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.

Welcome to the Web. Know Your Enemy.

The web’s greatest enemies are word processing programs. They do violent and unpredictable things to web forms. With a little knowledge you can avoid hours of heartache and destruction.

Now don’t even start with the, “but every web site on earth needs to work with Microsoft Word.” The worldwide web standards are not controlled by Microsoft. Just because you happen to use MS Word for everything is no reason for the rest of the world to conform to your limits. Arm yourself with a little knowledge and get with the program.

KISS it
“Keep is Simple Stupid,” is the best advice you can take away from this article. Use a very basic text editor to write things you plan to paste into a web form. Articles, resumes, and feedback rants are all examples.

Why are word processor so heinous?
Programs installed on your PC have access to the PC’s operating system, font definitions and formatting options. They also use proprietary codes to work their magic. Web servers do not have these nifty attributes. They expect you to provide plain text. When your text contains codes the web form can’t decipher, horrible, nasty things happen.

If you have dodged the bullet until now, chances are you were just keeping it simple when typing in Word. Trust me it will bite you eventually.

A little HTML goes a long way
The web runs on HTML. Just learning a little bit can be a life-saver. There is absolutely no reason to not learn the basics. Having a “mental block” is not an excuse. HTML is too easy. You need only know a hand-full of tricks to simplify your life.

1. Hypertext Markup Language is all about putting tags around your text which make the browser do certain things. HTML tags are inclosed in less-than and greater-than signs. To mark the end of what you want the tag to do, you use less-than, slash, tag, greater-than. Seriously, it’s that simple. For example <b>make it bold</b> gives you make it bold.

2. Know the basic tags: b=bold, u=underline, i=italics. That will cover 90% of your formatting needs.

3. Hyperlinks are simple. HTML has a multi-tasking tag called the anchor. You use it to create many things, but the one you’ll need most is a hyperlink. The format is: <A HREF=”http://thebarefoot.wordpress.com”>My Blog</A>. This leaves the words “My Blog” for the reader to see, but if they click on them, their browser goes to the address. So the results are: My Blog. (Note: the tag is case-insensitive.).

Why should you listen to me?
I know. I know. Some say this is all too difficult to bother learning, but I promise it will save your text one day. Some say, “Word has worked so far,” but I promise it will get you eventually.

I happen to be the technical weenie for a site which process hundreds of résumés each day. About once a week, we get notice of someone whose résumé won’t transfer correctly. One hundred percent of these cases have been people who pasted word-processor documents directly into the web site which houses their résumé. If you’ve ever been perplexed by Associated Content not displaying your article correctly, just think how these poor people feel when the window to apply for the job is closing in a few hours and they have no résumé to send.

All you Word die-hards, I’ll be looking for you in the AC forums. It’s just a matter of time before you post in a panic.

Stupid Word of the Day: Retired

Maybe I’m over thinking things again, but where the heck did the word “retired” come from? We all know it is the golden time in life when you have enough money, you can quit working, but you’re too old to do those things you’ve been wanting to do. Still, it looks odd.

I’m in my prime-producing, work years. Does that mean I’m “tired?” Well, some days, yes, but most of the time, I feel fine. Should I be looking forward to being tired again, AKA re-tired? Sounds a bit depressing. Maybe my tread has worn thin from the road of life, and I need to be retired like an old pair of whitewalls.

All our lives we are tired and when we reach our golden years, we just get tired all over again…retired. This thought makes me want to hang myself. Can’t we come up with a better word? When I’m able to stop working, I want it to at least sound fun, even if I’m too old and decrepit to do any of the fun things I have planned.

“Golden years” is a decent euphemism, but we need one word, something short and sweet, to jazz up retirement (dang, there it is again). How about “recess?” Remember recess? What a bright spot in any grade-schooler’s day. How great would it be to turn 65 and get to have recess again, like you were eight years old.

Instead of a cruise, we could play kickball. Instead of buying an RV, we could drag out our old Tonka trucks and Matchbox cars, and play in the dirt. When I’m 65, I want to have recess. I don’t want to be retired.

Any thoughts? What word would you use to replace “retired?”

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.

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 >>

Associated Content Announces Winners of 2nd Annual People’s Media Awards

Associated Content announced the winners of its 2nd annual, $10,000 awards today. Most of the awards are based on the amount of traffic generated for the site, but hidden within this years winners were a few gems of outstandingly well-written web content. The winners were:

Content Producer of the Year
Pam Gaulin writes on a variety of topics, has a tremendous following of readers, and promotes the general welfare of her fellow writers with site like AC Writers at Ning. On a personal note, Pam had my vote from the start for top honors.
Pam Gaulin’s CP page
Prize: $2,000

Best of AC Text
Michelle Devon. Don’t stop with just “Michy’s” winning article. She has a couple of hundred and everyone is worth the read. Beyond her fantastic writing abilities, she goes out of her way to mentor new writers and spread the wealth of writing opportunities with her own site, Accentuate.
Confessions of a Writer: The Ugly Truth About Being a Writer
Prize: $1000

Rosa Hayes wrote this astounding, personal piece about the loss of her son. Her other articles cover a spectrum of topics and always have great information.
Oklahoma City Mother Recounts the Death of Her Son
Prize: $1000

Jean Riva. I found Jean through another site before I found her writings. Her articles are full of the love and frustrations of life. When she is not caring for her husband, she spends her time writing insightful, humorous articles and spreading awareness of language aphasia.
How My Husband’s Stroke Changed My Life
Prize: $1000

Best of AC Video
Aaron Jaffe
Diamonds Are Not a Girl’s Best Friend
Prize: $1000

Best of AC Audio
Ken McCoy
Ken McCoy Entertainment Report
Prize: $1000

Best of AC Slideshow
Aly Adair
Aly’s Aesthetic Glory
Prize: $1000

Top Performing* Text
Neph
Webkinz World Secret Cheat Codes
Prize: $1000

Top Performing* Richmedia
Kelly Fleming
Craiglist: There is Something for Everyone
Prize: $1000

1,000 other members of the Associated Content community also were given recognition (i.e. no money) based on the number of hits generated for the site. Congratulations to all of this years winners.

*based on hits.

Associated Content Steps Up Plagiarism Checks

Associated Content allows contributors to submit articles for both review and immediate publication. With either submission type, more so with the un-reviewed, plagiarism is always a problem. This is true of any site. If VentureBeat is on target, Associated Content has just raised the stakes for those unscrupulous people who would rip-off a legitimate author’s work.

VentureBeat reports that AC has added Attributor software to their process to scan the web for plagiarized articles. Unfortunately, many contributors use articles that they have previously put on the web as re-publish fodder for AC. This becomes a sticky situation for software that only matches chucks of text.

In the past, some AC contributors have been on the receiving end of nasty-grams from AC when their old articles were detected by their current plagiarism-detection software. When the bylines didn’t match, it became a non-starter for the publication of the material at AC. There have also been cases where the bylines matched perfectly, but AC’s over-protective software still flagged the article and the author still got the hassle-gram.

An article submitted to AC for payment consideration will obviously be subject to plagiarism scanning, but it is unclear if/how AC intends to implement this for other articles. Most of the articles that have created the accusations of plagiarism in the past were submitted under AC’s non-reviewed, bonus-only payment program. One wonders if AC will police its contributions on a regular basis regardless of review. Maybe a periodic scan of all recently published articles in the works. This writer welcomes such a policy. It only takes a few unethical people to make an entire community look like crooks.

On a related note, AC recently published new photo-use guidelines.  There has been no end to confusion of correct use of photos to compliment an article.  Many people just pull photos from anywhere on the web without regard to copyright.  AC took recent steps to limit and/or strip suspect and improperly cited photos from their site.  The new guidelines don’t address every source of free photos, but make it clear that just finding a picture on the web isn’t a valid reason for using it.