles to be 18pt/bold/italics, they define that in the CSS and there is nothing we writers can do to change it. We don’t have access to the CSS on other people’s sites. We just have to live with it.

The CSS even controls things like how hyperlinks are displayed. For example, here at WordPress, if I include a HREF anchor (like in the next paragraph), it shows up as bold, blue text. Another site might display it as underlined, red text. It’s all up to the CSS.

So why do you care?
You care because knowing this, you can avoid futile attempts and useless tagging. Don’t even bother trying to use the <font> tag in your submissions. Most sites will strip it out because they control the font definitions from the CSS. Remember what I said in yesterday’s installment, keep it simple.

Next
Next time, I’ll de-mystify line breaks and paragraph markings so you can give your spacing a polished look.