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Monday, October 5, 2009

A Comparison of the Best Content $25 Assignment


This has been a heated debate among the forums, springing up thread after thread of ideas, speculation and others who have outright said they were leaving over it. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, perhaps you should read my previous post on the subject. But all that stuff aside, there were more good feelings about the assignment then bad (in general). Even though everyone didn't get the $25, the offers were still generally higher then what is usually given. Let's take a closer look at these articles. I tried getting all the links I could. There were a ton of them. So I took five that were offered lower amounts and five that were paid the $25. I apologize to the people I've missed but I just couldn't fit everyone in the mix. Feel free to leave your Best Content - $25 link in the comments section if I didn't mention you and let us know what your offer was and the reason AC gave. There are some people that are still waiting on their submissions to be reviewed by AC.

The goal? To try as we might to figure out what it is that AC is really looking for. They certainly don't tell us and the only reason I can think of is because they really don't want to spoil the spirit of AC which is for writers to write what they want. But at the same time, AC claims they want us to strive to earn. The more we drive traffic to AC, the more potential our articles have. A lot of theories are thrown to the wind. It's gotta be unique, it's gotta be SEO friendly (which a lot of writers just don't get the concept of, including yours truly), it's gotta be popular. So let's see how this turned out. Maybe this will help with the next assignment.

Oh, and do yourself a favor while you're going over these. Don't just click on the ones that were accepted. Click on those that weren't also. Only by reading over all of them can you get your own informed idea of what to do the next go around.

The Lower Offered Articles:

Lucinda Gunnin's Angie Wyatt Talks About Her Book, Timmy the Tractor: His Hay Day. Gunnin didn't specify how much was offered but we know it wasn't the $25. Why? Because AC called it a book review which doesn't typically get an upfront payment. Gunnin classified it as an author interview, though.

Travis Fox's How to Install a Doggy Door received an upfront offer of only $8. It was not unique to the web which was the reason AC gave for the lower offer.

Marie Anne St. Jean's Best Part Time Jobs for Seasonal Employment got an offer of $7. The feedback said that the topic was too broad.

Kim Keason's Choosing the Right Martial Arts Program for Your Child was offered $7. They claimed the topic was too common.

Jennifer Amlie's A Guide to Foreign Horror Movies was offered $7 also. AC said that even though the article was interesting, it was too similar to other content.

Articles Accepted for the $25 Upfront

I'll start off with mine: Why Nutrition Daily Value Percentages are Inaccurate.

Carly Hart's What to Expect If You're Diagnosed with Ocular Hypertension.

Tamara Water's Postpartum Depression: My Time in Darkness.

Cathy A. Montville's Past Life Regression.

R. Elizabeth C. Kitchen's BRCA Mutation: What Does it Mean and What is it like to Be Affected?.

I know that many of those who received the $25 also received a nice little feedback letter. That was nice on AC's part. We don't get much praise for what we do and it was a nice addition to the assignment. Thank you for that, AC.

I hope that this serves as a sort of reference for future assignments (which AC claims that they will be doing more of). Thanks to everyone who provided me links.

8 comments:

  1. This is a great review. My fear however is that because of how many writers reacted, that AC will be less likely to repeat the assignment (experiment).

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  2. Mine was just published today, so I didn't get a chance to put it in your thread, but I was offered 8 dollars.

    Here's the feedback I got: Thank you, but this is too much of a straight-forward travel guide to qualify for this particular assignment. However, as a travel guide we think it's quite good. Even though it didn't qualify for this assignment, we'd still like to publish it. Please accept this offer and your content will be published.

    And here's the link: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2223727/historic_st_marys_city_in_maryland.html?cat=2

    I like the comparisons here. It's interesting to see what type of articles got the full payment and what didn't.

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  3. Personal opinion and purely speculation, but I saw a lot more $25 offers after Michy's thread hit the fan. It makes me kind of sad because while it is nice to get $25 for my content, it also makes me wonder if the only reason I got it was because of Michy's bait and switch thread. Was the full offer an appeasement? Was it because people were discussing offers and they felt like they needed to make it look less lopsided? I probably won't ever know. So for me, the $25 was a bittersweet accomplishment.

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  4. I would like to help out my fellow AC contributors in figuring out what type of articles were offered $25 for the special assignment. I received the full $25 and I beleive that my piece is current and relevant to today's economy. The title is: Twitter Vs. LinkedIn for Job Searches, here is the link: http://ow.ly/tdNY

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  5. I didn't get a response until yesterday, and too late for this post. I also got the full $25, complete with nice little feedback note that told me to look out for "more opportunities of this nature" in the future. Sounds to me like they might do something like this again, although one would hope that AC would really think about the wording before they publish it next time.

    Here's the link to my article: 9 Famous Attorneys Who Do Not Practice Law. If you read it, please feel free to leave me whatever feedback you think appropriate. ;)

    I do want to read all the other articles, regardless of how much was offered, but I really need to get my car inspected before I get arrested, so I'll have to do so a bit later on. :)

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  6. Pamela...thank you for including my article in the comparison! I appreciate that! I thought all the articles were really super and I don't know really why some got lower offers! I believe we all write to our highest potential no matter what! This has certainly been interesting, though!

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  7. Hi Pam,
    I received the full $25 amount for my piece
    Path to Becoming a Pagan Priestess.
    I don't like the way AC handled the situation of the call and am still not completely convinced that it wasn't in part a scam to get more quality content and pay out little.
    My main issue is that the payment policy page says one thing while AC actually does another. But many know this from forum posts. For me, getting the $25 for the call was bittersweet.

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  8. I also received the $25 and a note thanking me for a well researched article...

    Hope it helps:Aspergers Syndrome Communication Theory and the Importance of Frame of References

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